"HusH!    THAT  is  THE  LANGUAGE  OF  COMPLIMENTS. "-Page  58,  Vol.  III. 


C  H  A  N  D  O  S. 

RANDOLPH    GORDON. 

SLANDER    AND    SILLERY. 
BLUE    AND    YELLOW. 
BELLES    AND    BLACKCOCK. 

A   LINE    IN    THE    "DAILY." 


BY 

OUIDA.' 


VOL.    III. 


NEW    YORK 

P.    F.    COLLIER,    PUBLISHER. 

1889. 


Stack 
Anne: 


CONTENTS. 

-  ifgi 


PROEM. 
Two  Vows 5 

BOOK  THE  FIRST. 

CHAP.  I. — Pythias,  or  Mephistopheles  ? 10 

II. — "  La  Com£te  et  sa  Queue  " 16 

III. — A  Prime  Minister  at  Home 36 

IV. — The  Queen  of  Lilies 42 

V. — Po6sie  du  Beau  Sexe 62 

VI.—"  The  Many  Years  of  Pain  that  Taught  me  Art  " 62 

VII. — Latet  Anguis  in   Herba 73 

III. — A  Jester  who  Hated  both  Prince  and  Palace 86 

BOOK  THE  SECOND. 

I.— Under  the  Waters  of  Nile 96 

II. — The  Dark  Diadem 105 

1 1 1. — Butterflies  on  the  Pin 113 

IV. — "  Straight  was  a  Path  of  Gold  for  him  " 119 

V. — Clarencieux 122 

VI. — The  Poem  among  the  Violets 140 

VII. — The  Poem  as  Women  read  it 146 

VIII.— In  the  Rose  Garden 148 

IX.— The  Watcher  for  the  Fall  of  Ilion 159 

BOOK  THE  THIRD. 

I.—"  Spes  et  Fortuna  Valete  " 169 

II.—"  Tout  est  Perdu,  fors  1'Honneur" 182 

III. — The  Love  of  Woman 197 

IV.— The  Last  Night  among  the  Purples 202 

V.— The  Death  of  the   Titan 208 

VI. — "  And  the  Spoilers  came  down" 214 

VII. — The  Few  who  were  Faithful 222 

VIII. — The  Crowd  in  the  Cour  des  Princes 234 

BOOK  THE  FOURTH. 

I. — "  Facilis  descensus  Averni  " 250 

II. — "  Where  all  Life  dies,  Death  lives  " •  258 

III. — In  the  Net  of  the  Retiarius 270 

IV. — "  Sin  shall  not  have  Dominion  over  You  " 284 

BOOK   THE  FIFTH. 

I. — In  Exile 291 

II.— In  Triumph 295 

BOOK  THE  SIXTH. 

I. — "  Primavera  !  Gioventu  dell'  Anno  !  " 299 

1 1. — Castalia 302 

III. — "Gioventu  !  Primavera  della  Vita  !" 312 

IV. — "  Seigneur  !  ayez  Pitie  " 319 

BOOK   THE  SEVENTH. 

I. — "Do  well  unto  Thyself,  and  Men  will  speak  good  of  Thee  " 332 

II. — The  Throne  of  the  Exile 341 

III. — "  He  who  endures  conquers" , 353 

IV. — "  Oui  a  Offens6  ne  Pardonne  Jamais  " ^64 

V. — "  Ne  Chercher  qu'un  Regard,  qu'une  Fleur  qu'un  Soleil " 368 

VI. — "  Nihil  Humani  a  me  Ahenum  Puto" 379 

V 1 1 — "  Pale  Comme  un  Beau  Soir  d' Automne  " 397 

V1IL— "  Record  one  Lost  Soul  more" 411 

VOL.  Hi.  (3) 


CONTENTS. 

BOOK  THE  EIGHTH. 

I.— The  Claimant  of  the  Porphyry  Chamber 4*3 

II. — "  Magister  de  Vivis  Lapidibus" 43° 

III.— "To  tell  of  Spring-tide  Past 437 

IV— "To  Thine  Own  Self  be  True" 442 

V.— The  Codes  of  Arthur 452 

VI.— Et  tu,  Brute  ! f* 

VI  I.— Liberia 473 

VII I.— Lex  Talionis 494 

IX.—"  King  over  Himself " 5°5 


RANDOLPH  GORDON. 
PART  THE  FIRST. 

I. — Our  Corps,  and  who  Composed  it :••••••  •'•  •  •  "i ^24 

II.— How  Sunshine,  Pearl,  and  Rosebud  shot  at  Bull's-eyes  and  hit  other  Marks. ..  531 

PART  THE  SECOND. 
III.— How  a  Silver  Bugle  sounded  Different  Notes,  and  Randolph  lost  a  Pony-race.  537 

PART  THE  THIRD. 

IV.— How   Randolph  and  I  Sinned  and  Confessed    it,  and  how  We  got  Pardon 

.and  Penance •  • 547 

V.— How  Spiritualistic  Agency  was  Brought  in  for  Material  Purposes 554 


SLANDER   AND   SILLERY. 

I.— The  Lion  of  the  Chaussee  d' Antin 565 

II. — Nina  Gordon 570 

III. —  Le  Lion  Amoureux" — , 576 

IV.— Mischief 582 

V. — More  Mischief — and  an  End 589 


BLUE   AND   YELLOW. 

I. — Fitz  Goes  down  by  the  Express,  and  Makes  an  Acquaintance  En  Route 601 

II. — Beau  Begins  one  Canvass  and  Fitz  another 608 

IlI..-r-Gupid  Gives  Beau  more  Trouble  than  all  the  Blues 613 

IV. — The  Radkal  Candidate  beats  the  Popular  Preacher  out  of  the  Field 620 

V. — Fitz  wins  one  Election  and  loses  another 626 


BELLES   AND   BLACKCOCK. 

I.— Over  the  Hills  and  Far  Away 638 

II.— We  Bag  Blackcock  and  Mark  Belles 643 

III. — The  Little  Diamond  in  the   Desert 651 

IV. — The  Gpwan  of  the  Moors  Grows  more  Attractive  than  the  Game 661 

V. — The  Light  on  the  Moors  shines  again  for  Dyneley 668 


A  LINE  IN   THE  "DAILY." ...„._ 675 


C  H  A  N  D  O  S, 


PROEM. 

TWO       VOWS. 

IT  was  the  sultry  close  of  a  midsummer  night  in  the  heart  of  London. 

In  all  the  narrow  streets  about  Westminster,  and  stretching  downward  to 
the  dens  of  the  City  or  the  banks  of  the  river,  there  were  the  roar  of  traffic  and 
the  glare  of  midnight;  the  throngs  were  jostling  each  other,  the  unscreened 
gas-jets  of  the  itinerant  stalls  were  flaring  yellow  in  the  stillness  of  the  air,  the 
screaming  of  ballad-singers  pierced  shrilly  above  the  incessant  noise  of  wheels, 
the  shouting  of  coster-mongers,  butchers,  oyster-venders,  and  fried-fish-sellers 
added  its  uproar  to  the  pandemonium,  and  the  steam  and  stench  of  hot  drinks 
and  of  rotting  vegetables  blent  with  the  heaviness  of  smoke  borne  down  by  the 
heat  and  the  tempestuous  oppression  of  the  night.  Above,  the  sky  was  dark, 
and  little  illumined  by  the  crescent  of  a  young  and  golden  moon;  but  across 
the  darkness  now  and  then,  across  the  narrow  strip  that  piled  roofs  and  towering 
spires  and  crushed-up  walls  alone  gave  sight  of,  a  falling  star  shot  swiftly  down 
the  clouds, — in  fleeting  memento  and  reminder  of  all  the  glorious  world  of 
forest  and  of  lake,  of  rushing  river  and  of  deep  fern-glade,  of  leafy  shelter 
lying  cool  in  mountain-shadows,  and  of  sea-waves  breaking  upon  wet  brown 
rocks,  which  lay  beyond,  and  were  forgotten  here  in  the  stress  of  trade,  in  the 
strife  of  crowds,  in  the  cramped  toil  of  poverty,  and  in  the  wealth  of  mingled 
nations.  Few  in  town  that  night  looked  up  at  the  shooting  star  as  it  flashed  its 
fiery  passage  above  the  dull,  leaden,  noxious,  gas-lit  streets;  none,  indeed, 
except  perhaps  here  and  there  a  young  dreamer,  with  threadbare  coat  and  mad 
but  sweet  ambitions  for  all  that  was  impossible, — or  some  woman,  young, 
haggard,  painted,  half  drunk,  whose  aching  eyes  were  caught  by  it,  and  whose 
sodden  memory  went  wearily  back  to  a  long-buried  childhood,  when  the  stars 
were  out  over  the  moorland  of  a  cottage  home,  and  childish  wonder  had 
watched  them  rise  over  the  black  edge  of  ricks  through  the  little  lozenge  of  the 
lattice,  and  sleep  had  come  under  their  light,  happily,  innocently,  haunted  by 

(5) 


6  O  UIDAS     WORKS. 

no  terrors,  to  the  clear  music  of  a  mother's  spinning-song.  Save  these,  none 
thought  of  the  star  as  it  dropped  down  above  the  jagged  wilderness  of  roofs: 
the  crowd  was  looking  elsewhere, — to  the  lighted  entrance  of  the  Lower  House. 
The  ministers  who  sat  in  the  Commons  were  about  to  leave,  after  a  night  of 
unusual  national  interest. 

The  multitude  had  gathered  thickly,  swollen  by  every  passer-by  who,  drawn 
into  the  vortex,  had  hung  on  the  outskirts  of  the  concourse,  and  stopped  in  turn 
to  pause  and  stare,  and  hear  the  gossip  of  St.  Stephen's.  There  had  been,  as  it 
was  known,  a  powerful  and  heated  debate,  a  political  crisis  of  decisive  eminence, 
— of  some  peril,  moreover,  to  the  country,  from  a  rash  war  policy  which  had 
been  urged  upon  the  existing  ministry,  which  must,  it  had  been  feared,  have 
resigned  to  escape  stooping  to  measures  forced  on  it  by  the  opposition;  the 
false  position  had  been  avoided  by  the  genius  of  one  man  alone;  the  government 
had  stood  firm,  and  had  vanquished  its  foes,  through  the  mighty  ability  of  its 
chief  statesman, — one  who,  more  fortunate  than  Pitt  in  the  brilliant  success  of 
his  measures  at  home  and  abroad,  was  often  called,  like  Pitt,  the  Great 
Commoner. 

Yet  it  was  a  title,  perhaps,  that  scarcely  suited  him;  for  he  was  patrician  to 
the  core, — patrician  in  pride,  in  name,  in  blood,  and  in  caste,  though  he  dis- 
dained all  coronets.  You  could  not  have  lowered  him;  also,  you  could  not 
have  ennobled  him.  He  was  simply  and  intrinsically  a  great  man.  At  the 
same  time,  he  was  the  haughtiest  of  aristocrats, — too  haughty,  by  all  the  Bour- 
bon and  Plantagenet  blood  of  his  line,  ever  to  stoop  to  the  patent  of  a  present,, 
earldom  or  a  marquisate  of  the  new  creation. 

The  crowds  pressed  closest  and  densest  as  one  by  one  of  his  colleagues  ap- 
peared, passing  to  their  carriages;  and  his  name  ran  breathlessly  down  the 
people's  ranks:  they  trusted  him,  they  honored  him,  they  were  proud  of  him,  as 
this  country,  so  naturally  and  strongly  conservative  in  its  instincts,  however  radi- 
cal it  be  in  its  reasonings,  is  proud  of  its  aristocratic  leaders.  They  were  ready  to 
cheer  him  to  the  echo  the  moment  he  appeared;  specially  ready  to-night, 
for  he  had  achieved  a  signal  victory,  and  the  populace  always  cense  success. 
At  last  he  came, — a  tall  and  handsome  man,  very  fair,  and  of  splendid  bear- 
ing, about  fifty  years  of  age,  and  with  a  physiognomy  that  showed  both  the 
habit  and  the  power  of  command.  He  was  satiated  to  weariness  with  public 
homage;  but  he  acknowledged  the  greetings  of  the  people  as  they  rang  on  the 
night  air  with  kindly,  if  negligent,  courtesy, — the  courtesy  of  a  grand  seigneur. 
At  his  side  was  a  boy,  his  only  son,  a  mere  child  of  some  seven  years.  In- 
dulged in  his  every  inclination,  he  had  been  taken  to  the  House  that  evening 
by  a  good-natured  peer,  to  a  seat  under  the  clock,  and  had  for  the  first  time 
heard  his  father  speak, — heard,  with  his  eyes  glittering,  and  his  cheeks  flushed, 
and  his  heart  beating,  in  a  passionate  triumph  and  an  enthusiastic  love  much 


CHANDOS.  7 

beyond  his  years;  with  a  silent  vow,  moreover,  in  his  childish  thoughts,  to  go  and 
do  likewise  in  his  manhood. 

"  That  boy  will  be  a  great  man,  if — if  he  dosen't  have  too  much  genius," 
the  old  peer  who  sat  beside  him  had  said  to  himself,  watching  his  kindling  eyes 
and  his  breathless  lips,  and  knowing,  like  a  world-wise  old  man  of  business  as 
he  was,  that  the  fate  of  Prometheus  is  the  same  in  all  ages,  and  that  it  is  medioc- 
rity which  pays. 

The  boy  had  a  singular;  it  had  been  a  great  characteristic  of  the  great  min- 
ister's race  through  all  centuries;  woman's  tenderness  and  fashionable  fancies 
were  shown  in  the  elegance  of  his  dress,  with  its  velvets  and  laces  and  delicate 
hues;  and  the  gold  of  his  hair,  falling  over  his  shoulders  in  long,  clustering 
curls,  glittered  in  the  lamp-light  as,  at  his  father's  recognition  of  the  crowd,  he 
lifted  his  cap  with  its  eagle's  feather  and  bowed  to  them  too, — a  child's  bright, 
gratified  amusement  blent  with  the  proud,  courtly  grace  of  his  father's  manner, 
already  hereditary  in  him. 

The  hearts  of  the  people  warmed  to  him  for  his  beauty  and  for  his  child- 
hood, the  hearts  of  the  women  especially,  and  they  gave  him  another  and  yet 
heartier  cheer.  He  bowed  like  a  young  prince,  to  the  right  and  to  the  left,  and 
looked  up  in  the  grave  statesman's  face  with  a  happy,  joyous  laugh;  yet  still  in 
his  eyes,  as  they  glanced  over  the  throngs,  there  was  the  look — dreamy,  brill- 
iant, half  wistful,  half  eager — which  was  beyond  his  age,  and  which  had  made 
the  old  peer  fear  for  him  that  gift  of  the  gods  which  the  world  does  not  love, 
because — most  unwisely,  most  suicidally — it  fears  it. 

Amongst  the  crowd,  wedged  in  with  the  thousands  pressing  there  about  the 
carriages  waiting  for  the  members,  stood  a  woman:  she  was  in  mourning-clothes, 
that  hung  sombrely  and  heavily  about  her,  and  a  dark  veil  obscured  her  feat- 
ures. By  something  in  her  attitude,  something  in  her  form,  it  would  have 
been  guessed  that  she  had  been  handsome,  not  very  long  since,  either,  but  that 
now  there  was  more  in  her  that  was  harsh,  and  perhaps  coarse,  than  there  was 
of  any  other  trait.  Her  features  could  not  be  seen,  her  eyes  alone  shone  through 
the  folds  of  her  veil,  and  were  fixed  on  the  famous  politician  as  he  came  out 
from  the  entrance  of  the  Commons,  and  on  the  young  boy  by  his  side.  Her 
own  hand  was  on  the  shoulder  of  a  child  but  a  few  years  older,  very  strongly 
built,  short,  and  muscularly  made,  with  features  of  a  thoroughly  English  type,— 
that  which  is  vulgarly  called  the  Saxon  ;  his  skin  was  very  tanned,  his  linen  torn 
and  untidy,  his  hands  brown  as  berries  and  broad  as  a  young  lion's  paws,  and 
his  eyes,  blue,  keen,  with  an  infinite  mass  of  humor  in  them,  looked  steadily 
out  from  under  the  straw  hat  drawn  over  them  ;  they  too  were  fastened  on  the 
bright  hair  and  the  delicate  dress  of  the  little  aristocrat,  with  some  such  look  as? 
when  a  child,  Manon  Phlippon  gave  the  gay  and  glittering  groups  of  Versailles 
and  the  young  queen  whom  she  lived  to  drag  to  the  scaffold. 


8  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

The  women's  hand  weighed  more  heavily  on  his  shoulder,  and  she  stooped 
her  head  till  her  lips  touched  his  cheek,  with  a  hoarse  whisper, — 

"  There  is  your  enemy  !  " 

The  boy  nodded  silently,  and  a  look  passed  over  his  face,  over  the  sturdy 
defiance  of  his  mouth  and  the  honest  mischief  of  his  eyes,  very  bitter,  very 
merciless, — worse  in  one  so  young  than  the  fiercest  outburst  of  evanescent  rage. 

Life  was  but  just  opening  in  him  ;  but  already  he  had  learned  man's  first 
instinct, — to  hate. 

Where  they  stood,  on  the  edge  of  the  pressing  throng,  that  had  left  but  a 
narrow  lane  for  a  passage  of  the  ministers,  the  little  patrician  was  close  to  the 
boy  who  stared  at  him  with  so  dogged  a  jealousy  and  detestation  in  his  glance ;  and 
his  own  large  eyes,  with  a  wondering  surprise  in  their  brilliance,  rested  a  mo- 
ment on  the  only  face  that,  in  a  world  to  him  of  luxury  and  love,  had  ever 
looked  darkly  on  him.  He  paused,  the  naturally  generous  and  tender  temper 
in  him  leading  him,  unconsciously,  rather  to  pity  and  to  reconciliation  than  to 
offence:  he  had  never  seen  this  stranger  before,  but  his  instinct  was  to  woo  him 
out  of  his  angry  solitude.  He  touched  him,  with  a  bright  and  loving  smile, 
giving  what  he  had  to  give. 

"You  look  vexed  and  tired:  take  these  !  " 

He  put  into  his  hand  a  packet  of  French  bonbons  that  he  had  been  given  in 
the  Ladies  Gallery,  and  followed  his  father,  with  a  glad,  rapid  bound,  into  the 
carriage,  by  whose  steps  they  were.  The  servants  shut  the  door  with  a  clash, 
the  wheels  rolled  away  with  a  loud  clatter,  swelling  the  thunder  of  the  busy 
midnight  streets.  The  boy  in  the  throng  stood  silent,  looking  at  the  dainty, 
costly,  enamelled  Paris  packet  of  crystallized  sweetmeats  and  fruits.  Then, 
without  a  word,  he  flung  it  savagely  on  the  ground,  and  stamped  it  out  under 
his  heel,  making  the  painted,  silvered  paper,  and  the  luscious  bonbons,  a  bat- 
tered, trampled  mass,  down  in  the  mud  of  the  pavement. 

There  was  a  world  of  eloquence  in  the  gesture.  Rich  bonbons  rarely 
touched  his  lips,  and  he  was  child  enough  to  love  them  well;  but  he  threw 
them  out  on  the  trottoir  now,  as  though  they  had  been  so  much  sand. 

As  his  carriage  rolled  through  the  streets  in  the  late  night,  the  great  states- 
man passed  his  hand  lightly  over  the  fair  locks  of  his  son.  The  child  had  much  of 
his  own  nature,  of  his  own  intellect,  and  he  saw  in  his  young  heir  the  future 
security  for  the  continuance  of  the  brilliance  and  power  of  his  race. 

"  You  will  make  the  nation  honor  you  for  yourself  one  day,  Ernest  ? "  he 
said,  gently,  as  his  hand  lay  on  the  soft,  glittering  hair. 

There  were  tears  in  the  child's  eyes,  and  a  brave  and  noble  promise  and 
comprehension  in  his  face,  as  he  looked  up  at  his  father. 

«  If  I  live  I  will  !  " 

As  they  were  propelled  onward  by  the  pressure  of  the  moving  crowd,  the 


CHAN  DOS.  9 

woman  and  her  son  went  slowly  along  the  heated  streets,  with  the  gas-glare  of 
some  fish  or  meat-shops  thrown  on  them,  as  they  passed,  in  yellow,  flaring 
illumination.  They  were  not  poor,  though  on  foot  thus,  and  though  the  lad's 
dress  was  torn  and  soiled  through  his  own  inveterate  activity  and  endless  mis- 
chief. No  pressure  of  any  want  was  on  them:  yet  his  glance  followed  the 
carriage,  darted  under  the  awnings  before  the  mansions,  and  penetrated  wher- 
ever riches  or  rank  struck  him,  with  the  hungry,  impatient,  longing  look  of  a 
starving  Rousseau  or  Gilbert,  hounded  to  socialism  for  the  lack  of  a  sou, — a 
look  very  strange  and  premature  on  a  face  so  young  and  naturally  so  mirthful 
and  good-humored. 

His  mother  watched  him,  and  leaned  her  hand  again  on  his  shoulder. 

"  You  will  have  your  revenge  one  day." 

"  Won't  I!" 

The  schoolboy  answer  was  ground  out  with  a  meaning  intensity,  as  he  set 
his  teeth  like  a  young  bulldog. 

Each  had  promised  to  gain  a  very  different  aristeia.  When  they  came  to 
the  combat,  with  whom  would  rest  the  victory  ? 


10  QUID  AS     WORKS. 


BOOK    THE    FIRST. 


Yo  tocar6  cantando 

El  musico  instrumento  sonoroso, 
Tu  el  glorio  gozando 

Danza,  y  festSja  a  Dios  que  es  poderoso, 
O  gozemos  de  esta  gloria 
Por  que  la  humana  es  transitoria  ! 

Ode  of  the  Flower.     IXTILXOCHITL. 

Plutus,  the  god  of  gold 

Is  but  his  steward 

.    .     .    no  gift  to  him 
But  breeds  the  giver  a  return  exceeding 
All  use  of  quittance. 

SHAKSPEARE. 


CHAPTER  I. 

PYTHIAS,    OR   MEPHISTOPHELES  ? 

IT  was  the  height  of  the  London  season.  Town  filled.  Death  had  made 
gaps  in  the  crowd;  but  new-comers  filled  up  the  rents,  and  the  lost  were  un- 
missed.  Brows,  that  the  last  year  had  been  stainless  as  snow,  had  been 
smirched  with  slander  or  stained  with  shame;  but  the  opals  crowning  them 
belied  their  ancient  fame,  and  did  not  pale.  Light  hearts  had  grown  heavy, 
proud  heads  had  been  bent,  fair  cheeks  had  learned  to  cover  care  with  pearl- 
powder,  words  had  been  spoken  that  a  lifetime  could  not  recall,  links  had  been 
broken  that  an  eternity  would  not  unite,  seeds  of  sin  and  sorrow  had  been  sown 
never  again  to  be  uprooted,  in  the  brief  months  that  lay  between  "  last  season  " 
and  this  phoenix  of  the  new;  but  the  fashionable  world  met  again  with  smiling 
lips,  and  the  bland  complaisance,  and  unutterable  ennui,  and  charming  mutual 
compliment  to  go  through  all  the  old  routine  with  well-trained  faces,  befitting 
the  arena. 

It  was  April.  The  last  carriages  had  rolled  out  by  the  Corner,  the  last  hacks 
paced  out  of  the  Ride,  the  last  sunlight  was  fading;  epicures  were  reflecting  on 
their  club  dinners,  beauties  were  studying  the  contents  of  their  jewel-boxes,  the 
one  enjoying  a  matelote,  the  other  a  conquest,  in  dreamy  anticipation;  chan- 
deliers were  being  lit  for  political  receptions,  where  it  would  be  a  three-hours 
campaign  to  crush  up  the  stairs;  and  members  waiting  to  go  in  on  Supply  were 


CHAN  DOS.  11 

improving  their  minds  by  discussing  a  new  dancer's  ankles,  and  the  extraordi- 
nary scratching  of  Lord  of  the  Isles  for  the  Guineas.  The  West,  in  a  word, 
was  beginning  its  Business,  which  is  Pleasure;  while  the  East  laid  aside  its 
Pleasure,  which  is  Business;  and  it  was  near  eight  o'clock  on  a  spring  night  in 
London. 

Half  a  hundred  entertainments  waited  for  his  selection;  all  the  loveliest 
women,  of  mondes  proper  and  improper,  were  calculating  their  chances  of 
securing  his  preference;  every  sort  of  intellectual  or  material  pleasure  waited 
for  him  as  utterly  as  they  ever  waited  for  Sulla  when  the  rose-wreaths  were  on 
his  hair  and  Quintius  Roscius  ready  with  his  ripest  wit;  and  for  him  as  truly  as 
for  Sulla,  "  Felix  "  might  have  described  him  as  the  darling  of  the  gods:  yet, 
alone  in  his  house  in  Park  Lane,  a  man  lay  in  idleness  and  ease,  indolently 
smoking  a  narghile  from  a  great  silver  basin  of  rose-water.  A  stray  sunbeam 
lingered  here  and  there  on  some  delicate  bit  of  statuary,  or  jewelled  tazze,  or 
Cellini  cup,  in  a  chamber  luxurious  enough  for  an  imperial  bride's,  with  its 
hangings  of  violet  velvet,  its  ceiling  painted  after  Greuze,  its  walls  hung  with 
rich  Old  Masters  and  Petits  Maitres,  and  its  niches  screening  some  group  of 
Coysevox,  Coustou,  or  Canova.  It  was,  however,  only  the  "  study,"  the  pet 
retreat  of  its  owner,  a  collector  and  a  connoisseur,  who  lay  now  on  his  sofa, 
near  a  table  strewn  with  Elzevirs,  Paris  novels,  MSS.,  croquis,  before-letter 
proofs,  and  dainty  female  notes.  The  fading  sunlight  fell  across  his  face  as 
his  head  rested  on  his  left  arm.  A  painter  would  have  drawn  him  as  Alcibia- 
des,  or,  more  poetically  still,  would  have  idealized  him  into  the  Phoebus  Lyke- 
genes,  the  light-born,  the  Sun-god,  of  Hellas,  so  singularly  great  was  his 
personal  beauty.  A  physiognomist  would  have  said,  "  Here  is  a  voluptuary, 
here  is  a  profound  thinker,  here  is  a  poet,  here  is  one  who  may  be  leader  and 
chief  among  men  if  he  will,"  but  would  have  added,  "  Here  is  one  who  may, 
fifty  to  one,  sink  too  softly  into  his  bed  of  rose-leaves  ever  to  care  to  rise  in 
full  strength  out  of  it."  Artists  were  chiefly  attracted  by  the  power,  men  by 
the  brilliance,  and  women  by  the  gentleness,  of  this  dazzling  beauty:  for  the 
latter,  indeed,  a  subtler  spell  yet  lay  in  the  deep-blue,  poetic,  eloquent  eyes, 
which  ever  gave  such  tender  homage,  such  dangerous  prayer,  to  their  own  love- 
liness. The  brow  was  magnificent,  meditative  enough  for  Plato's;  the  rich 
and  gold-hued  hair,  bright  as  any  Helen's;  the  gaze  of  the  eyes  in  rest,  thought- 
ful as  might  be  that  of  a  Marcus  Aurelius;  the  mouth,  insouciant  and  epicurean 
as  the  lips  of  a  Catullus.  The  contradictions  in  the  features  were  the  anoma- 
lies in  the  character.  For  the  rest,  his  stature  was  much  above  the  ordinary 
height;  his  attitude  showed  both  the  strength  and  grace  of  his  limbs;  his  age 
was  a  year  or  so  over  thirty,  and  his  revery  now  was  of  the  lightest  and  laziest: 
he  had  not  a  single  care  on  him. 

There  was  a  double  door  to  his  room;  he  was  never  disturbed  there,   either 


12  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

by  servants  or  friends,  on  any  sort  of  pretext;  his  house  was  as  free  to  all  as  a 
caravanserai,  but  to  this  chamber  only  all  the  world  was  interdicted.  Yet  the 
first  handle  turned,  the  second  turned,  the  portiere  was  tossed  aside  with  a 
jerk,  and  the  audacious  new-comer  entered.  A  gallant  retriever  lying  by  the 
couch  showed  fight  and  growled.  Yet  the  guest  was  one  he  saw  every  day,  al- 
most every  hour, — the  ami  de  la  maison,  the  masterly  comptroller  of  the 
household. 

"  My  dear  Ernest !  you  alone  at  this  time  of  the  day  ?  What  a  miracle  ! 
I  have  actually  dared  to  invade  your  sanctum,  your  holy  of  holies  ;  deuced 
pleasant  place,  too.  What  is  it  you  do  here  ?  Paint  your  prettiest  picture, 
chip  your  prettiest  statuette,  make  love  to  your  prettiest  mistress,  write  your 
novels,  study  occult  sciences,  meditate  on  the  Dialectics,  seek  the  Philosopher's 
stone,  search  for  the  Venetian  color-secret,  have  suppers  a  la  Re'genee  to  which 
you  deny  even  your  bosom  friends  ?  or  what  is  it  ?  On  my  honor  I  am  very 
curious  !  " 

"  Tell  me  some  news,  Trevenna,"  said  his  host,  with  an  amused  smile,  in  a 
voice  low,  clear,  lingering  and  melodious  as  music,  contrasting  forcibly  with  the 
sharp,  ringing,  metallic  tones  of  his  visitor.  "  How  came  you  to  come  in  here  ? 
You  know " 

"  I  know;  but  I  had  a  curiosity  and  a  good  opportunity:  what  mortal,  or 
what  morals,  ever  resisted  such  a  combination  ?  I  am  weaker  than  a  woman. 
No  principle,  not  a  shred.  Am  I  responsible  for  that  ?  No; — organization  and 
education.  How  dark  you  are  here  !  May  I  ring  for  -lights  ?  " 

"  Do  you  want  light  to  talk  by  ?  "  laughed  his  friend,  stretching  his  hand  to 
a  bell-handle.  "  Your  tongue  generally  runs  on  oiled  wheels,  Trevenna." 

"  Of  course  it  does.  It's  my  trade  to  talk;  I  rattle  my  tongue  as  a  nigger 
singer  rattles  his  bones;  I  must  chat  as  an  organ-grinder  grinds.  I'm  asked 
out  to  dine  to  talk.  If  I  grew  a  bore,  every  creature  would  drop  me;  and  if  I 
grew  too  dull  to  get  up  a  scandal,  I  should  be  very  sure  never  to  get  a  dinner. 
My  tongue's  my  merchandise  !  " 

With  which  statement  of  his  social  status,  John  Trevenna  jerked  himself 
out  of  his  chair,  and,  while  the  groom  of  the  chamber  lighted  the  chandelier, 
strolled  round  the  apartment.  He  was  a  man  of  six  or  eight-and-thirty,  short, 
a  little  stout,  but  wonderfully  supple,  quick,  and  agile,  a  master  of  all  the 
science  of  the  gymnasium;  his  face  was  plain  and  irregular  in  feature,  but 
bright,  frank,  full  of  good  humor  almost  to  joviality,  and  of  keen,  alert,  cul- 
tured intelligence,  prepossessing  through  its  blunt  and  honest  candor,  its  merry 
smile  showing  the  strong  white  teeth,  its  bonhomie,  and  its  look  of  acute  in- 
domitable cleverness, — a  cleverness  which  is  no  more  genius  than  an  English 
farce  is  wit,  but  which,  sharper  than  intellect  alone,  more  audacious  than  talent 
alone,  will  trick  the  world,  and  throw  its  foes,  and  thrive  in  all  it  does,  while 


CHANDOS.  13 

genius  gets  stoned  or  starves.  He  loitered  round  the  room,  with  his  eye-glass  up, 
glancing  here,  there,  and  everywhere,  as  though  he  were  an  embryo  auctioneer, 
and  he  stopped  at  last  before  a  Daphne  flying  from  Apollo  and  just  caught  by 
him,  shrouded  in  rose  colored  curtains. 

"  Nice  little  girl,  this  ?  Rather  enticing;  made  her  look  alive  with  that 
rose-light;  tantalizing  to  know  it's  nothing  but  marble;  sweetly  pretty,  certainly." 

"  Sweetly  pretty  ?  Good  heavens,  my  dear  fellow,  hold  your  tongue  !  One 
would  think  you  a  cockney  adoring  the  moon,  or  a  lady's  maid  a  new  fashion. 
That  Daphne's  the  most  perfect  thing  Coustou  ever  did." 

"  Don't  know  anything  about  them  !  Never  see  a  bit  of  difference  in  them 
from  the  plaster  casts  you  buy  for  a  shilling.  Won't  break  quite  so  soon,  to 
be  sure.  She  is  pretty, — nice  and  round,  and  all  that;  but  I  don't  care  a  straw 
about  art.  Never  could." 

"  And  you  are  proud  of  your  paganism  ?  Well,  you  are  not  the  first  per- 
son who  has  boasted  of  his  heresy  for  the  sheer  sake  of  appearing  singular." 

"  To  be  sure  !  I  understand  Wilkes:  let  me  be  the  ugliest  man  in  Europe, 
rather  than  remain  in  mediocrity  among  the  medium  plain  faces.  There's  not 
a  hair's  difference  between  notoriety  and  fame.  Be  celebrated  for  something, 
and,  if  you  can't  jump  into  a  pit  like  Curtius,  pop  yourself  into  a  volcano  like 
Empedocles:  the  foolery's  immortalized  just  as  well  as  a  heroism;  the  world 
talks  of  you,  that's  all  you  want.  If  I  couldn't  be  Alexander,  I'd  be  Diogenes; 
if  I  weren't  a  great  hero,  I'd  be  a  most  ingenius  murderer.  There's  no  radi- 
cal difference  between  the  two  !  But,  I  say,  do  you  ever  remember  what  a 
fearful  amount  you  throw  away  on  these  dolly  things  ? "  pursued  Trevenna,  in- 
terrupting himself  to  strike  his  cane  on  the  Daphne. 

"  The  only  things  worth  the  money  I  spend  !  My  dear  Trevenna,  I  thank 
you  much  for  your  interest,  but  I  can  dispense  with  your  counsels." 

The  answer  was  very  gentle,  but  there  was  the  slight  languor  of  hauteur 
natural  to  a  man  accustomed  to  deference. 

Trevenna  laughed  good-temperedly;  he  had  never  been  seen  out  of  humor. 

"  Pardon  !  I'm  a  brusque  fellow,  and  say  what  comes  uppermost;  wiser  if 
I  kept  it  sometimes.  If  you  do  live  en  prince,  who  wouldn't  that  could  ?  I 
don't  believe  in  renunciation.  He  is  a  shrewd  fellow  who,  forced  on  absti- 
nence, vows  he  likes  it  and  says  he  does  it  for  digestion ;  but  I  love  the  good 
things  of  life  and  say  so,  though  I  can't  afford  them.  I  should  sell  my  soul 
for  turtle  soup  !  By  the  way,  monseigneur,  before  we  eat  your  soup  there's  a 
little  business " 

"  Business  ?  In  the  evening  !  Do  you  wish  to  give  me  dyspepsia  before 
dinner?" 

"No;  but  I  want  to  digest  mine  by  feeling  I've  done  my  duty.  There's 
something  we  want  you  to  sign;  Legrew  does,  at  the  least " 


14  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

"  On  my  honpr,  Trevenna,"  cried  his  host,  with  a  gay,  careless  laugh,  "  you 
are  abominable  !  How  often  have  I  told  you  that  I  trust  you  implicitly, — you 
are  fit  for  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer, — and  that  I  never  will  be  worried  by 
any  nonsense  of  the  kind  ?  " 

"  But,  caro  mio,"  pleaded  Trevenna,  coaxingly,  "  we  can't  do  without  your 
signature.  What's  co  be  done  ?  We  can't  give  leases,  and  draw  checks,  and 
get  bonds  und  mortgages,  without  your  handwriting." 

The  last  words  caught  the  indolent  listener's  inattentive  ear.  He  looked 
up  surprised. 

"  Bonds  ?  Mortgages  ?     What  can  I  possibly  have  to  do  with  them  ?  " 

"  Money's  are  lent  out  on  mortgages;  I  only  used  the  word  a"s  example," 
explained  his  prime  minister,  a  little  rapidly.  "  We  trouble  you  as  little  as  we 
can;  only  want  your  name  now.  Remember,  the  Guineas  let  you  in  heavily 
this  time;  one  can't  transfer  those  large  sums  without  your  authorization. 
Just  let  me  read  you  over  this  paper: — it's  merely " 

"  Spare  me  !  spare  me  !  "  cried  the  lord  of  this  dainty  art- palace,  to  whom 
the  ominous  crackle  of  the  parchment  was  worse  than  the  singing  of  a  rattle- 
snake. "  Smindyrids  felt  tired  if  he  saw  a  man  at  work  in  the  fields:  what 
would  he  have  felt  if  he  had  seen  a  modern  law  document  ? " 

"  Just  sign,  and  you  won't  see  it  any  more,"  pleaded  Trevenna,  who  knew 
the  facile  points  of  a  character  he  had  long  made  his  special  study,  and  knew 
that,  to  be  saved  farther  expostulation,  his  chief  would  comply. 

He  did  so,  raising  himself  with  slow,  graceful  indolence  from  his  cushions, 
and  resigning  the  mouth-piece  of  his  hookah  reluctantly.  The  acquiescence 
was  very  weak,  very  pliant,  yielding  to  softness.  Yet  a  physiognomist  would 
have  said  that,  with  the  powerful  arch  of  the  brows  and  the  Julian  mold  of 
the  chin,  weakness  could  not  naturally  belong  to  this  man's  disposition,  if  too 
consummate  a  fastidiousness  and  too  absolute  a  love  of  pleasure  were  inherent 
in  it.  The  compliance  was  most  insouciant;  the  willingness  to  sign,  in  igno- 
rance of  what  he  signed,  a  trustful  carelessness  that  was  almost  womanish.  But 
life  had  fostered  this  side  of  his  character,  and  had  done  nothing  to  coun- 
teract it. 

"  Stay  !  you  haven't  heard  what  it  is,"  put  in  Trevenna,  while  he  rattled  off, 
with  clear,  quick  precision  that  showed  him  a  master  of  precis  and  would  have 
qualified  him  to  explain  a  budget  in  St.  Stephen's,  a  resume  of  what  he  stated 
the  contents  of  the  document  to  be;  a  very  harmless  document,  according  to 
him,  merely  reverting  to  the  management  of  the  immense  properties  of  which 
his  friend  was  the  possessor.  His  hearer  idly  listened  two  minutes,  then  let 
his  thoughts  drift  away  to  the  chiaroscuro  of  a  Ghirlandajo  opposite,  and  to 
speculation  whether  Reynolds  was  quite  correct  in  his  estimate  of  the  invariable 
amount  of  shadow  employed  by  the  old  masters. 


CHANDOS.  15 

Trevenna's  exposition,  lucid,  brief,  and  as  little  tiresome  as  legalities  can  be 
made,  ended,  he  took  the  pen  without  more  opposition  or  reflection,  and  dashed 
his  name  down  in  bold,  clear  letters, — 

"  ERNEST  CHANDOS." 

Trevenna  watched  him  as  he  wrote, — watched,  as  though  they  were  all  seen 
for  the  first  time,  the  delicate  firmness  of  the  writing, — a  firmness  so  singularly 
at  variance  with  the  pliability  with  which  persuasion  had  vanquished  him  with- 
out a  blow, — the  hand  which  traced  them,  white,  long,  elegant  as  a  woman's, 
and  the  single  rose-diamond  which  fastened  the  wristband  of  the  arm  that  lay 
idly  resting  on  the  table.  Rings  there  were  none  on  either  hand.  Chandos, 
the  leader  of  fashion,  had  banished  them  as  relics  of  barbarism. 

He  pushed  the  paper  to  Trevenna  with  the  ink  still  wet  on  the  signature. 
"  There  !  and  remember  henceforward,  my  very  good  fellow,  never  to  trouble 
me  with  all  this  nonsense  again.  I  might  as  well  manage  my  own  affairs  from 
first  to  last,  if  my  men  of  business  must  come  to  me  about  every  trifle.  I 
would  not  trust  the  lawyers  without  looking  after  them  (though  if  a  lawyer  means 
to  cheat  you  he  will,  let  you  have  as  many  eyes  as  Argus);  but  with  you  to  give 
them  a  check  they  can't  go  wrong.  By  the  way,  Trevenna,  were  you  not 
touched  on  the  Heath  yourself  ?  " 

"  Well,  Lord  of  the  Isle  let  us  all  in,  more  or  less,"  said  Trevenna,  crump- 
ling up  his  papers;  "but,  you  know,  poor  hedgers  like  me  can't  ever  risk  more 
than  a  tenner  or  so." 

"  Still,  your  inimitable  book-making  failed  you  at  the  Guineas  ?  I  was 
afraid  so.  Draw  on  me  as  you  need:  you  have  blank  checks  of  mine;  fill  one 
up  as  you  like." 

"  No,  no  !  oh,  hang  it,  monseigneur  !     You  put  one  out  of  countenance." 

"  Impossible  -miracle,  Trevenna  !"  laughed  Chandos,  looking  on  him  with 
kindly  eyes.  "  How'  can  any  little  matter  like  that  ever  repay  all  the  time  and 
talent  you  are  good  enough  to  waste  in  my  service  ?  Besides,  between  old 
friends  there  is  never  a  question  of  obligation.  Nine  o'clock.  We  must  go  to 
dinner.  I  promised  Claire  Rahel  not  to  miss  her  supper.  She  is  enchanting  ! 
She  has  the  sourire  de  la  Re'gence  and  the  wit  of  Sophie  Arnauld." 

"  And  the  smiles  cost  you  an  India  of  diamonds,  and  the  wit  is  paid  a  cash- 
mere each  mot  !  If  Monde  deigned  to  recognize  Demi-Monde,  how  would  the 
countess  admire  being  outrivalled  by  the  actress  ? " 

"  The  countess  is  like  Crispin,  rivale  de  soi-meme  alone.  All  pretty  women 
and  all  dull  men  are  vain  !  The  belles  and  the  bores  always  worship  at  their 
own  shrines,"  laughed  Chandos,  as  his  groom  of  the  chambers  announced  the 
arrival  in  the  drawing-rooms  of  other  guests  from  the  Guards,  and  the  Laga- 
tions,  to  one  of  those  "  little  dinners  "  which  were  the  most  coveted  and  ex- 
clusive entertainments  in  London. 


16  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

"We  must  go,  I  suppose;  Prince  Charles  might  wait,  but  the  turbot  must 
not,"  he  said,  with  a  yawn, — he  was  accustomed  to  have  the  world  wait  on  and 
wait  for  him, — as  he  held  back  the  portiere,  and  signed  to  John  Trevenna  to 
pass  out  before  him,  down  the  lighted  corridor,  with  its  exotics,  statues,  and 
bronzes  glancing  under  the  radiance  from  the  candelabra.  He  would  have 
kept  a  serene  highness  attending  his  pleasure;  but  he  gave  iheflas  with  as  much 
courtesy  as  to  a  monarch  to  that  very  needed  man-about-town,  his  dependent, 
hanger-on,  and  fidus  Achates,  John  Trevenna. 

"  What  a  clever  fellow  he  is  !  I  must  bring  him  into  the  house;  his  talents 
would  tell  well  there:  they  are  frittered  away  in  club-windows,"  he  thought,  as 
he  went  down  the  corridors  to  his  reception-rooms.  To  ask  whether  this  fidus 
Achates  were  a  Pythias  or  a  Mephistopheles  would  have  been  a  doubt  that 
could  never  have  crossed  either  the  chivalry  or  the  friendship  of  Chandos. 

He  would  have  thought  such  a  question,  even  in  thought,  a  blot  on  good 
faith,  a  treachery  to  the  bond  of  bread  and  salt.  His  trust  in  Trevenna  was  as 
great  as  his  services  to  him  had  been.  If  the  world,  that  now  idolized,  had 
turned  and  crucified  him,  he  would  have  been  secure  that  this  man  would  never 
have  denied  him. 

And,  thinking  how  he  could  serve  his  friend  farther,  Chandos  went  down  to 
his  dinner, — to  courses  prepared  by  a  cordon  bleu ;  to  wines  of  comet  years 
and  imperial  growth;  to  wit  that  was  planned  to  please  him  as  utterly  as  ever 
jesters  strove  to  amuse  their  king;  and,  later  on,  to  women's  beauty,  and  the 
charms  of  softest  pleasure,  and  the  glitter  of  every  revelry  that  could  beguile 
the  senses  and  enchant  away  the  hours  of  a  man  who,  brilliant  as  a  Guise,  lavish 
as  a  Bolingbroke,  splendid  as  a  Buckingham,  was  sought  in  proportion  to 
his  fashion  and  his  fame,  the  world  turning  after  him  like  heliotropes  after 
the  sun. 


CHAPTER  II. 

"  LA   COMETE   ET    SA   QUEUE." 

"  Did  you  see  Chandos'  trap  in  the  ring  to-day  ?  Four-in-hand  grays,  set  of 
outriders,  cream-and-silver  liveries, — prettiest  thing  ever  seen  in  the  park,"  said 
Winters  of  the  First  Guards. 

"  Chandos  has  given  six  thousand  for  Wild  Geranium, — best  bit  of  blood 
out  of  Danesbury;  safe  to  win  at  the  Ducal,"  said  the  Marquis  of  Bawood. 

"Chandos  has  bought  the  Titians  at  Due  de  Vallere's  sale  ;  the  nation  ought 
to  have  bidden  for  them,"  said  the  Earl  of  Rougemont. 


CHANDOS.  IT 

"Nation's  much  better  off  ;  he'  s given  them  to  the  country,"  said  Stentor,  a 
very  great  art-critic. 

"  You  don't  mean  it  ?  said  the  Duke  of  Argentine.  "  That  man  would  give 
his  head  away." 

"  And  if  the  Cabinet  bid  for  it  they  might  keep  in  office,"  said  George  Lorn, 
who  was  a  cynical  dandy. 

"Flora has  been  faithful  three  months:  Chandos  is  a  sorcerer  !"  yawned  Sir 
Phipps  Lacy,  talking  of  a  beautiful  sovereign  of  the  equivocal  world. 

"  Chandos  has  a  bottomless  purse,  my  dear  Sir  Phipps  ;  there's  the  key  to 
Flora's  new  constancy,"  said  John  Trevenna. 

"  You  have  read  '  Lucrece,'  of  course  ?  There  is  no  writer  in  Europe  like 
Chandos, — such  wit,  such  pathos,  such  power.  I  had  the  early  sheets  before  it 
was  published,"  said  the  Duchess  of  Belamour,  proud  of  her  privilege. 

" '  Lucrece,'  is  the  most  marvellous  thing  since  '  Pelham.' " 

"  The  most  poetic  since  Byron  ! " 

"  Oh,  it  is  a  poem  in  prose  !  " 

"And  yet  such  exquisite  satire  !  " 

"  Alfred  de  Musset  never  probed  human  nature  so  deeply ! " 

"  Shelley  never  attained  more  perfect  art.  " 

"  Certainly  not !  you  know  it  is  in  the  sixth  edition  already  ?  " 

"  Of  course  !  every  one  is  reading  it.  " 

So  the  talk  ran  around  at  a  garden-party  near  Richmond,  among  the  guests 
of  a  Bourbon  prince,  and  for  once  the  proverb  was  wrong,  and  the  absent  was 
found  by  his  friends  in  the  right,  with  a  universal  vote  of  adoration.  When  the 
sun  is  at  his  noon,  and  they  are  basking  in  his  light,  the  whole  floral  world  turn 
after  him  in  idolatry  ;  if  he  ever  set,  perhaps  they  hang  their  heads,  and  hug 
the  night-damp,  and  nod  together  in  condemnation  of  the  spots  that  dimmed 
their  fallen  god's  beauty  ;  they  have  never  spoken  of  them  before,  but  they 
have  all  seen  them  ;  and  then  the  judicious  flowers  will  sigh  a  vote  of  cen- 
sure. 

He  of  whom  the  world  chattered  now  was  the  darling  of  Fortune  ;  his  sins 
and  stains,  if  he  had  any,  were  buried  in  oblivion,  or  only  cited  tenderly,  almost 
admiringly,  as  a  women  puts  her  diamonds  on  black  velvet  that  their  brilliance 
may  be  enhanced  by  the  contrast.  It  must  be  granted,  too,  that  all  the  sins  he 
had  were  the  soft  sins  ;  but  let  him  have  done  what  he  would,  his  world  would 
have  christened  it  "  such  interesting  eccentricity  ! "  For  to  women  he  was  the 
most  handsome  man  of  his  day,  and  to  men  he  was  the  leader  of  fashion  and 
the  donor  of  the  best  dinners  in  Europe.  Friendship  is  never  sealed  so  firmly 
as  with  the  green  wax  of  a  pure  claret,  and  our  Patroclus  is  sacred  to  us  after 
sharing  his  salt  and  his  bread,  at  least  if  it  flavor  clear  soup  and  be. pain  £  la  mode; 
— black  brpth  and  black  bread  might  not  have  such  sanctifying  properties. 


18  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

"  How  late  you  are  !  "  cried  the  Countess  de  la  Vivarol,  making  room  for 
him  beside  her  in  a  summer  concert-room,  as  the  idol  of  the  hour  appeared  at 
last  for  half  an  hour  in  the  prince's  grounds.  Madame  de  la  Vivarol  was  the 
most  bewitching  of  Parisiennes,  and  the  loveliest  of  court  beauties,  with  a  form 
as  exquisite  as  Pauline  Bonaparte's,  and  hazel  eyes  of  the  divinest  mischief  and 
languor.  A  fairer  thing  than  this  fairest  of  fashionable  empresses  was  never 
seen  at  Longchamps  on  a  great  race-day,  or  in  the  Salle  des  Marechaux  at  a 
reception;  yet,  such  is  the  ingratitude  or  inconsistency  of  nature,  Chandos 
looked  less  at  her  than  at  a  strange  face  some  distance  from  him,  although  he 
had  for  the  last  two  years  been  no  more  rivalled  near  the  charming  countess 
than  if  she  had  worn  a  silver  label  or  a  silver  collar  round  her  neck  to  denote 
his  proprietorship,  like  his  retriever  Beau  Sire,  or  his  pet  deer  down  at  Claren- 
cieux.  Madame  noted  the  lese-majeste:  she  was  not  a  woman  to  forgive  it,  and 
still  less  a  woman  to  complain  of  it. 

"  They  are  talking  about  '  Lucrece  '  Ernest.  They  worship  it,"  she  said, 
dropping  her  lovely,  mellow,  laughing,  starlike  eyes  upon  him.  They  had 
fallen  on  him  with  effect,  twenty  months  before,  in  the  soft  moonlight  on  a  cer- 
tain balcony  at  Compiegne. 

He  laughed.  He  cared  little  what  the  world  said  of  him;  he  had  ruled  it 
too  long  to  be  its  slave. 

"  Indeed  !     And  do  they  read  it  ?  " 

"  Yes.  They  do  read  you"  laughed  madame,  too,  "  though  they  would 
swear  to  you  on  hearsay  just  so  warmly.  All  the  world  idolizes  the  book." 

"  Ah  !  I  would  prefer  half  a  dozen  who  could  criticise  it." 

"  Tais-toi.     How  ungrateful  you  are  !  " 

"  Because  my  head  does  not  get  turned  ?  That  was  Sulla's  worst  crime  to 
mankind.  They  say  '  Lucrece '  is  a  masterpiece  because  it  is  in  its  fifth  edition, 
and  they  expect  me  to  be  intoxicated  with  such  discerning  applause,"  said 
Chandos,  with  his  melodious,  amused  laugh,  clear  and  gay  as  a  woman's.  Fame 
had  come  to  him  so  young,  he  had  gained  the  world's  incense  with  so  little 
effort,  that  he  held  both  in  a  certain  nonchalant  mockery. 

"  To  be  sure  !  when  men  go  mad  if  they  get  one  grain  of  applause,  it  is  very 
discourteous  of  you  to  keep  cool  when  you  get  a  hundred.  What  a  reflection 
it  is  upon  them  !  Where  are  you  looking,  Ernest  ?  " 

"  Where  can  I  be  looking  ?  "  he  said,  with  a  smile,  as  he  turned  his  eyes  full 
upon  her.  It  would  not  have  done  to  confess  to  the  countess  that  he  was 
scarcely  heeding  her  words  because  of  a  face  rarer  to  him  had  caught  his  gaze 
in  the  fashionable  crowd. 

The  countess  gave  a  little  skeptical  meaning  arch  of  her  delicate  eyebrows. 
"  She  is  very  beautiful,  mon  ami,  but  her  beauty  will  not  do  for  you." 

"  Why  ?  " 


CHANDOS.  19 

There  was  a  little  eagerness  in  the  tone,  and  an  unconscious  self-betrayal 
that  she  had  penetrated  his  thoughts. 

"  Because  the  passage  to  it  will  be  terrible,"  said  Madame  de  la  Vivarol, 
with  a  shiver  of  her  perfumed  laces.  Her  teeth  were  set  in  rage  under  the  soft, 
laughing,  rose-hued  lips,  but  she  could  play  her  pretty,  careless  vaudeville 
without  a  sign  of  jealousy. 

"  Terrible  !  you  pique  my  curiosity.  I  have  no  fondness,  though,  for 
tempests  in  my  love-affairs. 

En  I'amour  si  rien  n'est  amer, 
Qu'on  est  sot  de  ne  pas  aimer  ! 
Si  tout  Test  au  degr6  supreme, 
Quand  est  sot  alors  que  1'on  aime  ! 

Terrible,  too  ?     In  what  way  ?  " 

"Par  la porte  du  manage,"  said  La  Vivarol,  with  a  silvery  laugh. 

Chandos  laughed  too,  as  he  leaned  over  her  chair. 

"  Terrible  indeed,  then.  It  were  too  much  to  pay  for  a  Helen  !  You  have 
disenchanted  me  at  once:  so  tell  me  now  who  she  is." 

"  Not  I  !  I  am  not  a  master  of  the  ceremonies."  There  was  a  certain  dark, 
angry  flash  under  the  curl  of  her  silky  lashes  that  he  knew  very  well. 

"  I  am  a  little  out  of  your  favor  to-day,  Heloise  ?  "  said  Chandos,  amusedly. 
The  passing  storm  of  a  mistress's  jealousy  was  the  darkest  passage  his  cloud- 
less and  insouciant  life  had  encountered.  "I  know  my  crime:  I  was  not  at 
your  reception  last  night." 

"Weren't  you?"  asked  La  Vivarol,  with  the  most  perfect  air  of  indifferent 
surprise.  "  I  could  not  tell  who  was  and  who  was  not.  How  I  detest  your 
English  crushes  !  " 

"  Nevertheless,  that  was  my  sin,"  laughed  Chandos.  "  What  excuse  can  I 
make  ?  If  I  tell  you  I  was  writing  a  sonnet  in  your  name,  you  would  tell  me 
we  solace  ourselves  more  materially  and  unfaithfully.  If  I  said  I  feared  my 
thousand  rivals,  you  would  not  be  likely  to  believe  that  any  more.  There  is 
nothing  for  it  but  the  truth." 

"  Well,  tell  it,  then." 

"  Ma  belle,  the  truth  will  be  that  I  was  at  Alvarina's  de"but  in  Rigoletto,  and 
supped  afterwards  with  her  and  Rahel." 

"  Alvarina  !  that  gaunt,  brown  Roman  ?  and  you  call  yourself  fastidious, 
Ernest  ?  "  cried  Madame  la  Comtesse. 

"  A  gaunt,  brown  Roman, — Alvarina  !  The  handsomest  singer  that  ever 
crossed  the  Alps  !  So  much  for  feminine  prejudice,"  thought  Chandos;  but  he 
knew  the  sex  too  well  to  utter  his  thoughts  aloud,  or  he  would  not  have  been 
forgiven  so  bewitchingly  as  he  was,  while  he  lingered  to  listen  to  a  cantata, 


20  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

exchanged  words  with  a  hundred  different  people,  who  vied  with  each  other  to 
catch  a  syllable  from  the  leader  and  darling  of  the  hour,  disentangled  himself 
from  Madame  de  la  Vivarol,  the  Duchess  of  Argentine,  and  a  score  of  titled 
beauties,  who  cared  for  no  other  at  their  side  as  they  cared  for  him,  and  made 
his  way  at  last  to  where  his  drag  stood  at  the  gates  in  the  bright  light  of  a  May 
evening  at  seven  o'clock. 

"  Pygmalion  was  nothing  to  you,  Chandos,"  said  Trevenna,  swinging  him- 
self up  the  perch  of  the  drag  as  a  schoolboy  up  a  tree,  while  the  other  men  on 
it  were  owners  of  some  of  the  highest  coronets  in  Europe.  There  was  this  that 
was  excellent  and  manly  in  this  penniless  man -upon -town;  he  never  truckled  to 
rank;  peer  or  day-laborer  alike  heard  his  mind.  "  He  put  heart  into  a  statue; 
youve  put  it  into  a  woman  of  the  world, — much  the  more  difficult  feat.  Madame 
la  Comtesse  is  positively  jealous.  I  do  believe  she  divines  we  are  going  to  have 
Demi-Monde  to  dinner  !  " 

Chandos  laughed  as  he  started  off  his  leaders, — thorough-bred  roans,  wild, 
young,  and  fresh.  Those  fair,  delicate  hands  of  his  could  hold  in  the  most  riot- 
ous team. 

"  Not  she  !  she  would  not  do  me  so  much  honor.  But  every  woman  has  a 
heart,  even  the  worst  woman, — though  to  be  sure,  we  forget  it  sometimes,  till — 
we've  broken  them." 

"  Broken  them  ?  Poetic  author  of  '  Lucrece  '  !  Hearts  never  break, — 
except  as  a  good  stroke  of  business,  as  sculptors  knock  a  limb  off  a  statue  to 
make  believe  it's  an  antique.  Every  Musette  we  neglect  vows  her  desertion  is 
her  death,  but  she  soon  sings  Resurgam  again,  to  the  tune  of  the  Cancan  at  the 
opera-ball." 

"  So  much  the  happier  for  them,  for  we  give  them  no  De  Profundis  ! 
There  are  exceptions  to  the  Musette  rule,  though.  I  remember " 

"  Don't  trouble  yourself  with  remembrance,  Ernest.  She  soon  supplied 
your  place,  take  my  word  for  it." 

"  My  good  fellow,  no:  she  died." 

"  Not  out  of  love  for  you  !  She  had  aneurism,  or  disease  of  the  heart,  or 
sat  in  a  draught  and  caught  cold,  or  ate  too  many  cherries  after  dinner  !  There 
was  a  substantial  basis  for  your  picturesque  hypothesis,  I'll  wager." 

"  Graceless  dog  !     Have  you  never  had  a  doubled-down  page  in  your  life  ? " 

"  I  don't  keep  a  diary;  not  even  a  mental  one  !  Reminiscence  is  utterly 
unpractical  and  unphilosophical :  agreeable,  it  dissatisfies  you  with  the  present ;  dis- 
agreeable, it  dissatisfies  you  with  the  past.  I  say,  they  are  taking  five  to  three 
on  your  chestnut  at  the  Corner.  I  don't  see  what  can  beat  you  at  Ascot. 
There's  a  good  deal  whispered  about  Lotus  Lily:  she's  kept  dark." 

"  They  always  train  closely  at  Whitworth,  but  rarely  bring  out  anything 
good.  Sir  Galahad  beats  the  whole  Ascot  field  for  pace,  and  blood  and  power. 


CHAN  DOS.  21 

You  are  quite  safe,  Chandos,"  said  His  Grace  of  Ardennes,  a  gay,  vivacious 
young  fellow,  well  known  to  the  Turf,  however. 

"  Queen  of  the  Fairies  is  the  only  thing  that  could  have  a  chance  with 
Galahad,"  put  in  the  Due  de  Luilhieres:  "  she  has  good  breed  in  her  by  double 
strains;  fine  shoulders " 

"  Leggy  !  "  objected  Trevenna,  contemptuously,  flatly  contradicting  a  peer 
of  France.  "  Not  well  ribbed-up;  weedy  altogether.  Chieftain  was  her  sire, 
and  he  never  did  anything  notable  except  to  break  a  blood-vessel  on  the 
Beacon  Course.  The  touts  know  what  they're  about,  and  they're  all  for  the 
Clarencieux  horse." 

"  Galahad  will  win  if  he  be  allowed,"  said  Chandos.  "  I  wish  I  could  ride 
him  myself;  he  would  walk  over  the  course.  Ah  !  there  is  Flora  on  the 
balcony;  they  are  before  us." 

"  I  wish  they  weren't  here  at  all  !  "  cried  Trevenna.  "  You  should  never 
have  women  to  dinner;  they  shouldn't  come  till  the  olives.  You  can't  appre- 
ciate the  delicate  nuances  of  a  flavor  if  you  are  obliged  to^turn  a  compliment 
while  you're  eating  it;  and  you  never  can  tell  whether  a  thing  is  done  to  a 
second,  if,  as  you  discuss  it,  you  are  pondering  on  the  handsome  flesh-tints  of 
a  living  picture  beside  "y°u-  The  presence  of  a  woman  disturbs  that  cool, 
critical  acumen,  that  serene,  divine  beatitude,  that  should  attend  your  dinner." 

"  Blasphemer  !  "  cried  Chandos.  "  As  if  one  touch  of  some  soft  lips  were 
not  worth  all  Brillat-Savarin's  science,  what  flavor  would  wine  have  if  women's 
eyes  didn't  laugh  over  it  !  You  King  of  Epicures  !  you'd  adore  a  Vitellius,  I 
believe,  and  hang  Pausanias  for  his  Spartan  broth  the  day  after  Mycale  !  " 

"  Certainly.  A  man  who  could  capture  Xerxes's  cooks  and  not  dine  off 
their  art  deserved  nothing  less  than  the  gallows;  and  Vitellius  was  a  very  sen- 
sible fellow;  when  he  knew  he  must  die  he  took  care  to  finish  his  wine  first. 
Hero  versus  Gourmet.  Why  not  ?  Careme  benefited  France  much  more  last- 
ingly than  Turenne;  and  Ude's  done  the  world  far  more  good  than  Napoleon. 
I'd  rather  have  been  the  man  who  first  found  out  that  you  must  stuff  a  turkey 
with  truffles  than  have  won  Austerlitz,  any  day.  Your  hero  gets  misjudged, 
blackguarded,  whitewashed,  over-rated,  under-rated,  just  as  the  fit's  hot  or  cold 
to  him;  but  the  man  who  once  invents  a  perfect  sauce  is  secure  for  all  eternity. 
His  work  speaks  for  itself,  and  its  judges  are  his  apostles,  who  never  name 
him  without  benediction.  Besides,  fancy  the  satisfaction,  to  a  cosmopolitan, 
amiable  creature  like  myself,  of  knowing  I'd  prepared  a  delight  for  generations 
unborn  ! " 

"  Sublime  apotheosis  of  gastromony  !  "  laughed  Chandos,  as  he  threw  the 
ribbons  to  his  groom  before  the  doors  of  a  summer  villa  at  Richmond  belong- 
ing to  him,  where  most  of  these  Bohemian  dinners  and  suppers  &  la  RJgence 
were  given;  a  charming  place,  half  covered  in  flowering  trees  and  pyramids 


22  QUID  AS     WOJRKS. 

of  May  blossom;  with  glimpses  of  wood  and  water  from  its  windows,  and  with 
the  daintiest  and  cosiest  banqueting-room  in  the  world,  hung  with  scarlet  silk, 
drawn  back  here  and  there  to  show  some  beautiful  female  picture  by  Titian, 
Greuze,  Regnault,  or  La  Tour,  large  enough  to  hold  twenty  people,  but  small 
enough  to  feel  d  huis  clos  like  a  cabinet;  with  the  air  scented  by  dreamy  in- 
censes, and  dishes  and  wines  under  the  mellowed  light  that  would  have  en- 
tranced even  Lucullus  had  he  been  throned  there  on  his  ivory  chair.  Of  this 
villa,  and  this  banqueting-room,  rumor  ran  high,  accediting  it  revelries  as  wild  as 
Medmenham  or  as  Bussy-Rabutin's  "  Abbey  "  of  Roissy.  They  who  told  most 
precisely  what  positively  took  place  there  where,  of  course,  always  those  who 
had  never  been  through  its  doors  !  And  the  world  loved  to  take  their  stories 
with  spice,  and  whisper  unimaginable  naughtiness  of  this  pleasant  bonbonniere  of 
a  villa  buried  away  in  its  acacias  and  guelder  roses  and  flowering  chestnuts, 
where  laughter  rang  out  on  to  the  young  summer  dawns,  and  beauty  in  neglige 
outshone  all  the  jewelled  beauty  of  courts. 

"  The  art  of  life  is— to  enjoy!"  cried  Chandos,  that  night,  lifting  up  to 
crown  the  sentiment  a  deep  glass  of  glowing  red  Roussillon. 

"  Toast  worthy  of  Lucullus  and  Ovid  !  and  you  are  a  master  of  the  science," 
said  John  Trevenna,  who  was  perhaps  the  only  one  who  saw  quite  clearly 
through  that  intoxicating  atmosphere  of  pastilles,  and  perfumes,  and  wines, 
and  crushed  flowers,  and  bruised  fruits,  and  glancing  tresses,  and  languid  eyes, 
and  lips  fit  for  the  hymns  of  a  Catullus. 

"  He  is  the  darling  of  the  gods  !  "  cried  Flora  de  1'Orme,  that  magnificent 
Arlesienne,  with  her  melting,  Greek-like  glance,  and  her  cheek  like  a  peach  in 
the  sun,  while  she  leaned  over  him  and  twisted,  Catullus-like,  in  the  bright 
masses  of  his  long,  golden  hair,  a  wreath  of  crimson  roses  washed  in  purple 
Burgundy. 

Chandos  shook  the  wine  from  the  rose-crown  as  he  bent  and  kissed  that 
glowing  Southern  loveliness,  and  laughed  under  his  diadem  of  flowers.  The 
roses  themselves  were  not  brighter  or  more  luxurious  than  the  hours  of  life 
were  to  him. 

He  enjoyed !  Oh,  golden  sum  of  this  world's  sweet  content  !  Supreme 
truth  of  Faust;  when  he  should 

to  the  passing  moment  say 
Stay  !  thou  art  so  fair  ! 

then  alone  the  philosopher  knew  that  he  could  claim  to  have  tasted  happiness. 
When  once  we  look  back  or  look  forward,  then  has  the  trail  of  the  serpent  been 
over  our  Eden.  To  enjoy,  we  must  live  in  the  instant  we  grasp. 

It  is  so  easy  for  the  preacher,  when  he  has  entered  the  days  of  darkness,  to 
tell  us  to  find  no  flavor  in  the  golden  fruit,  no  music  in  the  song  of  the 


CHAN  DOS.  23 

charmer,  no  spell  in  eyes  that  look  love,  no  delirium  in  the  soft  dreams  of  the 
lotus, — so  easy,  when  these  things  are  dead  and  barren  for  himself,  to  say  they 
are  forbidden  !  But  men  must  be  far  more,  or  far  less,  than  mortals  ere  they 
can  blind  their  eyes  and  dull  their  senses  and  forswear  their  natures  and  obey 
the  dreariness  of  the  commandment;  and  there  is  little  need  to  force  the  sack- 
cloth and  the  serge  upon  us.  The  roses  wither  long  before  the  wassail  is  over, 
and  there  is  no  magic  that  will  make  them  bloom  again,  .for  there  is  none  that 
renews  us— youth.  The  Helots  had  their  one  short,  joyous  festival  in  their 
long  year  of  labor;  life  may  leave  us  ours.  It  will  be  surely  to  us,  long  before 
its  close,  a  harder  tyrant  and  a  more  remorseless  taskmaster  then  ever  was  the 
Lacedemonian  to  his  bond-slaves, — bidding  us  make  bricks  without  straw, 
breaking  the  bowed  back,  and  leaving  us  as  our  sole  chance  of  freedom  the 
hour  when  we  shall  turn  our  faces  to  the  wall — and  die. 

Once,  some  twenty  years  or  more  before,  down  at  the  stately  pile  at  Claren- 
cieux,  in  the  heart  of  the  Devon  woods,  where  red  deer  couched,  and  the  black 
eagle  soared  in  the  light  of  summer  days  above  the  haughty,  ivy-mantled 
towers,  Philip  Chandos,  the  great  minister,  had  paused  a  moment  where  his 
young  son  leant  out  of  one  of  the  painted  oriel  casements  of  the  library,  hang- 
ing with  a  child's  faith  and  love  over  the  eternal  story  of  Arthur.  The  boy's 
arms  were  folded  on  the  vellum  pages,  his  head  was  drooped  slightly  forward 
in  dreamy  thought,  and  on  his  face  came  the  look  that  there  is  in  the  portrait 
of  Milton  in  his  early  years. 

His  father  touched  him  on  the  shoulder. 

"  Where  are  your  thoughts,  Ernest  ?  " 

The  child  started  a  little. 

"  I  was  thinking  what  I  shall  be  when  I  am  a  man." 

"  Indeed  ?     And  what  will  you  be  ?  " 

"  First,  Chandos  of  Clarencieux  !  " 

He  could  not  have  spoken  with  air  more  royal  if  he  had  said,  "  Augustus 
Imperator  !  " 

"  But  besides  ?  " 

"  Besides  ?  "  his  voice  fell  lower,  and  grew  swift  and  warmer,  a  little  tremu- 
lous in  its  enthusiasm.  "  Why,  I  will  be  a  poet  and  a  statesman.  I  will  have 
palaces  like  the  Arabian  Nights,  and  gather  the  people  in  them  and  make  them 
happy.  I  will  defend  all  the  guiltless  and  protect  all  the  weak,  like  King 
Arthur.  I  will  rule  men  but  by  love,  not  fear;  and  I  will  make  my  name 
great, — so  great  that  when  I  die  they  will  only  write  '  Chandos  '  on  my  grave, 
and  the  name  will  tell  the  world  its  own  tale  !  " 

They  were  strange  words;  and,  where  he  leaned  against  the  oriel,  the  light 
from  the  setting  autumn  sun  fell  full  on  his  face,  deepening  there  the  lofty 
and  spiritual  exaltation  of  thoughts  too  far  above  his  years.  His  father  looked 


24  QUID  AS     WORKS.' 

at  him,  and  something  that  was  almost  a  sigh  passed  the  haughty  lips  of  the 
great  minister.  The  sigh  was  for  the  future  of  those  heroic  and  pure  am- 
bitions, for  the  world  which  would  break  them  as  surely  as  the  pressure  of  the 
iron  roller  crushes  out  the  flowers  of  spring.  And  he  could  not  utter  to  the 
child,  in  the  proud  gladness  of  his  young  faith,  the  warning  that  rose  to  his 
own  lips:  "Keep  those  dreams  for  other  worlds,  for  they  will  never  find 
fruition  here." 

Yet,  for  the  boy  to  whom  these  dreams  came,  untaught  and  instinctive,  in  all 
their  superb  impossibility,  their  divine  unreality,  his  father  could  not  but  hope 
himself  a  future  and  an  ambition  still  loftier  than  his  own. 

"  The  darling  of  the  gods  !  "  said  Flora  de  1'Orme,  to-night  as  she  wound  the 
crown  of  scarlet  roses  in  her  lover's  hair;  and  she  had  said  very  truly.  Fortune 
and  the  world  never  combined  to  flatter  any  man  more  than  they  combined  to 
shower  all  gifts  and  graces  on  Ernest  Chandos.  When  he  had  been  but  a  child 
in  his  laces  and  velvets,  princes  had  tossed  him  bonbons  and  royal  women 
caressed  his  loveliness.  Tutors,  parasites,  servants,  indulged  all  his  fancies, 
and  never  controlled  or  contradicted  him.  At  Eton,  nicknamed  the  Dau- 
phin, hebore  all  before  him,  was  noted  for  his  champagne  breakfasts,  and 
had  a  duke  for  his  devoted  fag.  At  seventeen  he  was  his  own  master. 
His  father  died  grandly  as  Chatham,  falling  back,  without  a  sigh  or 
struggle,  after  one  of  the  finest  speeches  of  his  life,  in  the  full  career 
of  his  magnificent  and  fearless  leadership.  The  boy's  grief  was  intense, 
both  passionate  and  enduring,  for  he  had  worshipped  his  father  and  his 
father's  fame.  By  his  own  wish  he  went  abroad:  he  would  not  hear  of  a  col- 
lege. His  only  guardian  was  his  grandfather  by  the  distaff-side,  the  Duke  of 
Castlemaine,  an  old  soldier  and  statesman  of  the  Regency  time:  his  mother  had 
died  years  before.  The  duke  let  him  do  precisely  as  he  chose,  which  was  to 
remain  abroad  four  years,  chiefly  in  the  East,  where  life,  whether  waiting  for 
the  lion's  or  the  leopard's  step  through  the  sultry  hush  of  an  Oriental  night,  or 
learning  soft  love-lore  from  the  dark  eyes  of  a  Georgian  under  the  shadows  of  a 
palm-grove,  enchanted  and  enchained  one  who,  whatever  after-years  might  make 
him,  was  in  his  youth  only  a  poet,  and  a  lover  of  all  fair  things, — specially  of 
the  fairness  of  women.  Life  seemed  to  conspire  to  idolize  him  and  to  ruin  him: 
after  a  boyhood  of  limitless  indulgence,  limitless  tenderness,  and  limitless 
enjoyment,  with  'his  father's  name  the  greatest  in  the  state,  he  passed  to  the 
enervating,  poetic,  picturesque  sensuousness  of  life  in  the  Eastern  nations,  where 
every  breath  was  a  perfume,  every  day  was  a  poem,  and  every  lovely  face  was  a 
captive's,  to  be  bought  at  pleasure.  He  returned,  to  become  the  idol  of  a 
fashionable  world.  His  beauty,  his  wit,  his  genius,  that  showed  itself,  half 
capriciously,  half  indolently,  in  glittering  jeux  d' esprit,  his  generosity  that  scat- 
tered wealth  to  whoever  asked,  the  brilliance  of  his  splendid  promise,  the  mag- 


CHAN  DOS.  25 

nificence  of  his  entertainments, — these  became  the  themes  of  the  most  exclusive 
and  most  seductive  of  worlds;  and  while  men  cited  him  to  the  echo,  with 
women  he  had  only  to  love  and  he  won.  He  was  the  comet  of  his  horizon,  and 
fashion  streamed  after  him. 

Some  romances,  and  some  poems,  were  traced  to  him, — dazzling,  vivid 
bagatelles,  full  of  glowing,  if  sometimes  extravagant,  fancy,  and  of  that  easy 
grace  which  is  only  heaven-born  in  authors  or  in  artists.  They  were  raved  of 
in  Paris  and  London;  he  found  himself  twice  famous,  by  literature  and  by 
fashion;  and  his  invitation  was  far  more  courted  than  one  to  Windsor  or  the 
Tuileries:  those  only  conferred  rank,  his  gave  a  far  higher  and  subtler  dis- 
tinction,— fashion. 

For  the  rest  his  fortune  was  large,  his  estates  of  Clarencieux  were  as  noble 
as  any  in  England,  and  he  had  a  house  in  Park  Lane,  an  hotel  in  the  Champs 
Elysees,  a  toy  villa  at  Richmond,  and  a  summer-palace  on  the  Bosphorus;  and, 
costly  as  were  both  his  pleasures  and  his  art-tastes,  even  these  did  not  cost  him 
so  much  as  a  liberality  that  none  ever  applied  to  in  vain,  a  liberality  that 
was  the  only  thing  in  his  life  he  strove  to  conceal,  and  that  aided 
men  of  talent  to  a  fair  field,  or  lifted  them  from  the  slough  of  narrowed 
fortunes,  by  a  hand  that  often  was  unseen  by  them,  that  always  gave, 
when  compelled  to  give  openly  with  a  charm  that  banished  all  humiliation  from 
the  gift. 

Thus  was  Chandos  now. 

How  far  had  he  borne  out  his  childish  promise  of  the  night  in  Westminster  ? 
He  could  not  have  told  himself.  He  was  the  most  dazzling  leader,  the 
most  refined  voluptuary,  the  most  splendid  patron,  the  most  courted  man,  of 
his  times;  and  the  soft  ease,  the  lavished  wealth,  the  unclouded  success  of  his 
present,  he  asked  and  heeded  no  more.  He  was  at  the  height  of  brilliant 
renown,  and  not  even  a  doubled  rose-leaf  broke  his  rest. 

"  Who  ever  said  that  we  cannot  love  two  at  once  ?  It  is  the  easiest  thing  in  the 
world  to  love  half  a  dozen;  to  love  but  one  were  to  show  a  shocking  lack  of  ap- 
preciation of  nature's  fairest  gifts.  Constancy  is  the  worst  possible  compliment 
a  blockhead  can  pay  to  the  beau  sexe,"  thought  Chandos,  the  next  morning,  as 
he  breakfasted,  glancing  through  a  pile  of  scented  delicate  notes,  cream,  rose, 
pale  tendre,  and  snow-white,  perfumed  with  various  fragrance,  but  all  breathing 
one  tone.  Women  had  done  their  uttermost  to  force  him  into  vanity  from  his 
childhood,  when  queens  had  petted  him.  Women  always  coax  their  favorites 
into  ruin  if  they  can.  His  temper  chanced  to  be  such  that  they  had  entirely 
failed.  Of  his  personal  beauty  Chandos  never  thought  more  than  he  thought 
of  the  breath  he  drew. 

It  was  twelve  o'clock  as  he  took  his  chocolate  in  his  dressing-room,  a 
chamber  fit  for  a  young  princess,  with  its  azure  hangings,  its  Russian  cabinets, 


26  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

and  its  innumerable  flowers.  Perfumes  and  female  beauty  were  his  two  special 
weaknesses,  as  they  were  Mahomet's.  He  was  a  man  of  pleasure,  be  it  remem- 
bered, with  the  heart  'of  a  poet  and  the  eyes  of  a  painter, — a  combination  to 
make  every  temptation  tenfold  more  tempting. 

"  Cool  you  look  here  !  "  cried  a  resonant,  lively,  clear  voice,  telling  as  a 
trumphet-call,  as  that  privileged  person  John  Trevenna  pushed  lightly  past  a 
valet  and  made  his  way  into  the  chamber. 

"  My  dear  fellow  !     Delighted  to  see  you.     Come  to  breakfast  ?  " 

"  Breakfast  ?  Had  it  hours  ago,  and  done  no  end  of  business  since.  We 
poor  devils,  you  know,  are  obliged  to  walk  about  the  streets  in  the  noonday; 
it's  only  you  grands  seigneurs  who  can  lie  in  the  shade  doing  nothing.  Peaches, 
grapes,  chocolate,  and  claret  for  your  breakfast  !  How  French  you  are  !  The 
public  wouldn't  think  you  a  safe  member  of  society  if  they  knew  you  didn't 
take  the  orthodox  British  under-done  chop  and  slice  of  bacon  virtually  undis- 
tinguishable  from  shoe-leather.  I  wonder  what  you  would  do  if  you  were  a 
poor  man,  Ernest  ?  " 

Chandos  laughed  and  gave  a  shudder.  "  Do  !  glide  away  in  a  dose  of 
morphia.  Poor  !  I  can't  fancy  it,  even." 

Trevenna  smiled  as  he  tossed  himself  into  the  softest  lounging-chair.  He 
had  known  what  poverty  was, — known  it  in  its  ugliest,  its  blackest,  its  barest, 
and  had  learned  to  hate  it  with  a  loathing,  unutterable,  and  thoroughly  justi- 
fied; for  poverty  is  the  grimmest  foe  the  world  holds,  a  serpent  that  stifles  talent, 
ere  talent  can  rise,  that  blasts  genius  ere  genius  can  be  heard,  that  sows  hot 
hate  by  a  cold  hearth,  and  that  turns  the  germ  of  good  into  the  giant  of  evil. 

"  Trevenna,"  went  on  Chandos,  taking  one  of  his  hot-house  peaches, 
"  who  was  that  new  beauty  at  the  Due's  yesterday  ?  I  never  saw  anything 
lovelier." 

"  There  are  twenty  new  beauties  this  season, — in  their  own  estimation,  at 
least  !  Be  a  little  more  explicit,  please." 

" She  was  with  the  Chesterton.  Really  beautiful;  beautiful  as  that  Gior- 
gione.  There  were  plenty  of  men  about  her.  I  should  have  asked  who  she 
was,  and  have  been  presented  to  her,  but  I  had  no  time  to  stay,  even  for  her. 

"  With  the  Chesterton  ?    Why,  Ivors's  daughter,  of  course." 

"  Ivors  !  Died  last  year,  didn't  he  ? — of  losing  the  Guineas,  they  said,  to 
the  French  colt.  Why  haven't  I  seen  her  before  ?  " 

"  Because  she  has  been  in  Rome.  She's  the  thing  of  the  year  is  my  Lady 
Valencia.  They're  raving  of  her  in  the  F.  O.  this  morning,  and  they  have 
passed  her  into  notice  in  the  Guards;  there'll  be  nothing  to  make  running  like 
her  this  season.  You'll  see  her  at  the  Drawing-Room  to-morrow,"  said  Tre- 
venna. He  was  a  walking  court-newsman  and  fashionable  directory,  being  able 
to  tell  you  at  a  second's  notice  who  was  at  the  bottom  of  the  St.  Leger  scandal 


CHANDOS.  27 

about  the  powder  in  Etoile's  drinking-water,  what  divorces  were  in  train,  what 
amatory  passages  great  ladies  confided  to  their  Bramah-locked  dairies,  and 
whose  loose  paper  was  flying  about  most  awkwardly  among  the  Jews.  "  I  no- 
ticed you  looked  at  her  yesterday,"  he  pursued:  "  so  did  the  countess.  She's 
fearfully  jealous  of  you  !  Take  care  you  don't  get  a  note  perfumed  a  la  Brin- 
villers.  I  wonder  what  on  earth  she  would  do  if  you  were  ever  to  marry  ?  " 

"  Shrug  her  pretty  shoulders,  pity  my  wife,  and  console  me,  to  be  sure. 
But  I  shall  never  try  her.  Twenty  years  hence,  perhaps,  if  I  have  nothing 
better  to  do,  and  ever  see  the  woman  of  my  ideal " 

"  That  impossible  she, 
Wherever  she  be, 
In  meerchaum  dreams  of  fantasie  ! " 

paraphrased  Trevenna.  "  What  a  queer  idea,  to  be  longing  for  ideal  women 
when  there  are  all  the  living  ones  at  your  service  !  That  is  preferring  the 
shadow  to  the  substance.  What  can  you  want  that  Flora  and  all  the  rest  have 

not  ? " 

• 

Chandos  laughed,  nestling  in  among  the  cushions  of  his  sofa  at  full  length. 
"  My  dear  Trevenna,  it  would  be  talking  in  Arabic  to  you  to  tell  you.  Indeed, 
you'd  understand  the  Sanscrit  much  quicker,  you  most  material  of  men." 

"  Certainly  I  am  material  !  A  material  man  dines  well  and  digests  well. 
A  visionary  man  enjoys  his  banquet  of  the  soul,  and  has  a  deuced  deal  of 
neuralgia  after  it.  Which  were  best  ? — Lucullus's  cherry-trees,  or  Lucullus's 
conquests  ?  The  victories  are  no  good  to  anybody  now.  Asia  and  Europe 
have  been  mapped  out  again  twenty  times;  but  cherry  brandy  will  last  as  long 
as  the  world  lasts.  Conquerors  supplant  each  other  like  mushrooms,  but 
cherry  tarts  are  perennial  and  eternal  as  long  as  generations  are  born  to  go  to 
school.  Material  ?  Of  course  I  am.  Which  enjoyed  life  best, — your  grand 
summum  bonum  ? — Dante,  or  Falstaff  ?  Milton,  or  Sir  John  Suckling  ?  " 

"  And  which  does  posterity  revere  ?  " 

"  Posterity  be  shot  !  If  I  pick  the  bones  of  ortolans  in  comfort  while  I  am 
alive,  what  does  it  matter  to  me  how  people  pick  my  bones  after  I'm  gone  ? 
A  dish  of  truffles  or  a  terrapin  to  tickle  my  palate  is  a  deal  more  to  my  taste 
than  a  wreath  of  immortelles  hung  on  my  grave.  I  detest  posterity;  every 
king  hates  his  heir;  but  I  dearly  love  a  good  dinner.  If  I  could  choose  what 
should  become  of  my  bones,  I'd  have  myself  made  into  gelatine;  gelatine's 
such  a  rascally  cheat,  and  assists  at  such  capital  banquets,  it's  the  most  ap- 
propriate final  destiny  for  any  human  being  that  was  ever  devised.  But  what's 
the  good  of  my  talking  to  you  ?  We  look  at  life  through  different  glasses." 

"Rather!" 


og  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

"  A  disdainful  enough  dissyllable.  Well,  we  shall  see  which  is  best  content 
of  us  two,  after  all, — I,  the  animal  man,  or  you,  the  artistic.  You've  tremen- 
dous odds  in  your  favor.  I  shall  deserve  great  honor  if  I  make  any  head 
against  you." 

A  shadow  passed  slightly  over  the  face  of  Chandos;  he  had  the  variable  and 
impressionable  temperament  of  a  poetic  nature,  a  deep  thoughtfulness,  even  to 
melancholy,  mingled  in  contrast  with  the  gayest  and  most  nonchalant  epicu- 
reanism. 

"  Content  ?  at  the  end  ?  How  is  it  to  be  secured  ?  ^Emilianus  led  a  noble 
and  glorious  life, — to  fall  by  an  assassin's  dagger.  Ovid  led  the  gayest  and 
the  brightest  life, — to  go  out  to  the  frozen  misery  of  Pannonia.  Africanus  was 
a  hero, — to  be  accused  of  stealing  the  public  money.  Petronius  was  an  epicu- 
rean,— to  die  by  a  lingering  torture." 

His  voice  was  musing,  and  there  was  a  touch  of  sadness  in  it.  Trevenna 
laughed  as  he  took  a  cigar  from  a  case  standing  near,  lighted  it,  and  rose. 

"Hang  Petronius  !  It  could  have  been  no  fun  to  torment  him  ;  the  fellow 
died  so  game, — wouldn't  wince  once  !  As  for  the  end  of  the  farce  we  play  in, 

'Tis  not  in  mortals  to  deserve  success  ; 

But  you'll  do  more,  Sempronius  :  you'll  command  it  ! 

I  like  that  mis-quotation.  Only  '  deserve '  success,  and  I  should  like  to  know 
who'll  give  you  your  deserts  !  But  I  must  go.  There  are  no  end  of  poor  devils 
waiting  outside,  working  authors  and  working  jewellers,  mute,  inglorious  Mil- 
tons,  and  glorious,  talkative  tailors,  dealers  with  cracked  antiques,  and  poets 
with  cracked  novelties,  sculptors  with  their  bronzes,  and  young  Chattertons 

with  their  brass 1  beg  pardon,  I  forgot !  one  mustn't  laugh  at  genius,  even 

in  a  shabby  coat,  here." 

"  No  ;  Le  Sage  had  no  coat  on  in  his  attic  when  he  refused  the  millionnaire's 
bribe.  '  Tout  compte  fait,  je  suis  plus  riche  que  vous,  et  je  refuse  ! ' ' 

"  And  you  think  that  sublime  ?  to  tell  the  truth  and  starve  !  Faugh  !  I'd 
have  taken  their  check,  and  written  a  ten  times  more  stinging  Turcaret  after- 
wards !  But,  on  my  word,  Chandos,  your  ante-rooms  are  as  thronged  as  any 
Chesterfield's  or  Halifax's  of  a  hundred  years  ago." 

"  Nonsense  !  There  is  no  patronage  nowadays.     A  man  makes  himself." 

"  Pardon  me,  his  bank-balance  makes  him  !  if  it's  heavy  enough,  it  will 
cover  all  sins, — intellectual,  moral,  and  grammatical, —  and  float  him  high  as 
heaven.  So  you  are  keeping  that  young  Montrose  at  Oriel  ?  " 

"  How  could  you  find  that  out  ?  He  is  a  boy  of  great  promise;  the  Univer- 
sity will  give  him  a  fair  start." 

"  At  your  expense  !  Spending  your  money  in  keeping  penniless  lads  at  col- 
lege ?  Isn't  there  such  a  thing  as  Quixotic  generosity,  Chandos  ? " 


CHAN  DOS.  29 

"  Isn't  there  such  a  thing  as  officious  interference,  Trevenna  ? " 

The  rebuke  was  very  gentle.  Trevenna  took  it  with  the  best  of  good 
humor. 

"  A  delicate  reproof,  monseigneur  !  Well,  what  are  your  commands  to-day  ? 
I  know  what  to  do  about  securing  those  genre  picture;  and  I'm  now  going  to  the 
Corner  to  see  what  the  mid-day  betting  is  for  us;  and  I  sent  the  cabochon 
emeralds  to  Mademoiselle  Flora,  and  grudged  her  them  heartily;  and  I  have 
seen  to  the  enlarging  of  the  smoking-room  of  the  Anadyomene.  Anything 
else?" 

"  My  dear  fellow,  no;  I  think  not,  I  thank  you.    Unless they  tell  me  there 

are  some  good  things  in  Delia  Robbia  at  the  Vere  collection;  you  might  look 
at  them,  if  you  don't  mind  the  trouble;  buy,  if  they  are  really  perfect.  And 
bring  me  word  round,  if  you  can  learn,  what  houses  this  daughter  of  Ivors  will 
show  at  to-night.  I  never  saw  a  lovelier  face;  but  there  is  a  quality  above 
beauty  that  probably  she  has  not.  Rahel  is  not  absolutely  handsome;  but  that 
woman  has  such  sorcery  in  her  that  you  could  not  be  ten  minutes  with  her 
without  being  in  love." 

With  which  tribute  to  the  great  actress's  power,  Chandos,  a  connoisseur  in 
female  charms,  from  those  of  a  Greek  grape-girl  to  those  of  a  Tuileries  prin- 
cess, from  the  grace  of  a  Bayadere  to  the  glamour  of  a  Rosiere,  resumed  his 
pursuit  of  glancing  through  the  innumerable  little  amorous  notes  that  accom- 
panied his  breakfast,  while  Trevenna  sauntered  out,  pausing  a  moment  to  put 
in  his  head  at  the  door: 

"  I  lamed  my  horse  over  that  wretched  heap  of  stones  in_Bolton  Row.  May 
I  use  one  of  your  horses  ?  " 

"  My  dear  fellow,  what  a  question  !     My  stables  are  yours,  of  course." 

And  John  Trevenna  went  out  on  his  morning's  work.  He  called  himself  a 
business-man;  but  what  his  business  was,  beyond  being  prime  minister,  master 
of  the  horse,  and  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  to  Chandos,  and  knowing  all  the 
news  before  anybody  else  whispered  it,  wasjwhat  was  never  altogether  ascertained. 
Be  his  business  what  it  might,  in  amusement  Trevenna  brought  his  own  welcome 
to  every  one;  and  he  entertained  Society  so  well  that  Society  was  always  ready 
to  entertain  him. 

Society,  that  smooth  and  sparkling  sea,  is  excessively  difficult  to  navigate; 
its  surf  looks  no  more  than  champagne  foam,  but  a  thousand  quicksands  and 
shoals  lie  beneath;  there  are  breakers  ahead  for  more  than  half  the  dainty 
pleasure-boats  that  skim  their  hour  upon  it;  and  the  foundered  lie  by  millions, 
forgotten,  five  fathoms  deep  below.  The  only  safe  ballast  upon  it  is  gold  dust; 
and  if  stress  of  weather  come  on  you  it  will  swallow  you  without  remorse. 
Trevenna  had  none  of  this  ballast;  he  had  come  out  to  sea  in  as  ticklish  a 
cockle-shell  as  might  be;  he  might  go  down  any  moment,  and  he  carried  no 


30  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

commission,  being  a  sort  of  nameless,  unchartered  rover:  yet  float  he  did, 
securely. 

Twelve  years  before,  one  hot  night  at  Baden,  a  penniless  young  Englishman 
had  lost  more  than  he  had  in  his  purse, — had,  indeed  in  the  world;  the  bank 
arrested  him;  his  prospect  for  life  was  to  languish  in  German  prisons,  the  prey 
of  the  debts  he  could  not  liquidate  and  none  else  would  pay  for  him.  For  he 
was  alone  in  life,  and  had,  for  all  he  knew,  not  a  solitary  friend  upon  the  face 
of  the  earth.  A  boy  of  twenty,  throwing  his  gold  about  to  the  enchantress 
of  Play,  heard  the  story,  paid  the  debts,  and  freed  the  debtor.  The  boy 
was  Chandos,  the  young  master  of  Clarencieux.  It  was  the  last  dilemma  into 
which  astute  John  Trevenna  ever  let  life  betray  him;  and  it  was  his  first  step 
toward  social  success.  His  boy-benefactor  was  not  content  with  letting  his  good 
services  begin  and  end  at  the  prison  of  the  duchy:  he  made  the  prisoner  his  guest 
then  and  there,  in  the  sumptious  magnificence  of  the  life  he  was  leading  among 
emperors  and  princes,  peeresses  and  Aspasias,  in  that  pleasant  whirl  of  extrav- 
agance called  the  Baden  season.  He  was  infinitely  amused,  too,  with  a  compan- 
ion sufficiently  near  his  own  age  to  enter  into  all  his  pleasures,  and  who  was  the 
first  person  he  had  ever  met  who  told  him  the  truth  with  frank  good  nature  and 
never  annoyed  him  by  flattery.  From  that  day,  through  Chandos,  John 
Trevenna  was  welcomed  in  the  World  ;  and  the  World  soon  kept  him  in  it  as  a 
sort  of  Town  Triboulet. 

He  was  a  privileged  person:  every  one  knows  how  immense  a  carte  blanche 
is  given  by  those  words.  Chandos  was  the  fashion  ;  he  pleased  himself  by 
doing  all  good  services  to  Trevenna  that  circumstances  would  allow  of ;  and 
the  world  petted  Trevenna  because  Chandos  befriended  him.  He  lived  so 
very  near  the  rose  that  much  of  the  tender  dews  so  lavishly  poured  down  on 
the  king  flower  fell  of  necessity  upon  him.  He  was  often  rude,  always  brusque, 
sans  f aeon,  sometimes  even  a  little  coarse;  but  he  was  so_frank,  so  impertur- 
bably  good-humored,  told  stories  so  admirably,  and  had  such  a  thorough  spice 
of  true  wit,  that  he  was  as  good  with  wine  as  anchovies  or  olives,  and  men  had 
him  with  their  wines  accordingly.  Was  a  chateau  dull  on  the  shores  of  Monaco 
or  Baiae,  or  a  country-house  in  the  recesses;  was  there  a  dearth  of  news  in  a 
hot  club-room  at  the  fag-end  of  a  season;  was  the  conversation  dragging 
wearily  over  an  aristocratic  dinner-table;  or  was  a  duke  half  dead  of  ennui  in 
the  midst  of  a  great  gathering,  the  bright,  laughing  face  of  John  Trevenna, 
with  the  white  teeth  glancing  in  a  merry,  honest  smile,  always  fresh,  never 
faded,  never  bored,  but  always  looking,  because  always  feeling,  as  if  life  were 
the  pleasantest  comedy  that  could  be  played,  was  the  signal  of  instant  relief  and 
of  instant  amusement.  The  legions  of  blue-devils  flew  before  his  approach, 
and  no  ennui  could  withstand  the  tonic  of  his  caustic  humor  and  his  incessant 
mirth 


CHAN  DOS.  31 

Even  His  Grace  of  Castlemaine,  haughtiest  of  Garter  knights,  most  hard  to 
please  of  all  Regency  wits, — even  that  splendid  old  man,  who  had  set  his  face 
against  this  stray  member  of  society,  could  not  altogether  withstand  him. 

"  Chandos'  homme  d'affaires  ?  An  interloper,  sir,  an  adventurer,  and  I  de- 
test adventurers: — tell  you  a  first-rate  story,  make  you  a  first-rate  mot,  but 
always  have  a  second  king  in  their  sleeve  for  your  ecarte  !  Society's  a  soil 
you  can't  weed  too  vigorously.  Still,  a  humorous  fellow,  I  must  confess;  a 
clever  fellow, — very." 

So  John  Trevenna  had  laughed  his  way  into  the  world,  and,  laughing,  held 
his  own  there.  No  one  ever  heard  the  story  of  the  Baden  debts  from  Chandos, 
but  Trevenna  openly  confessed  himself  a  poor  man;  he  never  teased  people 
with  reminding  them  of  it,  but  stated  the  fact  once  for  all  without  disguise. 
He  made  a  little  money  on  the  turf,  and  doubled  that  little  now  and  then  by 
ingenius  traffic  here  and  there  in  the  commercial  gambling  that  the  world 
sanctifies;  but  nobody  knew  this.  He  was  simply  a  man-upon-town.  He  lived 
very  inexpensively,  dining  out  every  night  of  his  life;  he  had  no  vices;  he  was 
an  epicure,  but  that  taste  he  only  indulged  at  other  people's  tables;  and  he 
had  no  weakness  for  women;  if  you  had  offered  him  a  beautiful  mistress  or 
a  dozen  of  Imperial  Tokay,  he  would  without  hesitation  have  taken  the 
Tokay. 

As  regarded  his  intellect,  he  had  talent  enough  to  be  anything, — from  a 
jockey  to  an  ambassador,  from  a  head  cook  to  a  premier. 

"  The  Queen  of  Lilies  will  be  at  the  Des  Vaux  to-night,  Chandos,"  said  he, 
that  evening,  in  the  green  drawing-room  at  Park  Lane,  where  some  dozen 
guests  having  dined  with  him,  including  S.A.R.  the  Due  de  Neuilly,  and 
H.S.H.  the  Prince  Carl  of  Steinberg,  Chandos  was  now  playing  baccarat,  half 
a  hundred  engagements  being  thrown  over,  as  chanced  inevitably  with  him 
every  night  in  the  season.  Trevenna  himself  was  not  playing:  he  never 
touched  cards  at  any  game  except  whist,  which  he  had  studied  as — what  it  is — 
a  science.  He  stood  on  the  hearth-rug,  looking  on,  taking  now  and  then  a 
glass  of  Moselle  or  Maraschino  from  a  console  near. 

"  What  a  charming  name, — The  Queen  of  Lilies  !  Who  is  she  ? "  asked  his 
host,  having  already  forgotten  trie  commission  he  gave. 

"The  Queen  of  Lilies?  Ah,  she  is  exquisite!  you  have  not  seen  her,  of 
course,  Ernest  ? "  asked  the  French  prince.  "  The  Laureate  gave  her  the  title." 

"In  a  sonnet,  made  instantly  public  by  being  marked  Private.  If  you 
want  a  piece  of  news  to  fly  over  Europe  like  lightning,  whisper  it  as  a  secret 
that  would  infallibly  destroy  you  if  it  ever  got  wind,"  put  in  Trevenna,  who 
among  princes  and  peers  never  could  keep  his  tongue  still. 

"  But  who  is  she  ?  A  new  dancer,  I  hope.  We  have  nothing  good  in  the 
coulisses." 


32  GUI  DA'S     WORKS. 

"  A  dancer  ?    No  !     She  is  Ivors'  daughter." 

"  Ah  !  I  remember,  I  saw  her  yesterday.  The  Queen  of  Lilies,  do  you  call 
her?  The  name  is  an  idyl ! " 

"Ah  ! "  said  his  Grace  of  Crowndiamonds,  with  a  cross  between  an  oath  and 
a  regret.  "  She  is  a  great  deal  too  handsome  ! " 

"  Too  handsome  ?  How  charming  a  blemish  !  They  generally  sin  the 
other  way,  my  dear  Crown." 

"Too  handsome;  for — she  is  ice  !  " 

"  Never  find  fault  with  women,  old  fellow  !  We  may  all  of  us  think  that 
each  of  those  dainty  treasures  has  a  flaw  somewhere;  but  we  should  never  hint 
a  doubt  of  them,  any  more  than  of  their  Dresden." 

"  Though  the  best  Dresden  is  only  soiled  earth,  just  painted  and  glazed  !  " 
broke  in  Trevenna,  taking  out  his  watch.  "  You  told  me  to  learn  where  she 
went.  At  nine  she  dined  with  the  French  Ambassador;  at  twelve  she  was  at 
Livingstone  House;  at  one  she  was  at  Lady  BellingharrTs;  and  now,  fifty-five 
minutes  past  one,  she  is  at  the  Countess  des  Vaux's." 

"  Do  you  findbut  everything,  Monsieur  Trevenna  ? "  laughed  the  French  due. 

Trevenna  looked  at  him  with  a  certain  saucy  triumph  in  his  bold  Saxon-blue 
eyes, — blue  as  forget-me-nots,  and  keen  as  a  knife. 

"Yes,  monseigneur, — if  I  wish." 

The  answer  was  quiet,  and,  wonderful  for  him,  without  a  jest;  but  the  prince 
turned  and  gave  him  a  more  earnest  look  than  he  had  ever  bestowed  on  this 
flaneur,  this  rodeur  of  the  English  clubs. 

"  He  will  be  successful  man,  a  great  man,  ten  to  one,  when  our  brilliant 
Chandos,  who  has  the  genius  of  a  Goethe,  will  have  died  of  dissipation  or  have 
killed  himself  for  some  mistress's  infidelity,"  thought  the  duke,  a  keen  man  of 
the  world,  while  his  eyes  glanced  from  the  sagacious,  indomitable,  fresh-colored 
face  of  Trevenna  to  the  delicate,  proud  dazzling  beauty  of  Chandos,  with  the 
light  in  his  deep-blue  eyes  and  the  laughter  on  his  insouciant  lips. 

"  We  should  all  of  us  have  been  in  those  places,  if  your  baccarat  had  not 
beguiled  us,  Chandos,"  said  the  Comte  de  la  Joie;  "but  social  entertainments 
are  a  crying  cruelty." 

"  And  a  great  mistake.  Society  is  ruined  by  the  rdture,  which  has  nothing 
to  recommend  its  entertainments  but  its  cooking,  and  has  made  the  cooking 
the  measure  of  the  entertainments.  St.  Fond's  verdict  of  English  banquets  re- 
mains true  to  the  letter:  '  Us  se  saoulerent  grandement  et  se  divertirent  moult 
tristement  ! ' ' 

"  Oh,  we  all  know  what  you  are,  Chandos,"  cried  Trevenna.  "  You'd  ex- 
change your  own  cook — though  he  is  priceless  were  it  only  for  his  soups — to 
be  able  to  eat  a  dried  date  with  Plato,  and  would  give  up  White's  for  the 
Scipionic  circle  of  the  Mermaid  evenings  !  " 


CHANDOS.  33 

"  Perhaps.  Though  I  admit  you  are  a  more  practical  philosopher  than  any 
in  Academus,  and  are  as  good  a  companion  as  Lucilius  or  Ben  Johnson." 

"  I  hope  I  am,"  said  Trevenna,  complacently.  "  I  bet  you  the  philosophers 
flavored  their  dates,  as  we  do  our  olives,  by  discussing  the  Lalage's  ankles  and 
the  Agora  gossip.  Scipio  talked  fine,  we  know;  Lucilius  laughed  at  him  for  it, 
and  fine  talkers  are  always  bores;  and  as  for  the  Mermaid— Raleigh  whispered 
wicked  things  about  the  maids  of  honor,  and  Shakspeare  wondered  what  old 
Combe  would  leave  him  in  his  will,  and  Ben  joked  him  about  the  Crown  Inn 
widow  over  mulled  posset.  The  Immortals  were  as  mortal  as  we  are,  every 
whit." 

With  which  Trevenna  washed  down  their  mortality  by  a  glass  of  golden 
water. 

"  Shall  we  all  go  to  Lady  des  Vaux's  and  criticize  this  Lily  Queen,  Chan- 
dos  ?  "  asked  the  Due  de  Neuilly.  "  She  will  not  be  believed  in  till  you  have 
given  her  the  cordon  of  your  approbation. 

Prince  Carl  was  willing,  the  baccarat  was  deserted,  and  they  went  to  the 
crowded  rooms  of  the  Countess  des  Vaux,  one  of  those  great  leaders  of  the 
political  world,  who  pass  their  existence  in  the  supreme  belief  that  cabinets 
would  fall  and  the  constitution  perish  if  it  were  not  for  their  boudoir  conferences, 
which  secure  Providence  to  their  party  and  hold  Europe  together  over  a  cup  of 
souchong. 

"  There  she  is  ! "  said  Neuilly,  on  the  staircase,  that  was  still  thronged. 

Chandos  looked  through  the  long  vista  of  light  through  the  opened  doors, 
and  saw  a  loveliness  as  fair  as  the  lilies  after  which  they  had  named  her. 

She  was  beautiful  as  a  young  deer,  this  young  English  patrician,  and  had 
something  of  a  stag's  lofty  grace.  Her  eyes  were  a  dark,  deep  brown,  large, 
thoughtful,  proud,  swept  by  lashes  a  shade  darker  still;  her  lips  were  sweet  as 
half-opened  roses:  her  hair,  the  same  hue  as  her  eyes,  was  drawn  back  in  soft, 
floating  masses  from  a  brow  like  a  Greek  antique;  she  was  very  tall,  and  her 
form  was  simply  perfect.  It  was  in  its  fullest  loveliness,  too,  for  she  had  been 
some  years  in  Rome,  and  successive  deaths  in  her  family  had  kept  her  long  in 
almost  comparative  seclusion. 

"You  said  she  was  cold  !  Such  beauty  as  that  can  never  be  passionless," 
said  Chandos. 

As  though  his  voice  had  reached  her  through  the  long  distance  that  severed 
them,  she  turned  her  head  at  that  moment,  and  their  eyes  met. 

Corals,  pink  and  delicate,  rivet  continents  together;  ivy  tendrils,  that  a  child 
may  break,  hold  Norman  walls  with  bonds  of  iron;  a  little  ring,  a  toy  of  gold,  a 
jeweller's  bagatelle,  forges  chains  heavier  than  the  galley-slave's:  so  a  women's 
look  may  fetter  a  lifetime. 

"  Passionless  !  with  those  eyes  ?     Impossible  !  "  said  Chandos. 

VOL.  III.— 2 


34  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

"Oh,  she  will  have  two  passions,"  said  Crowndiamonds,  dryly, — "two  very 
strong  passions, — vanity  and  ambition  !  " 

"  For  shame  !  "  laughed  Chandos.  "  Never  be  cynical  upon  women,  Crown. 
It  is  breaking  butterflies  upon  the  wheel,  and  shooting  humming-birds  with 
field-pieces.  Well,  let  the  Lily  Queen's  sins  be  what  they  may,  she  is  lovely 
enough  to  make  us  forgive  them." 

"  Prfes  des  femmes  que  sommes-nous  ? 
Des  pantins  qu'on  ballotte  ! " 

laughed  the  Due  de  Neuilly  "  Madame  de  la  Vivaro  sees  you,  Ernest,  and 
already  looks  jealous." 

"  I  hope  not,  mon  prince.  I  would  almost  as  soon  see  a  lady  ugly  as  jeal- 
ous. When  she  once  begins  to  murmur  '  forever,'  she  has  given  the  first  chill 
to  one's  love,"  answered  Chandos,  with  his  low,  melodious  laugh,  that  had  not 
a  trace  of  care  in  it.  "  You  know  I  always  thought,  like  Goethe,  the  proof  of 
the  tenderest  heart  is  to  love  often  !  " 

And  he,  in  whose  path  loves  were  scattered  as  many  as  the  hours,  wooing 
him  to  that  inconstancy  which  is,  after  all,  the  salt  of  life, — "  en  amour  cen'est 
que  les  commencements  qui  soient  charmants;  je  ne  m'etonne  pas  qu'on  trouve 
du  plaisir  a  recommencer  si  souvent,"  as  the  Prince  de  Ligne  has  it, — made 
his  way  at  last  into  the  rooms  with  the  French  and  English  dukes,  to  be 
detained  right  and  left,  and  make  his  further  way  with  difficulty  into  his  host- 
ess's presence. 

There  was  empressment  wherever  Chandos  moved;  he  was  the  idol  of  this 
ultra-fashionable  and  ultra-exclusive  world.  They  followed  all  his  socials  laws, 
and  courted  all  his  words. 

When  he  was  at  all  free,  and  sought  to  look  for  the  Queen  of  Lilies,  he 
found  that  she  had  left  the  rooms. 

"  I  shall  see  her  at  the  Drawing-Room,"  thought  Chandos,  whom  too  many 
were  ever  ready  to  console,  for  him  ever  to  be  left  to  regret  an  absent  loveli- 
ness. Nevertheless,  two  or  three  times  that  night,  in  the  midst  of  fashionable 
crowds,  in  the  soft  smiles  of  other  beauties,  or  in  the  incensed,  gas-lit  air  of 
Claire  Rahel's  late  supper,  in  the  hours  that  followed,  there  rose  before  him, 
unbidden,  that  proud,  stag-like  head  of  those  luminous,  meditative  eyes  of  the 
Lily  Queen:  they  rose  before  the  glitter  of  La  Vivarol's,  they  rose  beyond  the 
lustre  of  Rahel's.  Men  of  his  temperament,  the  temperament  of  Goethe,  are 
incessantly  accused  of  inconstancy,  because  the  list  of  their  loves  is  long.  On 
the  contrary,  they  are  the  most  constant — to  their  own  ideal,  which  they  un- 
ceasingly persue  in  every  form  which  has  its  outward  semblance.  What  their 
dreams  long  for  is  not  there, — in  that  beautiful  shadow  that  looked  so  like 


CHANDOS.  35 

it,  but  which  was  but  a  transparency,  only  bright  through  borrowed  light; 
then  they  cease  to  love  till  again  they  persue  a  shadow;  and  fools  call  them 
libertines. 

That  night,  or  rather  in  the  dawn,  Heloise,  Countess  de  la  Vivarol,  looked 
at  her  own  face  in  the  mirror  while  her  attendants  were  taking  the  sapphires 
and  oynxes  from  her  hair.  It  was  well  worth  looking  at,  with  its  mignonne 
mouth,  its  glancing  falcon  radiance  of  regard,  its  indescribable  witchery  of 
coquetry,  and  its  rich  delicate  tints,  independent,  as  yet,  even  of  pearl-powder. 
"Belle  comme  unange,  et  mesquine  comme  un  diablotin,"  her  mother  had  used  to 
say  of  her  in  childhood;  and  the  description  still  held  good.  Her  mother  was 
the  Princesse  Lucille  Viardort,  who  had  married  an  Englishman,  a  rich  baronet; 
her  father  none  was  ever  so  bold  as  to  name, — the  baronet  himself  put  in  no 
claim  for  her;  he  lived  apart  from  his  wife,  who  was  a  handsome,  sunny,  good- 
tempered  creature,  as  happy  in  the  midst  of  the  slander  to  which  she  gave  rise 
as  a  sea-anemone  in  a  rock-pool.  It  was  her  normal  element:  the  Viardort, 
that  restless  and  dominant  race  who  had  played  at  bowls  with  nothing  less  than 
all  the  rolling  diadems  of  Europe,  always  had  scandalized  the  world  ever  since 
they  burst,  meteor-like,  upon  it.  All  the  Viardort  love  sovereignty,  and  get  it 
though  none  are  born  to  it.  Heloise,  who  at  sixteen  married  the  enormous 
wealth  of  the  Count  Granier  de  la  Vivarol,  was  not  behind  her  race.  She 
plunged  eagerly,  up  to  her  lovely  throat,  in  European  intrigues, — so  eagerly 
that  she  was  now  banished  from  France.  Her  lord  did  not  follow  her, — there 
lives  not  the  man  who  could  prefer  a  wife  to  Paris, — but  allowed  her  richly,  so 
richly,  indeed,  that  she  never  called  him  anything  worse  than  "  ce  petit  drole  " 
when  speaking  of  him  in  connection  with  her  money-matters.  With  any  other 
affairs  he  never  came  under  discussion. 

Before  her  banishment  from  Paris,  Chandos,  at  the  same  time  with  herself, 
had  been  among  the  First  Circle  of  autumn  guests  at  Compiegne.  In  the 
torchlight  cure'es,  in  the  moon-lit  terraces,  in  the  palace  theatricals,  in  the  forest 
hunts,  she  had  fascinated  him,  he  had  attracted  her.  M.  le  Comte  was  a 
thoroughly  well-bred  man,  who  knew  the  destinies  of  husbands,  abhorred  a 
scene,  and  neither  sought  a  duel  nor  a  divorce:  besides,  he  was  not  at  the 
court.  Their  love  passages  went  silvery  smooth,  and  were  quite  a  page  out  of 
Boccaccio.  Now  Madame  was  disposed  to  be  jealous,  and  Chandos  was  a  little 
disposed  to  be  tired.  Studies  after  Boccaccio  often  ended  thus, — in  bathos. 

To-night  she  looked  at  her  face  in  her  mirror,  and  her  tiny  white  teeth 
clenched  like  a  little  lion-dog's.  Perhaps  the  love  she  had  taught  mercilessly 
so  often  had  revenged  itself  here  on  its  teacher;  perhaps  it  was  but  pique  that 
made  her  as  tenacious  to  keep  the  sway  she  had  held  over  the  handsomest  man 
of  his  age;  be  the  spring  love,  vanity,  passion,  or  envy,  what  it  would,  her  eyes 


36  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

glittered  with  a  dangerous  gleam  under  her  curling  lashes,  and  she  muttered, 

between  her  set  teeth, — 

"  If  he  ever  love  another,  if  it  be  twenty  years  hence " 

The  menace  was  not  the  less  registered  in  her  heart,  because  left  unfinished 

on  her  lips;  even  if  the  twenty  years  passed  before  she  had  to  carry  it  out,  the 

fair  countess  was  not  a  woman  to  forget  it,  or  to  falter  in  it. 


CHAPTER   III. 

A    PRIME    MINISTER   AT    HOME. 

OVER  and  over  again  John  Trevenna  had  been  pressed  to  take  up  residence 
in  the  stately  suites  of  the  Park-Lane  house;  but  this  he  had  always  refused.  He 
dined  there,  lunched  there,  ordered  what  he  chose  there,  and  stayed  for  months 
each  year  at  Clarencieux;  but  he  had  his  own  rooms  in  town,  in  a  quiet  street 
near  the  clubs.  He  liked  to  retain  a  distinct  personality.  Besides,  people 
came  to  see  him  here  who  could  never  have  shown  themselves  before  the  porter 
of  the  great  leader  of  fashion;  men  with  bulldog  heads  and  close-cut  hair, 
known  as  "sporting-gents;"  men  with  the  glance  of  a  ferret  and  the  jewellery 
of  Burlington  Arcade,  utterly  and  unmistakably  "horsy; "  men  who  always  had 
"  a  lovely  thing  close  by  in  the  mews, — go  in  your  'and,  and  only  thirty  sovs.,"  to 
sell,  but  who  traded  in  many  things  beside  toy  terriers;  men  very  soberly  dressed, 
hard-featured,  hard-headed  members  of  trades-unions;  men  with  long  floating 
beards,  the  look  of  Biirschen,  and  "  artist  "  written  on  them  for  those  who  ran 
to  read,  without  the  paint-splashes  on  their  coats;  men  with  clean-shaven  faces 
or  white  pointed  beards,  but,  shaven  or  hirsute,  Israelites  to  the  bone:  all  these 
varieties,  and  many  more,  came  to  see  Trevenna,  who  could  never  have  gone 
into  the  hall  of  the  fastidious  and  patrician  Chandos.  On  the  surface,  Trevenna 
had  but  one  set  of  friends,  his  aristocratic  acquaintances  of  the  clubs  and  the 
Clarendon  dinners;  sub  rosa,  this  bright  Bohemian  was  thoroughly  versed  in 
every  phase  and,  indeed,  every  sink  of  London  life  and  of  human  nature.  It 
was  "his  way"  to  know  everybody, — it  might  be  of  use  some  day;  he  went 
now — in  the  same  spirit  of  restless  activity  and  indomitable  perseverance  which 
had  made  him  as  a  boy  ask  the  meaning  of  every  machine  and  the  tricks  of 
every  trade  that  he  passed — to  the  probing  of  every  problem  and  the  cementing 
of  every  brick  in  life.  The  multitudes  whom  he  knew  were  countless;  the 
histories  he  had  fathomed  were  unrecordable.  Men  were  the  pawns,  knights, 
bishops,  and  castles  of  Trevenna's  chess,  and  he  set  himself  to  win  the  game 
with  them,  never  neglecting  the  smallest,  for  a  pawn  sometimes  gives  checkmate. 


CHANDOS.  37 

Trevenna  sat  now  at  breakfast  early  in  the  morning, — half-past  eight,  indeed, 
— though  he  had  not  been  in  bed  until  four.  He  slept  the  sound,  sweet  peace- 
ful sleep  of  a  child,  and  very  little  of  that  profound  repose  sufficed  for  him. 
His  rooms  were  scrupulously  neat,  but  bare  of  every  thing  approaching  art  or 
decoration;  Chandos  could  not  have  lived  a  day  in  them,  if  he  had  been  a  poor 
man;  condemned  to  them,  he  would  have  hung  an  engraving  here,  or  a  cast 
from  the  antique  there,  that  would  have  gone  some  way  to  redeem  them  in  their 
useful  ugliness.  Trevenna  was  utterly  indifferent  to  that  ugliness;  as  far  as 
his  eyes  went,  he  would  have  been  as  happy  in  a  garret  as  in  a  palace.  His 
breakfast  was  only  coffee  and  a  chop;  he  exercised  the  strictest  economy  in  his 
life.  It  was  not,  to  be  sure,  very  painful  to  him;  for  he  had  the  run  of  all  the 
wealthiest  houses  in  England,  and  was  welcomed  to  every  table.  Still,  it  was 
significant  of  the  man  that,  well  as  he  liked  all  gourmets'  delicacies,  he  never  by 
any  chance  squandered  money  on  them,  and  if  he  had  to  go  without  them  from 
year's  end  to  year's  end,  never  would  have  done.  Naturally  he  was  very  self- 
indulgent,  but  he  had  schooled  himself  into  considerable  control. 

The  coffee  was  something  rough,  the  chop  was  something  tough, — English 
cookery  pure;  but  Trevenna,  who  would  know  to  a  T  what  was  wanting  in  the 
flavor  of  a  white  sauce  at  the  best  club  in  Pall  Mall,  and  who  could  appreciate 
every  finest  shade  in  the  most  masterly  art  of  the  Park-Lane  chef,  took  both  chop 
and  coffee  without  a  murmur.  In  the  first  place,  he  had  the  good  appetite  of 
a  thoroughly  healthy  and  vigorous  constitution;  in  the  second,  he  would  com- 
pensate himself  by  the  daintiest  and  most  delicious  of  noon  dtjefiners  at 
Chandos'  house. 

While  he  ate  and  drank  he  was  looking  at  some  memoranda,  and  talking  to 
a  man  before  him, — a  man  who  stood  before  him  as  an  inferior  before  his  em- 
ployer; a  tall  man,  lean,  venerable,  saturnine,  with  iron-gray  hair  that  floated 
on  his  shoulders,  like  a  patriarch,  and  down  his  chest  in  a  waving  beard, — a  man 
in  his  sixtieth  year,  with  his  shoulders  a  little  bowed,  and  his  hand  lightly  clasped 
in  front  of  him.  This  was  Ignatius  Mathias,  of  the  firm  of  Tindall  &  Co.,  which 
firm  was  well  known  Citywards,  in  a  little,  dark,  crooked,  stifling  lane,  where 
their  dusky,  sullen-looking,  rickety  door  was  only  too  familiar  to  men  in  the 
Guards,  men  in  Middle  Temple,  men  in  the  Commons,  and  men  in  nothing  at 
all  but  a  fashionable  reputation  and  a  cloud  of  debts.  Tindall  &  Co.  dealt  in 
damaged  paper  chiefly;  they  bought  up  most  of  the  awkward  things  that  floated 
in  the  market,  and,  it  was  said,  were  making  a  great  deal  of  money.  This  was 
but  guess-work,  however;  for  the  little  grimy  den  of  an  office  told  no  secrets, 
however  many  it  guarded;  and  who  was  Tindall,  and  who  were  Co.,  was  a  thing 
never  known;  the  only  person  ever  seen,  ever  found  there  as  responsible,  was 
Ignatius  Mathias,  a  Castilian  Jew,  and  most  people  considered  that  he  was  the 
firm;  they  never  were  surer  on  this  point  than  when  he  shook  his  head  gravely 


38  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

and  said  he  "  could  but  act  on  his  instructions;  his  principal  had  been  very  posi- 
tive; his  principal  could  not  wait." 

But,  be  this  as  it  might,  Ignatius  Mathias  was  no  common  Jew  lender;  he 
never  sought  to  palm  off  a  miserable  home-smoked  Rembrandt,  a  cracked  vio- 
lin christened  a  Straduarius,  or  a  case  of  wretched  marsala  called  madeira,  on 
a  customer.  Tindall  &  Co.  had  none  of  these  tricks;  they  simply  did  business, 
and  if  they  did  it  in  a  very  severe  manner,  if  when  they  had  sucked  their 
orange  dry  they  threw  the  peel  away,  something  cruelly,  into  the  mud,  they 
still  did  business  thoroughly  legitimately,  thoroughly  strictly.  Their  customers 
might  curse  them  with  terrible  bitterness,  as  the  head  and  root  of  their  de- 
struction, but  they  could  never  legally  complain  of  them. 

"Sit  down,  Mathias;  sit  down,  and  pour  yourself  out  a  cup  of  coffee,"  said 
Trevenna,  who  was  always  pleasant  and  cordial  to  everybody,  and  gained  the 
suffrages  of  all  the  lower  classes  to  a  man.  "  I'll  run  my  eyes  through  these 
papers;,  and  when  you  have  drunk  your  ooffee,  be  able  to  account  me  the  re- 
ceipts of  the  month.  I  know  what  they  should  be;  we'll  see  what  they  are." 

"You  will  find  them  correct,  sir,"  said  Mathias,  meekly;  "and  I  need  no 
coffee,  I  thank  you." 

Neither  did  he  take  the  proffered  seat;  he  remained  standing,  his  dark 
brooding  eyes  dwelling  on  the  parchment-bound  receipt-book  open  before  him. 

The  papers  supplied  the  sauce  which  was  wanting  to  Trevenna's  underdone 
mutton;  as  he  glanced  through  them,  his  humorous  lips  laughed  silently  every 
now  and  then,  and  his  light-blue,  cloudless,  dauntless  eyes  sparkled  with  a  sup- 
pressed amusement.  These  papers,  and  their  like,  brought  him  as  keen  a 
pleasure  and  excitation  as  other  men  find  in  a  fox-hunt  or  a  deer-drive;  it  was 
the  chase,  and  without,  as  Trevenna  would  have  said,  the  fatigue  of  dashing 
over  bullfinches  or  watching  in  sloppy  weather  for  the  quarry;  it  was  a  battue 
into  which  all  the  game  was  driven  ready  to  hand, — through  and  through  under 
the  fire  of  the  guns.  The  beaters  had  all  the  trouble;  the  marksman  all  the 
sport. 

"  Chittenden: — dined  with  him  at  the  Star  and  Garter  last  Thursday:  we'll 
soon  stop  those  dinners,  my  boy.  Bertie  Brabazon : — oh  !  he's  going  to  be 
married  to  the  Rosefleck  heiress:  better  let  him  alone.  Grey  Graeme: — who 
would  have  thought  of  his  being  in  Queer  Street?  Jemmy  Haughton: — little 
fellow, — barrister, — got  a  bishop  for  an  uncle, — bishop  will  bleed, — won't  see 
him  screwed;  Church  hates  scandals, — specially  when  it's  in  lawn  sleeves. 
Talbot  O'Moore — Wareley — Belminster Very  good, — very  good,"  mur- 
mured Trevenna  over  details  of  paper  floating  about  town,  that  those  whom  it 
otherwise  concerned  would  have  rather  characterized,  on  the  contrary,  as  very 
bad.  He  meditated  a  little  while  over  the  memoranda, — amused  meditation 
that  washed  down  the  flavorless  coarseness  of  his  breakfast;  then  he  thrust  his 


CHAN  DOS.  39 

breakfast  cup  away,  pocketed  the  lists,  and  went  steadily  to  business.  Not  that 
he  looked  grave,  dull,  or  absorbed  even  in  that;  he  was  simply  bright,  intelli- 
gent, and  alert,  as  he  was  in  a  ducal  smoking-room;  but  Ignatius  Mathias  knew 
that  those  sagacious,  sparkling  glances  would  have  discovered  the  minutest  flaw 
in  his  finance,  and  that  the  man  who  listened  so  lightly,  with  a  brier-wood  pipe 
between  his  lips,  and  his  elbows  resting  on  the  mantel-piece,  would  have  been 
down  on  him  like  lightning  at  the  slightest  attempt  to  blind  or  to  cheat  one 
who  was  keener  even  than  that  keen  Israelite. 

"  All  right,"  said  Trevenna,  as,  having  come  to  the  completion  of  his 
monthly  accounts,  the  Portuguese  closed  his  book  and  waited  for  instructions. 
Trevenna  never  wasted  words  over  business,  rapidly  as  he  chattered  over  din- 
ner-tables and  in  club-rooms;  and  Ignatius  and  he  understood  each  other. 
"  You  take  care  to  keep  Tindall  &  Co.  dark,  eh  ?  " 
"  Every  care,  sir." 

"  Encourage  them  to  think  you  Tindall  &  Co.  by  the  charming  and  impres- 
sive character  of  denial,  your   inflexible  austerity,  your  constant  references  to 
'  your  principal.     The  more  you   refer  to  him,  you  know,  the  more   they'll  be 
sure  that  he  dosen't  exist.     Everybody  takes  it  for  granted  that  a  Jew  lies." 

There   was  a  cheerful,  easy  serenity  in  the  tone,  as  though  uttering  the 
pleasantest  compliment  possible,  that  made  them   sound  all  the  more  cutting, 
all  the  more  heartless;  yet  they  were  spoken  with  such  happy  indifference. 
The  Jew's  dark  and  hollow  cheek  flushed  slightly:  he  bent  his  head. 
"  I  observe  all  your  commands,  sir." 

"  Of  course  you  do,"  said  Trevenna,  carelessly.  "  The  first  you  disobey 
will  set  the  police  after  Young  Hopeful.  Tell  him  it's  no  use  to  hide:  I  know 
he's  at  that  miserable  little  Black  Forest  villiage  now.  He  may  just  as  well 
come  and  walk  about  London.  He  can't  escape  me.  When  I  want  him,  I 
shall  put  my  hand  on  him  if  he  buries  himself  under  a  Brazilian  forest;  you 
know  that." 

A  change  came  over  the  unmovable,  impassive  form  of  the  Castilian, — a 
change  that  shook  him  suddenly  from  head  to  foot,  as  a  reed  trembles  in  the 
wind.  What  little  blood  there  were  in  his  dark,  worn  face  forsook  it;  a  look 
of  hunted  and  terrible  anguish  came  into  his  eyes.  With  the  long-suffering 
patience  of  his  race,  no  outburst  of  passion  or  of  entreaty  escaped  him;  but 
his  lips  were  dry  as  bones  as  he  murmured,  faintly,  "  Sir,  sir,  be  merciful  ! 
I  serve  faithfully;  I  will  give  my  body  night  and  day  to  redeem  the  lad's  sin." 
Trevenna  laughed  lightly  as  he  blew  a  cloud  of  smoke  from  the  little  brier- 
wood  pipe;  but  his  glance  rested  meaningly  on  the  Jew's,  looking  him 
through. 

"  That's  the  compact.     Keep  it,  and  I  don't  touch  the  boy,"  he  said  curtly. 
"  You  are  very  good,  sir." 


40  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

There  was  no  hypocrisy  here;  acute,  parsimonious,  keen  to  cunning,  saga- 
cious to  unscrupulousness  as  Ignatius  Mathias  might  be  in  commercial  trans- 
actions, here  he  was  grateful  and  gentle,  with  a  humility  that  made  him 
the  bond  slave  of  this  drawing-room  wit,  this  club  amuse,  this  man  about- 
town,  and  a  terrible  supplicating  fear  mingled  with  the  breathless  thankfulness 
with  which  he  looked  at  a  benefactor  whom  most  men  would  have  been  tempted 
to  hold  a  taskmaster. 

"  You  may  go  now,  Mathias,"  said  Trevenna,  with  a  nod.  "  You  know 
what  to  do  in  all  cases;  and  don't  forget  to  put  the  screw  on  to  Fotheringay  at 
once.  The  next  time  come  a  little  earlier, — seven  or  so;  if  I'm  in  bed,  I'll  see 
you.  It's  rather  dangerous  when  people  are  about;  your  visits  might  get  blown 
on.  All  my  people — the  dainty  gentlemen — are  never  up  till  noon-day,  it's 
true;  but  their  servants  might  be  about.  At  all  events,  '  safe  bind,  safe  find.' 
They  might  wonder  what  I  borrowed  money  of  you  for ;  it  would  hurt  my 
character." 

He  laughed  gayly  and  merrily  over  the  words;  they  tickled  his  fancy. 
The  Jew  bowed  reverentially  to  him,  gathered  up  his  papers,  and  left  the 
room. 

"  The  best  organizations  are  sure  to  have  a  flaw,'  thought  Trevenna,  leaning 
there  still  with  his  elbows  on  the  mantel-piece,  smoking  meditatively.  "  Now, 
there  is  that  Jew;  marvellous  clever  fellow,  shrewd,  got  head  enough  to  be  a 
finance-minister;  grind  a  man  as  well  as  anybody  can;  take  you  in  most  neatly; 
a  magnificent  machine  altogether  for  cheating,  and  hard  as  a  flint;  and  yet  that 
Jew's  such  a  fool  over  his  worthless  young  rascal  of  a  son  that  you  can  turn  him 
round  your  finger  through  it.  There  he's  as  soft  as  an  idiot  and  as  blind  as  a 
bat.  Incomprehensible  that  a  man  can  let  such  trash  creep  into  him  !  It's  very 
odd,  men  have  so  many  weaknesses;  I  don't  think  I've  got  one." 

He  had  one;  but,  like  most  men,  he  did  not  imagine  it  as  weakness,  and  in 
truth  it  was  not  a  very  tender  one,  though  it  was  very  dominant. 

"  Not  at  home  to  all  the  dukes  in  the  world,  my  dear,  till  twelve,"  said  he, 
as  the  maid-servant  of  his  lodgings  (he  kept  no  man-servant  of  any  kind,  except 
a  miniature  tiger  to  hang  on  behind  his  tilbury)  cleared  away  the  breakfast-ser- 
vice. That  done,  Trevenna  sat  down  to  a  table  strewn  with  blue-books,  books 
on  political  economy,  books  on  population  and  taxation,  books  on  government, 
books  English,  French,  German,  and  American,  all  tending  to  the  same  direc- 
tion of  study.  He  certainly  did  not  need  to  ponder  over  the  statistics  of  nations 
to  conduct  his  affairs  with  Ignatius  Mathias,  however  intricate  they  were,  and 
he  had  received  every  benefit  that  a  first-rate  education  can  confer.  But  he  was 
one  of  those  wise  men  who  remember  that  the  longest  and  most  learned  life,  spent 
aright,  never  ceases  to  learn  till  its  last  breath  is  drawn;  and,  moreover,  far  away 
in  limitless  perspective  in  Trevenna's  ambitions  lay  an  arena  where  the  victory 


CHAN  DOS.  41 

is  not  to  the  strong,  nor  the  race  to  the  swift,  but  to  the  ablest  tactician  in  such 
rare  instances  as  it  departs  from  the  hereditary  winners, — an  arena  where  adven- 
turers are  excluded  as  utterly  as  men  of  the  foreign  states,  though  they  were 
princes,  were  excluded  from  the  games  of  Elis.  So  for  three  hours  and  a  half 
Trevenna,  that  idle,  gossiping  flaneur,  that  town-jester  whom  the  town  called 
Chandos'  Chicot,  plunged  himself  deep  into  political  subtleties,  and  the  science 
of  statecraft,  and  the  close  logic  of  finance,  bringing  to  their  problems  a  head 
which  grew  only  clearer  the  tougher  the  problem  it  clenched,  the  deeper  the 
ground  it  explored.  Hard  study  was  as  thorough  a  revelry  to  Trevenna  as 
plunging  into  the  cool,  living  water  is  to  a  great  swimmer.  Like  the  swimmer, 
his  heart  beat  joyously  as  he  dived  only  to  rise  again  the  fresher  and  the  bolder. 
Like  the  swimmer,  his  soul  rose  triumphant  as  he  felt  and  he  measured  his 
strength. 

Twelve  struck. 

He,  who  was  as  punctual  as  if  he  were  made  by  clock-work,  got  up,  changed 
his  dress  in  ten  minutes,  and  rang  for  his  tilbury  to  be  brought  round.  It 
came,  as  elegant  a  thing  as  ever  went  round  the  park  at  six  on  a  June  day, 
with  a  chestnut  mare  in  it,  pure  bred,  who  would  do  twelve  miles  in  five-and- 
forty  minutes,  if  needed.  Both  the  tilbury  and  the  chestnut  mare  had  been 
given  him  by  Chandos,  who  knew  that  a  man  may  live  in  what  den  he  pleases, 
but  that  he  must  drive  a  good  thing  or  be  dropped  by  the  mondes  to-morrow. 
"  I  will  indemnify  myself  for  my  ascetic  chop  in  Park  Lane,  but  I  will  see  how 
the  wind  is  blowing  for  Sir  Galahad  at  the  Corner  first,"  thought  Trevenna;  and 
thither  he  went. 

The  midday  betting  was  eager,  for  it  was  within  a  month  of  the  Ascot  week. 
"The  gentlemen  "  were  barely  out  yet;  but  the  book-makers  were  mustered  in 
full  force,  from  the  small  speculators,  who  usually  did  a  little  quiet  business 
only  in  trotting-matches  and  quiet  handicaps,  to  the  great  gamblers  of  the  ring, 
who  took  nobleman's  odds  in  thousands,  and  netted  as  much  in  lucky  hits  as 
those  other  great  gamblers  of  the  'Change  and  the  Bourse  whom  a  world  that 
frowns  on  the  Heath  smiles  on  so  benignly  when  they  are  successful.  All  the 
vast  genius,  flashy,  slangy,  sharp  as  needles,  with  a  language  of  their  own,  a 
literature  of  their  own,  a  world  of  their  own,  whom  marquises  and  earls  are 
eagerly  familiar  with  in  the  levelling  atmosphere  of  the  Lawn  and  the  Downs, 
and  give  a  distant  frigid  nod  to,  at  the  uttermost,  if  they  pass  them  in  Piccadilly, 
were  there;  and  amidst  them,  in  the  terrific  babel  of  raised  voices,  Trevenna 
pushed  his  way, — as  he  pushed  it  everywhere. 

Sir  Galahad  was  higher  than  ever  in  public  favor.  All  the  shrewdest  men 
were  afraid  to  touch  him.  The  Clarencieux  stables  had  been  famous  since  the 
Regency.  Trevenna  bet  but  very  little  usually,  he  was  known  to  have  but  little 
money  to  risk;  but  men  were  eager  to  have  his  opinion  of  the  favorite.  None 


42  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

had  such  opportunities  of  telling  to  the  nicety  the  points,  powers,  stay,  and  pace 
of  the  Clarencieux  horse  in  its  prime.  He  gave  the  opinion  frankly  enough. 
Sir  Galahad  was  the  finest  horse  of  the  year,  and  to  his  mind  would  ail-but 
walk  over  the  course.  The  opinion  went  for  a  great  deal,  especially  from  one 
who  was  a  master  of  stable-science  but  who  was  no  betting-man  himself.  He 
had  laid  heavy  bets  in  Chandos'  name,  backing  the  favorite  for  considerable 
sums  so  long  as  any  could  be  found  rash  enough  to  take  them. 

There  was  one  little,  spare,  red-wigged,  fogy,  quiet  man  who  offered  bets  on  a 
chestnut — Diadem,  an  -Outsider,  unknown  and  unnoticed,  generally  looked  on 
by  the  touts  as  fiddle-headed  and  weedy.  The  colt  had  trained  in  an  obscure 
stable  northward,  and  was  a  "colt"  only  to  his  breeders  and  owners  in  familiar 
parlance,  having  been  known  as  a  Plater  in  nothern  autumn-meetings,  though 
having  earned  no  sort  of  renown  anywhere. 

When  Trevenna  left  Tattersall's,  this  little  leg,  a  worn-out  shattered  creature, 
who  had  ruined  himself  over  one  St.  Leger  and  collapsed  under  it,  was  walking 
slowly  out  in  the  sun,  having  backed  nothing  except  this  ill-conditioned  colt. 
Trevenna  paused  a  second  by  him. 

"  Drop  Diadem's  name,  or  they'll  be  smelling  a  rat.  Take  the  field  against 
the  favorite  with  any  fools  you  like,  as  widely  as  you  can." 

The  words  so  rapidly  uttered  that  to  passers  Trevenna  seemed  to  have 
merely  stopped  a  second  to  strike  a  fusee,  without  noticing  the  little,  broken- 
down  leg. 

"  Wonderfully  dark  we  have  kept  that  chestnut.  Not  a  soul  has  ever  sus- 
pected the  colt.  He's  so  ugly  !  that's  the  treasure  of  him;  and  we've  trained 
him  so  close,  and  roped  him  so  cleverly,  that  the  sharpest  tout  that  ever  lay  in 
a  ditch  all  night  to  catch  a  morning  gallop  doesn't  guess  what  that  precious 
awkward-looking  brute  can  do,"  thought  Trevenna,  as  he  got  into  his  tilbury. 

And  he  went  to  eat  a  second  breakfast  with  Chandos. 


CHAPTER    IV. 

THE   QUEEN    OF   LILIES. 

LADY  VALENTIA  ST.  ALBANS  stood  beside  one  of  the  palms  in  the  conser- 
vatory of  her  sister  Lady  Chesterton's  house.  It  was  the  day  of  the  Drawing- 
Room;  she  waited  for  her  sister,  with  her  white  train  carelessly  caught  over 
one  arm,  and  a  shower  of  lace  and  silk  falling  to  the  ground  and  trailing  there 
in  a  perfumy  billowy  cloud.  She  was  a  picture  perfect  as  the  eye  could  ask  or 
the  heart  conceive  in  the  glowing  colors  of  the  blossoms  round;  and  a  painter 


CHAN  DOS.  43 

would  have  given  her  to  his  canvas  as  the  Ordella  or  the  Evadne  of  Fletcher's 
dramas  in  all  their  sweet  and  delicate  grace,  or,  if  passion  could  pass  over  those 
luminous,  thoughtful  eyes,  as  Vittoria  'Corrombona  in  her  royal  and  imperious 
beauty. 

Passion  had  never  troubled  their  stillness  as  yet.  Some  touch  of  calamity 
had  indeed  cast  its  shadow  on  her;  the  pressure  of  improvidence  and  im- 
poverishment had  sent  her  father  to  the  Roman  air  that  she  had  breathed  so 
long,  and  his  decease  had  left  her,  for  an  earl's  daughter,  almost  penniless, 
while  his  title  and  estates  had  passed  away  to  a  distant  heir  male.  Her  poverty 
was  bitter,  terribly  bitter,  to  the  Queen  of  Lilies,  daughter  of  the  once  splendid 
house  of  Ivors.  She  was  little  better  than  dependent  on  the  generosity  of  her 
brother-in-law,  Lord  Chesterton,  and  the  nature  in  her  was  born  for  the 
magnificence  of  dominion,  the  consciousness  of  inalienable  power. 

She  stood  now  under  the  curled,  hanging  leaves  of  the  palms,  their  pale 
green  contrasting,  as  though  she  had  been  posed  there  by  a  painter's  skill,  with 
the  exquisite  coloring  of  her  own  beauty,  and  the  snowy,  trailing  robes  that  fell 
about  her.  Of  that  beauty  she  was  too  proud  to  be  vain;  she  was  simply  con- 
scious of  it  as  an  empress  is  conscious  of  the  extent  of  the  sway  of  her  sceptre. 

"  WVre  rather  early,"  said  her  sister,  a  baroness,  as  she  entered  the  con- 
servatory,— a  handsome  brunette  some  years  her  senior,  and  very  unlike  her; 
a  brusque,  abrupt,  showy  woman;  ambitious  and  disappointed,  keenly  dis- 
appointed because  a  distant  cousin  had  stepped  between  the  Ivors  earldom  and 
her  own  young  son.  "  Who  sent  you  those  flowers  ?  Clydesmore  ?  Admir- 
able person,  very  admirable;  great  pity  he's  such  a  bore.  How  well  you 
look,  Valencia  !  On  ne  pouvait  mienx.  Chandos  will  be  at  the  palace,  you 
know,  this  morning." 

"  Are  you  sure  ?  " 

There  was  a  glance  of  interest  from  the  Lily  Queen's  deep,  serene  eyes. 

"  Perfectly.  He  is  everywhere.  It  is  the  most  difficult  thing  to  secure  his 
presence  at  any  time.  He  is  so  fastidious,  too  !  He  has  sent  me  a  most 
curtly  note,  however.  I  wrote  to  say  you  had  just  arrived  from  Rome,  and 
that  I  would  bring  you  with  me  to  his  ball  to-night;  and  there  is  his  answer. 
It  is  an  immense  deal  from  him  !  " 

Lady  Valencia  took  the  white,  scented  paper  her  sister  tossed  to  her,  and  a 
faint,  gratified  flush  passed  over  the  pure  fairness  of  her  face;  her  lips  parted 
with  a  slight  smile.  She  had  heard  so  much  of  the  writer, — of  his  fame,  of  his 
conquests,  of  his  homage  to  beauty,  of  his  omnipotence  in  fashion. 

"  He  is  very  rich,  is  he  not  ? "  she  said,  while  her  gaze  still  rested  on  the 
superscription  of  his  name. 

"  Rich  !  "  said  Lady  Chesterton.  "  A  thousand  men  are  rich;  money's 
made  so  fast  in  these  days.  Chandos  is  very  much  more  than  only  rich.  He 


44  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

could  make  us  all  eat  acorns  and  drink  cider,  if  he  chose  to  set  the  fashion  of 
it.  He  rules  the  ton  entirely,  and  lives  far  more  en  roi  than  some  royalties  we 
know." 

"Yes;  I  heard  that  in  Rome.  Men  spoke  of  being  '  friends  with  Chandos,' 
as  they  might  speak  of  being  invited  to  the  court." 

"  Chandos  gives  much  greater  fashion  than  the  palace  ever  confers.  Bores 
and  parvenus  go  there,  but  they  never  visit  him"  responded  Lady  Chesterton, 
with  an  impressive  accentuation  almost  thrilling.  "  Nothing  will  ever  make 
him  marry,  you  know.  He  would  hold  it  in  absolute  horror.  The  Princess 
Marie  of  Albe  is  terribly  in  love  with  him, — almost  dying,  they  say;  very 
beautiful  creature  she  is,  too,  and  would  bring  a  magnificent  dower." 

The  Lily  Queen  smiled  slightly,  her  thoughtful,  half-haughty  smile.  She 
knew,  as  though  they  were  uttered  aloud,  the  motives  of  her  sister's  little 
detour  into  this  little  sketch  of  sentiment. 

"  With  so  much  distinction,  he  could  be  raised  to  the  peerage  any  day,  of 
course?"  she  inquired,  half  absently,  drawing  to  her  the  deep  purple  bells  of 
an  Oriental  plant.  She  declined  to  persue  the  more  poetic  track,  yet  she  looked 
a  poem  herself. 

•"Raised!"  echoed  her  sister.  "My  dear,  he  would  call  it  anything  but 
raised.  The  Chandos  were  Marquises  of  Clarencieux,  you  remember,  until  the 
title  was  attaindered  in  the  Forty-Five.  Philip  Chandos — the  premier — could 
have  had  it  restored  at  any  time,  of  course;  but  he  invariably  declined.  Ernest 
Chandos  is  like  his  father;  he  would  not  accept  a  peerage." 
"Not  a  new  one.  But  he  might  revive  his  own." 

"He  might,  of  course;  nothing  would  be  refused  to  him;  they  would  be 
glad  to  have  him  in  the  Lords.  But  he  has  often  replied  that,  like  his  father, 
he  declines  it.  He  has  some  peculiar  notions,  you  know;  there  has  been  some 
oath  or  other  taken  in  the  family,  I  believe,  about  it, — great  nonsense,  of  course, 
— utter  Quixotism.  But  men  of  genius  are  Quixotic:  it  never  does  to  contra- 
dict them.  They  are  like  that  mare  of  mine,  Million:  give  them  their  head  and 
they  will  be  sweet-tempered  enough, — take  you  over  some  very  queer  places 
sometimes,  to  be  sure,  but  still  tolerably  even  goers;  but  once  give  them  a 
check,  they  rear  and  throw  you  directly.  I  never  disagree  with  authors,  any 
more  than  with  maniacs." 

With  which  expression  on  her  compassionate  consideration  for  genius,  Lady 
Chesterton,  who  was  very  well  known  across  the  grass-countries  and  with  the 
buckhounds,  shook  out  her  violet  velvets  and  black  Spanish  laces,  well  content 
with  the  warning  she  had  adroity  conveying  to  her  sister  never  to  disagree  with 
the  eminent  leader  of  society,  whom  women  idolized  as  they  idolized  Jermyn 
and  Grammont  in  the  splendid  days  of  Hampton  Court. 

The  Queen  of  Lilies  did  not  answer;  she  stood  silent,  looking  still  at  the 


CHAN  DOS.  45 

note  she  held,  as  though  the  paper  could  tell  her  of  its  writer,  while  her  other 
hand  ruthlessly  drew  the  purple  bells  of  the  flower  down  in  a  shower  at  her  feet. 

"Is  he  so  much  spoilt,  then ?  Can  he  not  bear  contradiction?"  she  said, 
at  length, 

"  My  dear,  he  has  never  tried  it,"  retorted  her  sister,  with  some  petulance. 
"  Bear  it !  of  course  he  would  bear  it:  he  is  the  first  gentleman  in  Europe;  but 
the  woman  who  teased  him  with  it  would  never  draw  him  to  her  again.  He  is 
so  used  to  being  followed,  he  would  not  know  what  it  was  to  be  opposed.  He 
is  the  most  graceful,  the  most  brilliant  the  most  generous  person  in  the  world: 
at  the  same  time,  he  is  the  most  difficult  to  please.  Guess,  yourself,  whether 
a  man  whose  ideal  is  Lucrhe  is  very  likely  to  be  easily  enslaved.  But  it  is 
time  to  go." 

And,  having  cast  that  arrow  to  hit  her  sister's  vanity  or  pique  her  pride,  as 
it  might  happen,  Lady  Chesterton  floated  out  of  the  drawing-rooms,  followed  by 
the  Lily  Queen,  who  laid  the  note  down  with  a  lingering,  farewell  glance  at  it 
as  she  swept  away.  She  had  heard  much  of  its  writer  some  years  past  in  Rome, 
although  they  had  never  met;  and  she  had  seen  his  eyes  give  her  an  eloquent 
mute  homage  the  night  before, — eyes  that  it  was  said  looked  on  no  woman 
without  awakening  love. 

"  How  beautiful  his  face  is  !  "  she  thought,  recalling  the  night  just  passed, 
and  that  momentary  glance  of  one  long  famous  to  her  by  reputation.  "  Lord 
Clarencieux, — Marquis  of  Clarencieux: — it  is  a  fine  title." 

"  Going  to  the  Drawing- Room  ? "  said  Trevenna,  entering  one  of  the  morn- 
ing-rooms in  Park  Lane  to  take  his  meditated  second  breakfast.  Chandos  was 
talking  his  first,  the  chamber  scented  and  shaded,  and  cooled  with  rose-water, 
and  his  attendants  Georgian  and  Circassian  girls  he  had  bought  in  the  East 
and  appointed  to  his  household.  The  world  had  been  a  little  scandalized  at 
those  lovely  slaves,  but  Chandos  had  soon  converted  his  friends  to  his  own 
views  regarding  them.  "Why  have  men  to  wait  on  you,"  he  had  argued,  "when 
you  can  have  women, — soft  of  foot,  soft  of  voice,  and  charming  to  look  at  ?  To 
take  your  chocolate  from  James  or  Adolphe  is  no  gratification  at  all ;  to  take  it 
from  Leila  or  Zelma  is  a  great  one."  And  his  pretty  Easterns  were  certainly 
irresistible  living  proofs  of  the  force  of  his  arguments.  They  were  fluttering 
about  him  now  with  silver  trays  of  coffee,  sweetmeats,  liqueurs,  and  fruit, 
dressed  in  their  own  Oriental  costume,  and  serving  him  with  the  most  loving 
obedience.  A  French  duke  and  two  or  three  Guardsman  were  breakfasting 
with  him,  playing  a  lansquenet  at  noon,  from  which  they  had  just  risen.  Men 
were  very  fond  of  coming  to  take  a  cup  of  chocolate  from  those  charming 
young  odalisques. 

"  Cards  at  noon,  Chandos  ?  "  cried  Trevenna,  as  he  sauntered  in  the  room, 
regardless  alike  of  the  presence  of  fashionable  men  who  looked  coldly  on  him, 


46  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

and  of  the  charms  of  the  Turkish  attendants.  "  Fie  !  fie  !  The  only  legiti- 
mate gaming  before  dinner  is  the  sanctioned  and  sanctified  swindling  done  upon 
'Change." 

"  Business  is  holier  than  pleasure,  I  suppose,"  laughed  Chandos.  "  Business 
ruins  a  host  of  others;  pleasure  only  ruins  yourself:  of  course  the  world  legiti- 
mates the  first.  How  are  you  to-day  ?  Yes,  I  am  going  to  the  Drawing- 
Room;  I  am  going  to  see  the  Queen  of  Lilies.  I  will  endure  the  crush  and 
ennui  of  St.  James's  for  her.  Take  something  to  eat,  Trevenna  ?  " 

"  All  too  light  and  too  late  for  me.  I'm  a  John  Bull,"  said  Trevenna,  taking 
a  glass  of  curapoa,  nevertheless,  with  some  Strasbourg  pate.  "  Have  you  heard 
the  last  news  of  Lady  Carallynne  ?  " 

"  No.     Gone  off  with  poor  Bodon  ? " 

"  Precisely.  Went  off  with  him  from  Lillingstone  House  last  night.  Never 
missed  till  just  now.  Carallynne's  started  in  pursuit,  swearing  to  shoot  poor 
Bo  dead.  Daresay  he  will,  too:  'bon  sang  ne  peut  mentir; '  it  must  break  the 
criminal  law  rather  than  break  its  word." 

"  Hard  upon  Bo,"  murmured  Cosmo  Grenvil  of  the  Coldstreams.  "  She 
made  such  fast  running  on  him,  and  a  fellow  can't  always  say  no." 

"  Well,  the  mischief's  her  mother's  fault;  she  made  her  marry  a  man  she 
hated,"  said  Chandos,  drawing  one  of  the  bright  braids  of  the  Circassian  near 
him  through  his  hand.  "  Poor  Car  !  he  is  quite  a  V antique:  that  sort  of 
revenge  has  gone  out  with  hair-powder,  highwaymen,  patches,  and  cock- 
fighting." 

"  Beauty  of  a  commercial  age:  we  can  turn  damaged  honor  and  broken 
carriage-panels  into  money,  nowadays,"  said  Trevenna.  "  Carallynne's  rococo. 
Liberty  all,  say  I.  If  my  wife  runs  away  with  a  penniless  hussar,  why  the  deuce 
am  I  to  make  a  fuss  about  it  ?  I  think  I  should  be  the  gainer  far  and  away." 

"Noblesse  oblige"  said  Grenvil,  softly  with  a  glance  up  from  under  his 
lashes,  that  were  silky  and  curly  as  La  Vivarol's.  "Car  don't  like  his  name 
stained;  Old-World  prejudice;  great  bosh,  of  course,  and  Mr.  Trevenna  can't 
understand  the  weakness, — very  naturally." 

The  softness  of  the  thrust  gave  it  the  keener  stab.  For  a  moment  the  light 
leaped  into  Trevenna's  bright  eyes  with  a  passionate  glitter,  but  it  was  instan- 
taneously suppressed.  He  recovered  his  gay  good  humor. 

"  Mr.  Trevenna  dosen't  understand  it,  Lord  Cosmo.  Why  standing  up  to 
have  an  ounce  of  lead  shot  into  you  across  a  handkerchief  should  be  considered 
to  atone  to  you  for  another  man's  having  the  amusement  of  making,  love  to  your 
property,  is  beyond  my  practical  comprehension.  If  I  were  a  bellicose  fellow, 
now,  I  should  call  you  out  for  that  pretty  speech." 

"  I  only  go  out  with  my  equals,"  yawned  the  handsome  guardsman,  indo- 
lently turning  to  resume  his  flirtation  in  Turkish  with  a  Georgian. 


CHANDOS.  47 

"  Where  do  you  ever  find  them — for  insolence  ? "  said  Trevenna  tranquilly. 

"Clearly  hit,  Cos,"  laughed  Chandos,  to  arrest  whatever  sharper  words 
might  have  ensued.  "So  Lady  Car  has  gone  off  at  last !  I  declare,  Trevenna, 
you  are  the  most  industrious  chiffonnier  for  collecting  naughty  stories  that  ever 
existed.  You  must  come  across  some  very  dirty  tatters  sometimes.  I  do 
believe  you  know  everything  half  an  hour  before  it  happens." 

"Scandals  are  like  dandelion-seeds,"  said  Trevenna,  with  the  brevity  of  an 
Ecclesiasticus.  "A  breath  scatters  them  to  the  four  winds  of  heaven;  but  they 
are  arrow-headed,  and  stick  where  they  fall,  and  bring  forth  and  multiply  four- 
fold." 

"  And  scandals  and  dandelions  are  both  only  weeds  that  are  relished  by 
nothing  but  donkeys." 

"  You  know  nothing  at  all  about  either.  You  don't  want  scandal  for  your 
pastime,  nor  taraxacum  for  your  liver;  but  when  you  are  septuagenarian,  dys- 
peptic, and  bored,  you'll  be  glad  of  the  assistance  of  both." 

"  My  dear  fellow,  what  unimaginable  horrors  you  suggest !  Whenever  I 
feel  the  days  of  darkness  coming,  I  shall  gently  retire  from  existence  in  a  warm 
bath,  or  breathe  in  chloroform  from  a  bouquet  of  heliotrope.  The  world  is  a 
very  pleasant  club;  but,  if  once  it  get  dull,  take  your  name  off  the  books. 
Nothing  easier;  and  your  friends  won't  dine  the  worse." 

"  Rather  the  better,  if  your  suicide  is  piquant.  Something  to  censure, 
flavors  your  curry  better  than  all  the  cayenne.  We  never  enjoy  our  entre-mets 
so  thoroughly  as  when  we  murmur  over  it,  '  Very  sad  !  terribly  wrong  ! '  Apro- 
pos of  censure,  even  the  Hypercritic  won't  censure  you:  there  are  three  columns 
of  superb  laudation  to  Lucrece." 

"  Never  read  critiques,  my  dear  Trevenna. 

'  Such  is  our  pride,  our  folly,  or  our  cru, 
That  only  those  who  cannot  write  review  ! ' 

I  am  sorry  to  hear  they  praise  me.  I  fear,  after  all,  then,  I  must  write  very 
badly.  Reviewers  puff  bad  books,  as  ladies  praise  plain  women." 

"To  show  their  own  superiority:  very  likely.  However,  whether  you  please 
it  or  not,  Jim  Joselyn  is  so  lavish  of  his  milk  and  honey  that  the  Hypercritic 
will  have  to  atone  for  his  weakness  by  chopping  up  novels  in  vinegar  all  the 
rest  of  the  season.  I  am  sure  he  will  expect  to  dine  with  you  at  Richmond." 

"  Indeed  !  Then  he  may  continue  to — expect  it.  I  neither  buy  a  Boswell 
with  a  bouillabaisse,  nor  play  Maecenas  by  giving  a  matelote.  Praise  hired  with 
a  pate  !  what  a  droll  state  of  literature  ! " 

"  Not  at  all.  Everything's  bough  and  sold,  from  the  dust  of  the  cinder- 
heaps  to  the  favor  of  heaven, — which  last  little  trifle  is  bid  for  with  all  sorts  of 
things,  from  a  piece  of  plate  for  the  rector,  to  a  new  church  for  St.  Paul,  it 
being  considered  that  the  Creator  of  the  Universe  is  peculiarly  gratified  by 


48  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

small  pepper-pots  in  silver,  and  big  pepper-pots  in  stucco,  as  propitiatory  and 
dedicatory  offerings.  Pooh  !  everybody's  bribed.  The  only  blunder  ever  made 
is  in  the  bribe  not  being  suited  to  the  recipient." 

"  You  have  suffered  from  that  ?  " 

Trevenna,  the  imperturbable,  laughed,  as  Grenvil  dealt  him  that  hit  a  la 
Talleyrand,  murmuring  the  question  in  his  silkiest,  sleepiest  tone.  The  Guards- 
man was  a  dead  foe  to  the  Adventurer. 

"  I  wish  I  had,  Lord  Cosmo.  I  should  like  to  be  bribed  right  and  left.  It 
would  show  I  was  a  man  of  '  position.'  When  the  world  slips  doucers  into  your 
pocket,  things  are  going  well  with  you.  I  can't  fancy  a  more  conclusive  proof 
of  your  success  than  a  host  of  bribers  trying  to  buy  you.  But,  to  be  sure,  the 
aristocratic  prejudice  is  in  favor  of  owing  money,  not  of  making  it." 

Which  hit  the  ball  back  again  to  his  adversary,  Cos  Grenvil  being  in  debt 
for  everything,  from  the  thousands  with  which  he  had  paid  his  Spring  Meeting 
losses,  to  the  fifty -guinea  dressing-box  he  had  bought  for  a  pretty  rosiere  the  day 
before,  as  he  brought  her  over  from  Paris. 

"  Let  that  fellow  alone,  Cos,"  laughed  Chandos,  to  avert  the  stormy  element 
which  seemed  to  threaten  the  serenity  of  his  breakfast-party.  "  Trevenna  will 
beat  us  all  with  his  tongue,  if  we  tempt  him  to  try  conclusions.  He  should  be  a 
Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  or  a  Cheap  John;  I  am  not  quite  clear  which  as  yet." 

"  Identically  the  same  things  !  "  cried  Trevenna.  "  The  only  difference  is 
the  scale  they  are  on;  one  talks  from  the  bench,  and  the  other  from  the  benches; 
one  cheapens  tins,  and  the  other  cheapens  taxes;  one  has  a  salve  for  an 
incurable  disease,  and  the  other  a  salve  for  the  national  debt;  one  rounds  his 
periods  to  put  off  a  watch  that  won't  go,  and  the  other  to  cover  a  deficit  that 
won't  close;  but  they  radically  drive  the  same  trade,  and  both  are  successful  if 
the  spavined  mare  trots  out  looking  sound,  and  the  people  pay  up.  <  Look 
what  I  save  you,'  cry  Cheap  John  and  Chancellor;  and  while  they  shout  their 
economics,  they  pocket  their  shillings.  Ah,  if  I  were  sure  I  could  bamboozle  a 
village,  I  should  know  I  was  qualified  to  make  up  a  Budget." 

"  And  my  belief  is  you  could  do  either  or  both,"  laughed  Chandos,  as  he 
rose  with  a  farewell  caress  of  his  hand  to  the  bright  braids  of  gazelle-eyed  Leila. 
"Are  you  all  going?  To  be  sure  ! — the  Drawing-Room,  I  had  forgotten  it: 
we  shall  be  late  as  it  is.  Au  revoir,  then,  till  we  meet  in  a  crush.  Nothing 
would  take  me  to  that  hottest,  dullest,  drowsiest,  frowiest,  and  least  courtly  of 
courts  if  it  were  not  for  our  lovely — what  is  her  name  ? — Queen  of  the  Lilies." 

And  Chandos,  who  glittered  at  the  Tuileries  and  at  Vienna  as  magnificently 
as  Villiers  ever  had  done  before  him,  and  who  had  a  court  of  his  own  to  which 
no  courts  could  give  splendor,  went  to  dress  for  St.  James's  as  his  guests  left 
the  chamber,  pausing  a  moment  himself  beside  Trevenna. 

"  Are  you  coming  ? " 


CHANDOS.  49 

"  I  ?  No  !  Mr.  John  Trevenna  is  not  an  elegant  name  for  a  court-list.  It 
would  look  very  bourgeois  and  bare  beside  the  patrician  stateliness  of  Chandos 
of  Clarencieux." 

For  a  moment  he  spoke  almost  with  a  snarl,  the  genuine,  bright  serenity  of 
his  mirthful  good  temper  failing  for  an  instant.  Surprised,  Chandos  laid  his 
hand  on  his  shoulder  and  looked  at  him. 

"  Nonsense  !  what  is  the  matter  with  your  name  ?  It  is  a  very  good  one,  and 
I  would  bet  much  that  you  will  one  day  make  it  a  known  one.  Why  should  you 
not  attend  at  the  palace  to-day  ?  I  presented  you  years  ago." 

"  Yes,  you  did,  mon  prince,"  laughed  Trevenna,  whose  ill  humor  could  not 
last  longer  than  twenty  seconds.  "  You  took  me  out  of  prison,  and  you  intro- 
duced me  to  court: — what  an  antithesis  !  No  !  I  don't  want  to  come.  I  always 
feel  so  dreadfully  like  a  butler  in  silk  stockings  and  tights;  and  I  don't  care 
about  creeping  in  at  the  tail  of  a  list  in  the  morning  papers.  It's  not  elevating 
to  your  vanity  to  bring  up  the  rear,  like  the  spiders  in  a  childs  procession  of 
Noah's  Ark  animals." 

Chandos  laughed. 

"Well,  as  you  like;  amuse  yourself  with  my  pretty  Easterns,  then, — though, 
on  my  word,  Trevenna,  you  never  seem  to  know  whether  a  woman's  handsome 
or  not." 

"No  !  I  never  cared  much  about  women." 

Chandos  lifted  his  eyebrows  in  unutterable  pity  and  amazement. 

u  What  you  lose  !  Good  heavens  !  that  a  man  can  live  so  dead  to  all  the 
salt  of  this  life  !  Adieu  for  an  hour  or  two,  then:  I  shall  be  very  late." 

"  Poor  fellow  !  He  has  brains  enough  to  be  premier,  and  he  is  nothing  but 
a  penniless  man-on-the-town,"  he  thought,  as  he  entered  his  dressing-room  and 
put  himself  in  the  hands  of  his  body-servants  to  dress  for  the  court.  "  A  better 
temper  never  breathed,  but  it  sometimes  galls  him,  I  daresay,  not  to  occupy  a 
higher  place.  I  have  been  too  selfish  about  him:  giving  him  money  and  giving 
him  dinners  is  not  enough  to  deal  fairly  by  him:  he  ought  to  be  put  forward. 
I  will  try  and  get  him  into  the  House.  I  could  have  a  pocket-borough  for  him 
from  some  of  them;  and  he  could  be  trusted  to  make  his  own  way  there.  His 
style  would  suit  St.  Stephen's;  he  would  always  be  pungent,  and  never  be  meta- 
phorical; he  is  too  good  .a  scholar  to  offend  their  taste,  and  too  shrewd  a  tactician 
to  alarm  them  with  genius." 

And,  revolving  plans  for  the  welfare  and  advancement  of  his  fidus  Achates, 
Chandos  dressed  and  went  down  to  his  carriage,  with  its  cream-and-silver 
liveries,  its  four  grays  ridden  by  jockeys,  and  its  fracas  of  fretting  horses  and 
of  dashing  outriders.  Trevenna  looked  out  of  one  of  the  windows,  profanely 
regardless  of  the  beauty  of  the  Circassians  that  had  been  left  in  legacy  to  him, 
and  watched  the  gay  elegance  of  the  equipage  as  it  swept  away. 


50  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

"  Go  to  the  palace,  my  brilliant  courtier,"  he  said  to  himself,  while  his  teeth 
set  like  the  teeth  of  a  bulldog, —strong,  fine,  white  teeth,  that  clenched  close. 
"  Men  as  graceful  and  as  glittering  even  as  you  went  by  the  dozens  to  Ver- 
sailles in  their  lace  and  their  diamonds,  to  end  their  days  behind  the  bars  of 
La  Force  or  on  the  red  throne  of  the  guillotine.  My  dainty  gentlemen,  my 
gallant  aristocrats,  my  gilded  butterflies  !  Rira  bien  qui  rira  le  dernier.  Do 
you  think  I  amuse  you  all  now  not  to  use  you  all  by-and-by?  We're  not  at  the 
end  of  the  comedy  yet.  I  am  your  Triboulet,  your  Chicot,  whose  wit  must 
never  tire  and  whose  blood  must  never  boil;  but  I  may  outwit  you  yet  under 
the  cap  and  bells.  'La  vengeance  est  boiteuse;  elk  vient  a  pas  tents  j  mat's — 
elle  itient ! '  And  what  a  comfort  that  is  !  " 

He  stood  looking  out  still  as  the  carriage  swept  out  of  sight,  the  dust  scat- 
tered in  a  cloud  behind  it  as  the  outriders  dashed  after  it  like  a  king's  guard. 
This  was  the  solitary  weakness  in  his  virile  and  energetic  nature, — a  nature 
otherwise  strong  as  bronze  and  unyielding  as  granite, — this  envy,  intense  to 
passion,  morbid  to  womanishness,  vivid  to  exaggeration  of  all  these  symbols, 
appanages,  and  privileges  of  rank.  Chiefly,  of  course,  he  envied  them  for  that 
of  which  they  were  the  insignia  and  the  producers,  but  beyond  this,  he  envied 
them  themselves,  envied  every  trifle  of  their  distinction  with  as  acute  and  as 
feminine  a  jealousy  as  ever  rankled  in  a  woman's  heart  for  the  baubles  and 
the  flatteries  she  cannot  attain.  It  was  a  weakness,  and  one  curiously  and 
deeply  graven  into  his  temperament,  in  all  other  respects  so  bright,  so  shrewd, 
so  practical,  and  so  dauntless. 

As  he'turned  from  the  casement,  the  retriever,  Beau  Sire,  standing  near, 
fixed  his  brown  eyes  on  him  and  growled  a  fierce,  short  growl  of  defiance. 
Trevenna  looked  at  him  and  laughed. 

"  Curse  you,  dog  !  You  needn't  be  jealous  of  me,  Beau  Sire:  /don't  love 
your  master." 

Nevertheless,  Trevenna  rang  the  bell,  and  ordered  some  of  the  best  clarets 
of  Beau  Sire's  master  to  be  brought  for  his  own  drinking,  and  took  his  luncheon 
in  solitude  off  some  of  the  masterpieces  of  that  culinary  chef,  M.  Dubosc.  He 
offered  Beau  Sire  the  dog's  favorite  bonne  bouche,  the  liver-wing  of  a  pheasant; 
but  Beau  Sire  showed  his  teeth,  and  refused  to  touch  it,  with  a  superb  canine 
scorn. 

"  You've  more  discrimination  than  your  master,  O  you  Lavater  among  re- 
trievers !  You  know  his  foes:  he  doesn't,"  laughed  Trevenna,  while  he  finished 
his  luncheon  with  the  fine  appreciation  of  Dubosc's  talent,  and  of  the  oily  per- 
fections of  the  hock  and  the  maraschino,  because  of  his  previous  asceticism 
over  a  mutton-chop. 

"  You  are  safe  for  the  Cup,  Ernest  ? "  said  his  Grace  of  Castlemaine,  as  they 


CHANDOS.  51 

encountered  each  other  in  the  press  of  the  reception-room  at  the  palace.  The 
duke  was  a  very  old  man,  but  he  was  as  superb  a  gentleman  as  any  in  Europe, 
a  gallant  soldier,  a  splendid  noble  still,  with  his  lion-like  mane  of  silken,  silver 
hair  and  his  blue  and  flashing  eyes,  as  he  stood  now  in  his  field-marshal's  uni- 
form, with  the  Garter  ribbon  crossing  his  chest,  and  stars  and  orders  innumer- 
able on  his  heart,  above  the  scars  of  breast-wounds  gained  at  Vittoria  and  in 
many  a  cavalry-charge  in  Spain. 

"  Safe  ?  Oh,  yes.  There  is  nothing  in  any  of  the  establishments  to  be 
looked  at  besides  Galahad,"  answered  Chandos,  between  whom  and  the  duke 
there  was  always  a  sincere  and  cordial  affection.  They  were  alike  in  many 
things. 

"  No :  at  least  it  must  be  kept  very  dark  if  there  be.  By  the  way,  there  was  a 
man — a  thorough  scamp,  but  a  very  good  judge  of  a  horse — offering  widely  at 
Tattersall's  to-day  on  a  chestnut,  Diadem.  I  know  the  fellow:  he  got  into 
difficulties  years  ago,  at  the  time  of  the  White  Duchess  scandal :  she  was  carted 
out  stiff  as  a  stake  on  the  St.  Leger  morning,  and  it  was  always  suspected  that 
he  poisoned  her;  but  he  would  know  what  he  was  about,  and  he  offered  long 
odds  on  this  chestnut." 

"  Diadem  ?  "  repeated  Chandos,  whose  eyes  were  glancing  over  the  many- 
colored  sea  about  him,  of  feathers,  jewels,  floating  trains,  military  orders,  and 
heavy  epaulets,  to  seek  out  the  Queen  of  Lilies. — "  Diadem  ?  You  mean  an 
outsider,  entered  by  a  Yorkshire  man?  My  dear  duke,  he  is  the  most 
wretched  animal,  1  hear.  Trevenna  tells  me  he  could  not  win  in  a  Consolation 
scramble." 

"  Humph  !  may-be.     You  never  scarcely  go  to  the  Corner  yourself  ?  " 

"  Very  rarely.  I  like  to  keep  up  the  honor  of  the  Clarencieux  establish- 
ment; but  of  all  abominations  the  slang  of  the  stable  is  the  most  tedious. 
Trevenna  manages  all  that  for  me,  you  know." 

"  Yes,  I  know.  Clever  fellow,  very  clever;  but  I  never  liked  him.  Noth- 
ing but  an  adventurer." 

Chandos  laughed,  as  he  moved  to  pierce  his  way  towards  the  young  Duchess 
of  Fitz-Eden,  a  beautiful  brunette,  with  whom,  rightly  or  wrongly,  society  had 
entangled  his  name  in  a  very  tender  friendship. 

"  For  shame,  duke  !  You  should  not  use  that  word.  It  is  the  last  resource 
of  mediecrity  when  it  can  find  nothing  worse  to  cast  against  excellence." 

"  Believe  in  people,  my  dear  Chandos;  believe  in  them  !  You  will  find  it 
so  profitable  !  "  murmured  his  Grace,  as  the  press  of  the  crowd  swept  them 
asunder,  and  Chandos,  joining  the  young  duchess,  while  bows,  smiles,  and 
morning  greetings  recognized  him  on  all  sides  from  the  courtly  mob,  passed 
on  with  her  into  the  presence-chamber. 

From  the  Guardsmen,  who  to  their  own  discomfiture,  had  formed  the  escort, 


52  O  UIDA'S     WORKS. 

and  were  drawn  up  with  their  troop  outside  to  catch  but  fugitive  glimpses  of  fair 
faces  as  the  carriages  passed,  to  the  ministers  in  the  Throne-room,  whose 
thoughts  were  usually  too  prosaically  bent  on  questions  of  supply  or  votes  of 
want  of  confidence  to  turn  much  to  these  vanities,  there  was  one  predominant 
and  heightened  expectation, — the  sight  of  the  Queen  of  Lilies.  Rumor  had  long 
floated  from  Rome  of  her  extraordinary  loveliness;  poets  had  sung  it,  sculptors 
immortalized  it,  and  artists  adore  it  there.  The  golden  Southern  sun  had  ripened 
it  to  its  richest  there,  and  it  came  now  to  adorn  the  court.  It  drifted  across  the 
thoughts  of  Chandos,  to  the  detriment  of  much  of  the  beauty  that  was  about 
him,  and  he  waited  for  it  impatiently  were  he  stood  among  the  circle  of  princes, 
peers,  and  statesman  about  the  throne.  His  loves  had  been  countless,  always 
successful,  never  embittered,  intensely  impassioned  while  they  lasted,  swiftly 
awakened  and  often  as  rapidly  inconstant.  The  very  facility  with  which  his 
vows  were  heard  made  them  as  easily  broken:  he  loved  passionately,  but  he 
loved  so  many.  The  eyes  that  he  had  last  looked  on  were  always  the  stars 
that  guided  him.  A  woman  would  very  likely  have  told  him  that  he  had  never 
really  loved:  he  would  have  told  her  that  he  had  loved  a  thousand  times.  And 
he  would  have  been  more  right  than  she.  Love  is  no  more  eternal  than  the 
roses,  but,  like  the  roses,  it  renews  with  every  summer  sun  in  as  fair  a  frag- 
rance as  it  bloomed  before. 

Women  only  rebel  against  this  truth  because  their  season  of  the  roses — 
their  youth — is  so  short. 

One  after  one  they  passed  before  him,  the  beauties  of  the  year;  none 
attracted  him  very  much.  He  had  been  so  fully  sated  by  all  that  was  most 
dazzling  and  seductive  in  feminine  loveliness  for  so  many  years,  that,  while  still 
impressionable,  he  was,  as  they  called  him,  fastidious.  He  looked  almost 
eagerly  for  the  presentation  of  the  Queen  of  Lilies. 

At  last  the  delicate  white  robes  swept  by  him;  thrown  out  from  the  maze  of 
gorgeous  color,  of  gleaming  gold,  of  diamonds  and  sapphires,  of  purples  fit  for 
Titian,  of  rubies  fit  for  Rubens,  of  azure,  of  scarlet,  of  amber,  filling  the 
chamber,  like  a  cameo  from  the  deep  hues  of  an  illuminated  background,  the 
Athenian-like  fairness  of  her  face  glanced  once  more  on  his  sight:  she  was 
close  to  him  as  she  swept  towards  the  throne. 

"She  is  fit,  herself,  for  the  throne  of  the  Caesars,"  he  thought,  as  he  followed 
the  slow,  soft  movements  of  her  imperial  grace.  Once  again  their  eyes  met; 
she  saw  him  where  he  stood  among  the  royal  and  titled  groups  about  the  dias 
and  a  slight  flush  rose  over  her  brow, — a  flush  that,  if  it  betrayed  her,  was 
hidden  as  she  bowed  her  proud  young  head  before  her  sovereign,  yet  not 
hidden  so  soon  but  that  he  caught  it. 

"Passionless!  They  must  wrong  her;  they  have  not  known  how  to  stir 
her  heart,"  he  thought,  as  he  followed  her  with  his  glance  still  as  she  passed 


CHANDOS.  53 

onward  and  out  of  the  Throne-room;  and  through  the  rest  of  the  gorgeous  and 
tedious  ceremony  Chandos  let  his  thoughts  dwell  on  those  deep,  gazelle  eyes 
and  those  soft  silent  lips,  musing  how  easy  and  how  beguiling  a  task  it  would 
be  to  teach  the  one  the  "  looks  that  burn  "  and  woo  from  the  other  their  first 
and  lingering  caress.  Her  remembrance  haunted  him  in  the  palace:  for  the 
first  time  he  thrust  such  a  remembrance  away.  "  Bagatelle  !  "  he  thought,  as 
he  threw  himself  back  among  his  carriage-cushions  and  drove  to  FLora  de 
rOrme's.  "  Let  me  keep  to  beauty  that  I  can  win  at  no  cost  but  a  set  of 
emeralds  or  a  toy-villa:  the  payment  for  hers  would  be  far  too  dear.  Heloise 
was  right." 

Chandos  was  a  man  for  whom  too  varied  amusements  waited,  and  by  whom 
too  rich  and  intoxicating  a  life  was  hourly  led,  for  one  woman  to  be  able  in 
absence  to  retain  her  hold  on  him.  The  world,  like  a  kaleidoscope,  was  always 
turning  its  most  seductive  pictures  towards  him.  How  was  it  possible  that  his 
gaze  could  linger  long  and  faithfully  on  one  ? 

"  Brilliant  affair  !  More  like  a  fete  a  la  Regence  than  anything  else.  How 
the  money  goes  !  The  cost  of  one  of  those  nights  would  buy  me  a  seat  in  the 
House,"  thought  Trevenna  that  evening,  as  he  passed  up  the  staircase  of  Park 
Lane. 

The  dinners  and  suppers  of  the  Richmond  villa  in  all  their  gayety  and  ex- 
travagance, were  not  more  famous  with  Anonyma  and  her  sisterhood  than  the 
entertainments  to  the  aristocratic  worlds  with  which  Chandos  in  Paris  and 
Naples  revived  all  the  splendor  of  both  Regencies,  and  outshone  in  his  own 
houses  the  gatherings  of  imperial  courts,  were  celebrated  in  that  creme  de  la 
creme  which  alone  were  summoned  to  them.  The  fetes  that  he  gave  abroad  he 
gave  in  England,  startling  society  with  their  novelty  and  their  magnificence. 
Chandos  showed  that  the  Art  of  Pleasure  was  not  dead.  To-night  all  that  was 
highest  in  both  the  French  and  English  aristocracies  came  to  costume-ball  that 
was  also  at  pleasure  a  masked-ball,  and  professedly  in  imitation  of  the  Veglione 
of  Florentine  carnivals.  Trevenna  paused  a  moment  near  the  entrance  of  the 
reception-rooms,  where  he  could  see  both  the  constantly  increasing  throng  that 
ascended  the  stairs  and  the  long  perspective  of  the  chambers  beyond,  that  ended 
in  the  dark  palm-groups,  the  masses  of  tropic  flowers,  and  the  columns  and 
sheets  of  glancing  water  foaming  in  the  light  of  the  winter-garden  in  the  dis- 
tance. Masked  himself,  and  dressed  simply  in  a  dark  violet  domino,  he  looked 
down  through  the  pageant  of  color,  fused  into  one  rich  glow  by  the  lustre  that 
st: .  i.aied  from  a  hundred  chandeliers,  from  a  thousand  points  of  illumination, 
till  his  eyes  found  and  rested  on  Chandos,  who,  with  the  famed  Clarencieux 
diamonds  glittering  at  every  point  of  his  costume,  as  Edward  the  Fourth,  stood 
far  off  in  an  inner  drawing-room  receiving  his  guests  as  they  arrived. 

"  Ah,  my  White  Rose  !  "  said  Trevenna  to  himself,  "  How  the  women  love 


54  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

you,  and  how  the  world  loves  you,  and  how  lightly  you  wear  your  crown  !  Ed- 
ward himself  had  not  brighter  gold  in  his  hair,  nor  fairer  loves  to  his  fancy. 
Well,  you  have  some  Plantagenet  blood,  they  say,  in  that  sangre  azul  of  your 
gentleman's  veins,  and  the  Plantagenets  were  always  dazzling  and — doomed." 

With  which  historical  reminiscence  drifting  through  his  thoughts,  Trevenna 
drew  himself  a  little  back,  farther  into  the  shelter  of  an  alcove  filled  with 
broad-leaved  Mexican  plants,  and  studied  the  scene  at  his  leisure,  his  eyes  re- 
curring every  now  and  then  with  persistent  contemplation  to  the  distant  form 
of  his  friend  and  host,  where  the  diamonds  of  Clarencieux,  that  had  glittered 
at  many  a  Stuart  and  Bourbon  gathering,  sparkled  with  every  movement  of 
Chandos  as  he  bowed  to  a  prince,  greeted  an  ambassador,  or  smiled  on  a  beauty. 
There  was  a  certain  savage  envy  and  a  certain  luscious  satisfaction  mingled  to- 
gether in  the  contemplation. 

"  The  fools  that  go  to  see  Moliere,  and  read  novels  and  satires,  while  they 
can  look  on  at  life  !  "  thought  Trevenna,  who  was  never  weary  of  watching  that 
mingling  of  comedy  and  melodrama,  though  his  genius  was  rather  the  loqua- 
cious than  the  meditative.  "  I  can't  picture  greater  fun  than  to  have  been  a 
weather-wise  philosopher  who  knew  what  Vesuvius  was  going  to  do,  told  nobody 
anything,  but  took  a  stroll  through  Pompeii  on  the  last  day,  while  his  skiff 
waited  for  him  in  the  bay.  Fancy  seeing  the  misers  clutch  their  gold,  while 
he  knew  they'd  offer  it  all  for  bare  life  in  an  hour;  the  lovers  swear  to  love  for 
eternity,  while  he  knew  their  lips  would  be  cold  before  night:  the  bakers  put 
their  loaves  in  the  oven,  while  he  knew  nobody  would  ever  take  them  out;  the 
epicures  order  their  prandium,  while  he  knew  their  mouths  would  be  choke  full 
of  ashes;  the  throngs  pour  into  the  circus,  laughing  and  eager,  while  he  knew 
they  poured  into  their  grave;  the  city  gay  in  the  sunshine,  while  he  knew  that 
the  lava-flood  would  swamp  it  all  before  sunset.  7'hat  would  have  been  a 
comedy  worth  seeing.  Well,  T  can  fancy  it  a  little.  My  graceful  Pompeian, 
who  know  nothing  but  the  rose-wreaths  of  Aglae  and  Astarte,  how  will  you 
like  the  stones  and  the  dust  in  your  teeth  ?  " 

And  Trevenna,  pausing  a  moment  to  enjoy  to  its  fullest  the  classical  tab- 
leau he  had  called  up  in  his  mind's  eye,  and  looking  still  at  the  friend  whom  he 
had  alternately  apostrophized  as  Plantagenet  and  Pompeian,  left  his  alcove  and 
his  revery  to  mingle  with  the  titled  crowd,  in  his  dark  domino  and  his  close 
Venetian  mask,  casting  an  epigram  here,  a  scandal  there,  a  suspicion  in  this 
place,  a  slander  in  that,  blowing  away  a  reputation  as  lightly  as  thistle-down, 
and  sowing  a  seed  of  disunion  between  two  lives  that  loved,  with  dexterous 
whispers  under  his  disguise  that  could  never  be  traced,  and  as  amused  a  malice 
in  the  employment  as  any  Siamese  monkey  when  he  swings  himself  by  his  tail 
from  bough  to  bough  to  provoke  the  crocodiles  to  exasperation.  True,  as 
monkey  may  get  eaten  for  his  fun,  so  Trevenna  might  get  found  out  for  his 


CHANDOS.  55 

pastime;  but,  to  both  monkey  and  man,  the  minimum  of  danger  with  the 
maximum  of  mischief  made  a  temptation  that  was  irresistible.  Trevenna  had 
been  the  most  mischievous  boy  that  ever  tormented  tom-cats;  he  was  now  the 
most  mischievous  wit  that  ever  tormented  mankind. 

He  was  a  moral  man;  he  had  no  vices;  he  had  only  one  weakness, — he  hated 
humanity. 

"  How  extravagant  you  are,  Ernest  !  "  said  the  Duke  of  Castlemaine,  who 
had  made  his  appearance  for  twenty  minutes  with  his  daughter-in-law,  the  Mar- 
chioness of  Deloraine^  a  beautiful  Austrian  blonde  of  two-and-twenty  years,  the 
hostess,  to  a  certain  extent,  of  Chandos'  great  parties.  "  Do  you  think  these 
people  love  you  any  the  better  for  all  you  throw  away  on  them,  eh  ?  " 

"  Love  me  ?  Well,  the  fairer  section  do,  I  hope,"  laughed  Chandos,  linger- 
ing a  moment. 

The  Duke  gave  another  little  growl  to  himself  as  he  brushed  a  moth  off  his 
broad  blue  ribbon.  He  too  had  had  ajeunesse  orageuse,  and  had  made  Europe 
ring  with  the  brilliance  of  his  extravagances;  but  Warburne  Abbey  now  was 
heavily  laden  with  mortgage  in  consequence,  and  its  noblev  owner  sometimes 
wished  that  he  had  played  a  little  less  au  roi  dfyouille. 

"Ah  !  women  were  always  the  ruin  of  your  race,  and  of  mine:  you  have  the 
weakness  from  both  sides,  Ernest.  There  was  your  father " 

"Who  was  a  deucedly  proud  man,  wasn't  he,  duke?-"  asked  Trevenna,  with 
scant  ceremony,  as  he  came  up  by  Castlemaine's  side,  without  his  mask  now, 
and  having  glided  into  a  blue  domino,  that  his  gunpowder-whispers  might  not 
be  traced  to  him. 

The  duke  looked  down  on  him  from  the  tower  of  his  height,  scarce  bent 
more  than  when  he  was  a  colonel  of  cavalry  at  Salamanca. 

"  Proud  ?  Perhaps  so,  sir.  Adventurers  thought  him  so.  He  put  down 
impudence  wherever  he  met  with  it.  It  is  a  pity  he  is  not  alive  now." 

"  To  put  me  down  ?  I  understand,  duke,"  laughed  Trevenna,  impervious  to 
satire,  and  impenetrable  even  to  a  cut  direct,  who  caught  every  bullet  sent 
against  him,  gayly  and  courageously,  and  played  with  it  unharmed  as  a  conjurer 
will.  (What  magic  has  the  conjurer?  None;  but  he  has  one  trick  more  than 
the  world  that  he  baffles.)  "Ah  !  I  can't  let  myself  be  put  down;  I'm  like  a 
cork  or  an  outrigger;  all  my  safety  lies  in  my  buoyancy.  I  have  no  ballast;  I 
must  float  as  I  can.  Storms  sink  ships  of  the  line,  and  spare  straws." 

"  Yes,  sir,  rubbish  floats  generally,  I  believe,"  said  his  Grace,  grimly,  turn- 
ing his  back  on  him  as  he  took  out  his  snuff-box,  enamelled  by  Pettitot  and 
given  him  by  Charles  Dix.  Trevenna  bowed  as  low  as  though  the  silver-haired 
Sabreur  had  paid  him  a  compliment  and  had  not  turned  his  back  on  him. 

"I  accept  your  Grace's  prophecy.  Rubbish  floats;  I  shall  float.  And  when 
I  am  at  the  top  of  the  wave,  won't  everyone  call  my  dirtiest  pebbles  fine  pearls  ?" 


56  GUI  DA'S     WORKS. 

"  I  think  he  will  float,"  murmured  the  duke,  passing  outward  through  the 
rooms  to  the  noiseless,  shut-off,  luxurious  chamber  dedicated  to  cards,  which 
had  an  altar  in  Chandos'  house  as  though  they  were  its  Penates.  "  Sort  of 
man  to  do  well  anywhere;  be  a  privileged  wit  in  a  palace,  and  chief  demagogue 
in  a  revolution;  be  merry  in  a  bagne,  and  give  a  pat  answer  if  he  were  tried  for 
his  life;  hold  his  own  in  a  cabinet,  and  thrive  in  the  bush.  A  clever  fellow,  an 
audacious  fellow,  a  most  marvellous,  impudent  fellow." 

"  An  insufferable  fellow  !  I  wish  Chandos  would  not  give  him  the  run  of 
the  house,  and  the  run  of  the  town,  as  he  does,"  said  my  lord  of  Morehampton, 
wending  his  way  also  to  the  card-rooms.  The  man  has  no  idea  of  his  place." 

"  I  think  he  has  only  too  good  a  one:  he  imagines  it  to  be — everywhere. 
But  the  fellow  will  do  well.  He  plays  so  admirable  a  game  of  whist;  leads 
trumps  in  the  bold  French  manner,  which  has  a  great  deal  to  be  said  for  it;  has 
an  astonishing  recuperative  power;  if  one  play  will  not  serve,  changes  his  attack 
and  defence  with  amazing  address,  and  does  more  with  a  wretched  hand  than 
half  the  players  in  the  clubs  do  with  a  good  one.  A  man  who  can  play  whist 
like  that  could  command  a  kingdom;  he  has  learnt  to  be  ready  for  every 
position  and  for  every  emergency.  Still,  with  you,  I  don't  like  him,"  said  his 
Grace,  entering  the  card-room  to  devote  himself  to  his  favorite  science  at 
guinea  points,  where,  despite  his"  inherent  aversion  to  Trevenna,  he  would 
have  been  willing  to  have  had  that  inimitable  master  of  the  rubber  for  a  partner. 

The  duke  was  quite  right,  that  a  man  who  has  trained  his  intellect  to  per- 
fection in  whist  has  trained  it  to  be  capable  of  achieving  anything  that  the 
world  could  offer.  A  campaign  does  not  need  more  combination;  a  cabinet 
does  not  require  more  address;  an  astronomer- royal  does  not  solve  finer  prob- 
lems; a  continental  diplomatist  does  not  prove  greater  tact.  Trevenna  had 
laid  out  the  time  he  spent  over  its  green  table  even  more  profitably  for  the 
ripening  and  refining  of  his  intelligence  than  in  the  hours  he  gave  to  his  blue- 
books;  and  the  duke's  eulogy  was  but  just. 

His  rooms  were  nearly  full,  but  Chandos  still  glanced  every  now  and  then 
impatiently  towards  the  entrance-doors  that  opened  in  the  distance  to  the 
staircase.  Eyes  that  might  well  claim  to  be  load-stars  wooed  him  through 
coquettish  Venetian  masks,  and  faces  too  fair  for  that  envious  disguise  met  his 
gaze  wherever  it  turned.  On  his  ear  at  that  moment  was  the  silvery  ring  of  La 
Vivarol's  gay  raillery,  and  at  his  side  was  that  bright  exile  of  the  Tuileries, 
fluttering  her  sapphire-studded  wings  as  a  Fille  des  Feux,  and  bewitching  in  her 
coquette's  charms  as  any  portrait  aux  Amours  of  Mignard.  Still  ever  and 
again  his  eyes  turned  towards  the  entrance  as  he  moved  among  his  guests, 
and  suddenly  a  new  look  glanced  into  them:  they  were  too  eloquent  to  women 
not  to  be  unconsciously  and,  for  him,  dangerously  expressive.  She  who  held 
him  captive  at  that  moment  saw  that  look,  and  knew  it  well.  She  had  seen  it 


CHAN  DOS.  57 

lighten  for  her  in  the  forests  of  Compiegne  when  the  summer  moon  had  streamed 
down  through  the  leaves  on  a  royal  hunting-party  sweeping  through  the  glades 
to  the  mellow  music  of  hunting-horns,  and  they  had  lingered  behind  while  the 
bridles  dropped  on  their  horses'  necks,  and  only  the  wooing  of  soft  words  broke 
the  silence  as  the  hoofs  sank  noiselessly  in  the  deep  thyme-tangled  grasses. 

She  knew  the  look  of  old,  and  followed  it.  It  rested  on  the  Queen  of 
Lilies. 

If  that  poetic  loveliness  had  been  fair  in  the  morning  light,  it  was  far  fairer 
now.  By  a  delicate  flattery  to  her  host,  the  Lily  Queen  had  chosen  as  her 
impersonation  the  role  of  his  own  Lucrece, — a  Byzantine  Greek;  and  her  dress, 
half  Eastern,  glowed  with  the  brightness  of  Oriental  hues,  while  the  snow-white 
barracan  floated  round  her  like  a  cloud,  and  Byzantine  jewels  gleamed  upon 
her  bosom  and  her  hair, — jewels  that  had  seen  the  Court  of  the  Comneni  and 
the  sack  of  Dandolo, — jewels  that  had  once,  perhaps,  been  on  the  proud,  false 
brow  of  the  Imperial  Irene. 

Involuntarily  Chandos  moved  slightly  forward;  involuntarily  there  ran,  even 
through  that  courtly  and  impassive  crowd,  an  irrepressible,  low  murmur  of  ad- 
miration. La  Vivarol  looked,  and  did  not  underrate  one  in  whom  she  foresaw 
her  rival. 

She  arched  her  pencilled,  piquant  eyebrows. 

"  Ah,  there  is  your  living  Lucrece  !  It  must  be  charming  to  sketch  char- 
acters and  find  them  come  to  life." 

Chandos  lost  the  ironic  and  malicious  contempt  with  which  jealousy  subtilely 
tipped  the  tone  of  the  words,  as,  leaving  the  countess  to  the  homage  of  the 
maskers  about  her,  he  did  for  the  Queen  of  Lilies  what  he  had  not  done  for 
any  other, — passed  out  of  the  inner  drawing-room,  where  he  received  his  guests, 
and  advanced  to  meet  the  impersonation  of  his  Lucrece. 

That  moment  was  fatal  to  him, — that  moment  in  which  she  came  on  his 
sight  as  startling  as  though  magic  had  summoned  the  living  shape  of  his  own 
fancies  and  breathed  the  breath  of  existence  into  the  thoughts  of  his  poem. 
He  would  never  now  see  her  as  she  was;  he  would  see  in  her  only  his  own  ideal, 
not  asking  whether  she  only  resembled  it  as  the  jeweller's  lily  with  petals  of 
pearl  and  leaves  of  emerald,  which  gleams  equally  bright  in  every  hand,  re- 
sembles the  forest-lily  with  its  perfume  and  purity,  growing  fair  and  free  under 
the  sunshine  of  heaven,  which  dies  under  one  ungentle  and  alien  touch. 

The  lilies  may  be  alike,  leaf  for  leaf,  beauty  for  beauty,  but  the  fragrance 
is  breathed  but  from  one. 

"Necromancers  of  old  summoned  the  dead;  you  have  done  more,  Lady 
Valencia,  you  have  caught  and  incarnated  an  idler's  dream.  How  can  he  ever 
thank  you  ? "  he  said,  later  on,  as  he  led  her  into  the  winter-garden,  where  the 
light  was  subdued  after  the  glitter  of  the  salons,  and  the  hum  of  the  ball  with 


58  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

the  strains  of  the  music  were  only  half  heard,  and  through  the  arching  aisles  of 
palm  and  exotics  his  Circassian  attendants  noiselessly  flitted  like  so  many 
bright-hued  birds. 

"  She  smiled  while  a  new  lustre  came  into  the  thoughtful  splendor  of  her 
eyes,  and  a  soft,  wild  warmth  on  her  cheek.  Her  heart  was  moved, — or  her 
pride. 

"  I  must  rather  thank  you  that  you  do  not  rebuke  me  for  being  too  rash. 
I  assure  you  that  I  feared  my  own  temerity." 

"  What  fear  could  you  have,  save  out  of  pity  for  others  ?  My  fairest  fancies 
of  Lucrece  are  embodied  now, — perhaps  only  too  well.  What  made  you  di- 
vine so  entirely  the  woman  I  dreamt  of  ?  She  only  floated  dimly  even  through 
my  thoughts,  until  I  saw  her  to-night." 

She  looked  at  him  almost  deprecatingly,  and  that  look  on  her  proud  and 
sovereign  loveliness  had  a  greater  charm  than  on  women  more  capable  of  en- 
treaty, less  used  to  a  victorious  and  unquestioned  power. 

"  Hush  !  That  is  the  language  of  compliment.  I  have  heard  how  deli- 
cately and  how  dangerously  you  will  flatter." 

"  Indeed,  no;  you  have  heard  wrongly.  I  never  flatter.  But  there  are 
some — you  are  one  of  them — to  whom  the  simplest  words  of  truth  must  needs 
sound  the  words  of  an  exaggerated  homage." 

He  spoke  with  the  caressing  gentleness  of  his  habitual  manner  with  women, 
while  his  eyes  dwelt  on  her  with  a  softer  eloquence  still.  He  spoke,  moreover, 
in  fullest  sincerity.  As  he  looked  down  on  her  in  the  shadowed  and  silvery 
light,  while  the  pale  green  foliage  and  the  burning  hues  of  the  tropical  plants 
were  around  her  and  above  her  in  their  maze  of  hue  and  perfume,  he  might 
have  been,  in  the  dead  Byzantine  years,  beside  the  sorceress  beauty  that 
Justinian  crowned,  or  that  bloomed  with  the  Eastern  roses  in  the  soft  isles  of 
Propontis. 

So  far,  it  was  well  for  him  that  he  was  not  alone  with  her,  though  this  was 
but  the  first  night  that  she  had  been  presented  to  him.  All  love  in  Chandos 
had  been  quickly  roused,  rather  from  the  senses  and  the  fancy  than  the  heart, 
and  roused  for  those  to  whom  there  was  a  royal  road,  pursued  at  no  heavier 
penalty  than  some  slight  entanglement.  That  this  royal  road  could  not  avail 
with  the  Queen  of  Lilies  chilled  her  charm,  and  yet  heightened  it,  as  it  lay  like 
a  light  but  unyielding  rein,  checking  the  admiration  she  roused  in  him,  yet  not 
checking  it  so  much  but  that  she  enchained  his  attention  while  she  remained  in 
his  rooms,  while  the  bright  eyes  of  his  neglected  Fille  des  Feux  kept  dangerous 
account  of  the  lese  majeste. 

La  Vivarol  fluttered  her  golden  wings,  and  waltzed  as  though  they  really 
bore  her,  bird-like,  through  the  air,  and  flirted  with  her  most  glittering  coquet- 
ries, and  smiled  on  him  with  her  most  bewitching  mutine  mouth;  but  she  noted 


CHANDOS.  59 

every  glance  that  was  given  to  another,  and  treasured  the  trifles  of  each  slight 
infidelity. 

If  a  Viardort,  a  court-coquette,  a  woman  of  the  world,  an  aristocrat,  could 
be  guilty  of  so  much  weakness,  she  had  loved  Chandos, — loved  the  brilliance  of 
the  eyes  that  looked  into  hers  under  the  purple  vine-shadows, — loved  the  mel- 
ody of  the  voice  that  had  lingered  on  her  ear  in  the  orange-alleys  of  Fontaine- 
bleau, — loved  him  if  only  because  so  many  loved  him  in  vain.  And  far  more 
than  her  heart  was  involved  in  his  allegiance;  a  thing  .far  dearer  to  her,  far 
closer  and  more  precious  to  all  women, — her  vanity. 

If  any  one  had  talked  to  the  pretty,  worldly,  pampered,  and  little-scrupulous 
countess  of  fidelity,  she  would  have  satirized  him  mercilessly  for  such  provin- 
ciality, and  would  have  asked  him  where  he  had  lived  that  he  thought  the 
vows  of  the  soft  religion  eternal.  She  was  infidelity  itself,  and  held  to  the  right 
divine  of  caprice;  talk  of  "forever,"  and  she  would  yawn  with  ennui;  appeal  to 
her  reason,  and  she  would  cordially  assent  to  the  truth  that  "  nous  sommes 
bien  aises  que  Ton  devienne  infidele,  pour  nous  degager  de  notre  fidelite." 
But,  alas  for  the  consistency  of  fair  philosophers  !  Madame  applied  her  theo- 
ries to  all  lovers  except  her  own,  and,  while  she  was  eloquent  on  the  ridicule  and 
the  weariness  of  constancy,  held  inconstancy  to  herself  as  the  darkest  of  treason. 

A  woman  of  the  world  never,  by  any  hazard,  is  so  imprudent  as  to  show 
herself  piqued:  such  gaucherie  as  thus  to  show  her  cards  and  declare  herself  in- 
capable of  winning  the  game  were  utterly  impossible  to  her.  La  Vivarol  never 
for  a  moment  so  betrayed  herself  :  on  the  contrary,  she  praised  her  rival  with 
as  easy  a  grace  as  she  would  have  praised  a  Velasquez,  whenever  she  spoke  of 
her.  Nevertheless,  not  one  glance  that  her  lover  bestowed,  not  one  waltz  that 
he  gave,  not  one  moment  that  he  was  held  captive  to  Lady  Valencia,  escaped 
her.  She  had  drawn  him  away — dearest  triumph  of  womanhood  ! — from  her 
sworn  friend,  the  Duchess  of  Fitz-Eden,  and  had  found  her  conquest  exquis- 
itely sweetened  by  the  heart-burning  she  caused  to  that  lovely  idiot.  She  had 
held  him  enchained  longer  than  any  other  ever  had  done;  her  yoke  had  been  so 
skilfully  woven  of  silk  bonds  that  it  had  lasted  longer  than  any  unbroken.  Of 
such  rivals  as  Flora  de  1'Orme  she  had  been  secretly,  though  she  never  deigned 
to  confess  herself,  jealous;  of  a  rival  in  her  own  sphere  she  was  intolerant. 

She  had  never  been  given  one  in  the  eighteen  months  that  had  passed  by 
since  the  conte  d1  amour  a  la  Boccaccio  had  commenced  in  the  gay  autumn 
days  of  Compiegne;  and  La  Vivarol,  whose  breviary  was  Rochefoucauld  and 
whose  precursor  was  Montespan,  philosophized  inimitably  on  the  rights  of  in- 
constancy, but  was  none  the  less  prepared  to  avenge  and  to  resent  with  all  the 
force  of  a  Corsican  vendetta  any  homage  that  should  dare  wander  from  her. 

And  to-night  she  was  openly,  visibly,  unmistakably  neglected.  As  far  as  the 
courtesies  and  duties  of  a  host  allowed  him,  the  Queen  of  Lilies  usurped  the 


60  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

attention  and  admiration  of  Chandos  almost  entirely.  The  gleam  of  those  an- 
tique Byzantine  jewels  was  the  light  that  he  followed.  In  this  new  loveliness, 
so  rich  in  its  coloring,  so  proud  in  its  cast,  yet  delicate  as  the  fairest  thought  of 
a  sculptor  when  rendered  into  the  purity  of  the  marble,  he  saw  the  portraiture 
of  an  ideal,  half  idyl,  half  passionately  cast  into  words  in  the  work  he  called 
Lucrece,  that  had  been  chiefly  written  in  hot,  dreamy  days  in  the  syringa  and 
basilica-scented  air  of  his  summer-palace  on  the  Bosphorus,  and  had  caught  in 
it  all  the  voluptuous  color,  all  the  mystical  enchantment,  all  the  splendida  ritia 
of  glow  and  of  fancy,  that  still  belong  to  the  mere  name  of  the  East.  She  was 
no  longer  the  beauty  of  the  season  to  him;  she  was  the  incarnation  of  his  own 
most  golden  and  most  treasured  fancies.  Side  by  side  in  his  temperament  with 
the  nature  of  the  voluptuary  was  the  heart  of  the  poet.  She  appealed  to,  and 
tempted  both.  Since  the  days  of  his  first  loves,  felt  and  whispered  under 
Oriental  stars  to  antelope-eyed  Georgians,  none  had  had  so  vivid  a  charm  as 
this  soft  yet  imperial  beauty,  who  came  to  him  in  the  guise  of  his  heroine. 
And  he  let  the  world  see  it;  what  was  far  more  dangerous,  he  let  the  Countess 
de  la  Vivarol. 

"  If  Madame  live  twenty  years,  Chandos,  she  will  never  forgive  you  to- 
night," whispered  Trevenna,  in  passing,  as  his  host  ascended  the  staircase, 
having  escorted  the  Lady  Valencia  to  her  carriage,  while  a  crowd  of  glittering 
costumes  and  maskers  followed  her  footsteps, — a  ceremonial  he  never  showed 
except  to  those  of  blood  royal. 

"  Forgive  me  !     What  have  I  done  ?  " 

"  What  !  O  most  innocent  Lovelace,  what  serene  sublimity  of -ignorance  ! 
You  have  piqued  a  jealous  woman,  tres-cher;  and  he  who  does  that  might 
have  as  well  sat  down  upon  a  barrel  of  gunpowder:  it  is  much  the  less  fatal 
combustible  of  the  two." 

"Nonsense!  We  are  none  of  us  jealous  now:  everybody  is  too  languid 
and  too  well-bred.  How  handsome  Lady  Ballasysse  looks  to-night!  widowhood 
must  be  the  best  cosmetic  imaginable." 

"  All  women  thrive  on  it.  Women  take  a  husband  as  balloons  take  their 
ballast,  because  they  can't  rise  without  it.  But  the  moment  the  heavy  weight's 
dropped  overboard,  puff  ! — how  lightly  woman  and  balloon  go  up  in  the  air  !  " 

Chandos  laughed,  and  passed  on  into  the  throng  of  his  courtly  maskers  to 
seek  the  golden  wings  and  falcon  eyes  of  his  liege  lady,  and  make  his  peace 
with  her,  as  far  as  it  could  be  made,  without  offending  her  more  deeply  by 
showing  her  a  suspicion  that  the  peace  had  ever  been  broken. 

Trevenna  looked  after  him,  watching  the  flash  of  the  jewels  on  his  dress 
and  the  careless  grace  of  his  movements  as  he  passed  through  the  groups  of 
his  drawing-rooms;  and  Trevenna's  eyes  wandered  downward  through  the 
blaze  of  light,  and  the  wilderness  of  clustered  flowers,  along  the  whole  line  of 


CHAN  DOS.  Cl 

the  marble  stairs  with  their  broad  scarlet  carpeting  into  the  depths  of  the  hall, 
where  at  the  farthest  end,  with  the  lustre  from  two  giant  candelabra  full  upon 
it,  was  the  statue  of  the  great  minister,  Philip  Chandos. 

His  glance  wandered  from  the  living  man,  with  the  living  flash  of  the  rose- 
diamonds  about  him  like  so  many  points  of  sunlight,  to  rest  upon  the  cold, 
haughty  serenity  of  power  that  was  spoken  in  the  attitude  of  the  marble  limbs 
and  traits  of  the  marble  features  in  that  likeness  of  the  dead. 

And  he  smiled  a  little. 

"  Beaux  seigneurs,  beaux  seigneurs,"  he  said,  softly  and  low  to  himself, 
"  there  may  be  games  at  which  you  will  not  win.  Ah,  my  great  Chandos,  how 
you  stand  there  in  your  marble  pride  as  if  you  could  lord  it  over  us  all  still ! 
and  a  stone-mason's  hammer  could  knock  you  to  pieces  now.  Sic  transit  gloria 
iniindi.  Your  darling  Ernest  is  a  brilliant  man;  you  have  your  wish;  but  we 
may  sing  the  old  see-saw  over  him  too,  before  very  long.  And  what  will  the 
world  care  for  him  then  ?  " 

With  which  inquiry,  mutely  addressed  in  self-communion  to  the  statue  where 
it  stood  in  the  flood  of  light  and  maze  of  exotics  in  the  great  hall  below, 
Trevenna,  who  never  danced,  and  had  tormented  people  under  his  change  of 
domino  enough  to  amuse  him  {having  left  many  in  the  throes  of  an  agonizing 
suspense  as  to  who  could  have  known  their  most  hidded  pet  sins,  and  others  in 
the  paralyzed  torture  of  doubt  as  to  whether  their  most  terribly  cherished  family 
histories  would  not  make  popular  fun  next  week  in  the  Charivari  or  in  Punch}, 
went  downstairs  and  out  to  his  night-cab  as  the  spring  morning  broke  in  its 
earliest  hours. 

He  looked  back  as  he  waited  a  second  in  the  portico  for  the  cab  to  make 
its  way  up  to  him  through  the  long  line  of  waiting  carriages  and  glittering 
night-lamps  and  fretting  horses  and  shouting  footmen.  The  music  came  on  his 
ear  from  the  distant  ball-room,  and  as  he  glanced  backward  at  the  hall  and 
staircase,  with  its  bronzes,  marbles,  malachites,  jasper,  gold  and  silver  can- 
delabra, and  clusters  of  blossoms  and  of  broad-leaved  Southern  shrubs,  while  the 
scarlet  of  the  laced  liveries  gleamed  through  the  boughs  and  made  it  like  one 
of  the  palace-antechamber  scenes  of  Paul  Veronese's  canvas,  the  statue  rose 
white,  calm,  regal  in  its  attitude  of  command,  haughty  as  had  been  the  life  of 
which  it  was  the  mute  and  breathless  symbol.  It  caught  Trevenna's  eyes 
again. 

"  Curse  you  !  "  he  muttered  in  his  teeth,  while  the  laugh  passed  off  his  face 
and  the  mirth  out  of  his  eyes.  "  Curse  you  living,  and  curse  you  dead  !  I  will 
be  paid,  like  Shylock,  with  a  pound  of  flesh  cut  from  the  heart, — from  the  heart 
of  your  brilliant  darling.  And  your  power  cannot  play  the  part  of  Portia  and 
stop  me;  for  you  are  dead,  mon  ministre  !  " 

"  And  with  that  valediction  to  the  dwelling  across  whose  threshold  he  was 


62 


QUID  AS     WORKS. 


ever  welcomed  and  to  whose  board  he  was  ever  bidden,  Tervenna  passed  down 
the  steps  and  drove  away  in  the  gray  of  the  morning. 


CHAPTER  V. 

POESIE  DU   BEAU   SEXE. 

"You  did  very  well  for  the  first  night,  my  dear,"  said  Lady  Chesterton, 
muffling  herself  more  comfortably  in  her  eider-down,  as  her  carriage  rolled 
through  the  silent  streets  in  the  raw  of  the  dawn.  "Certainly  he  admires  you: 
that  is  very  plain." 

The  Queen  of  Lilies,  leaning  back,  answered  nothing.  There  was  a  slight 
flush  on  her  shell-like  cheek,  and  the  lashes  were  drooped  over  her  dreamy, 
thoughtful,  Velasquez  eyes,  that  had  so  many  poems  slumbering  in  their  liquid 
depths.  She  was  in  a  soft,  happy  revery,  a  little  grave,  aud  yet  proudly  trium- 
phant, by  the  shadow  of  the  smile  that  lingered  about  her  lips. 

At  last  she  spoke. 

"  Those  were  the  Clarencieux  diamonds  he  wore,  were  they  not  ?  I  think 
they  must  be  the  finest  in  Europe." 

Oh,  poetry  of  a  woman's  soul  ! 

And  this  is  what  men  lose  their  heads  for,  and  swear  while  the  delirium  lasts, 
is  divine. 

Fratres  mei,  believe  me,  the  chorus-singer  whom  you  establish  in  her  little 
bijou  villa,  and  who,  though  before  she  came  under  your  protetcion  she  thought 
it  the  height  of  good  fortune  to  be  sure  of  bread  and  cheese,  now  will  touch 
nothing  meaner  than  champagne  and  chicken,  does  not  weigh  you  more  entirely 
by  what  you  are  worth  to  her  than  will  nine-tenths  of  the  delicate  high-born 
ladies  to  buy  whom  you  must  barter  your  freedom. 

There  is  no  sort  of  difference  in  their  speculations  for  remunerative  sur- 
render: there  is  only  a  difference  in  their  price. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

"THE    MANY    YEARS   OF    PAIN    THAT    TAUGHT    ME    ART." 

WHEN  his  guests  had  left,  and  all  the  costumes  that  had  glittered  through 
his  salons  had  dispersed,  some  half-dozen  men,  his  most  especial  friends,  re- 
mained, among  them  Cos  Grenvil  and  the  Due  de  Neuilly,  with  his  cousin, 


CHANDOS.  63 

Prince  Philippe  d'Orvale,  and  in  a  cabinet  de  peinture,  hung  chiefly  with  French 
pictures  of  the  eighteenth  century,  while  the  Circassians  brought  them  wines 
and  liqueurs,  sat  down  to  Trente  et  Quarante,  half  of  them  taking  the  bank  and 
half  the  table.  It  was  a  customary  termination  of  Chandos'  parties,  and  was 
at  least  an  admirable  stimulant  for  sweeping  away  too  lingering  memories  of 
beauty  that  might  have  appeared  there. 

"  Ah  that  we  had  a  Crockford's  !  They  have  left  us  no  choice  but  to  play 
in  our  own  houses  or  to  go  among  Greeks  and  blackguards;  as  if  they  could 
suppress  our  gaming  any  more  than  they  can  suppress  our  breathing,  or  had 
any  more  right  to  interfere  with  it  ! "  cried  Chandos,  as  an  almond-eyed  girl 
from  the  Deccan  poured  him  out  some  iced  hock. 

"  You  give  us  a  very  good  substitute  for  Crockford's,  though,  mon  cher 
Ernest,"  said  D'Orvale.  "  I  am  disposed  to  regret  nothing  when  I  am  once 
within  this  little  painted  chamber,  except,  perhaps,  that  your  Hebes  are  a  little 
bit  too  distracting." 

"  I  think  your  Highness  is  not  given  to  regretting  any  detriment  from  that 
sort  of  cause  any  more  than  I  am,"  laughed  Chandos,  while  he  sat  down  to  the 
table  and  staked  his  gold  with  the  lavishness  that  was  in  his  blood  from  men 
who  had  played  through  long  forenoons  at  Whitehall  with  Rochester  -and 
Jermyn. 

The  Chandos  of  Clarencieux  had  always  been  famed  for  their  love  of  play, 
from  the  days  that  they  shook  the  dice  with  Charles  the  Second,  or  threw  a 
main  before  supper  at  Choisy  with  Louis  and  Richelieu  and  Soubise.  But  his 
love  of  cards,  however  great  it  might  be,  had  not  cost  him  so  much  as  another 
trait  in  his  nature,  /.  e.  that  he  loved  men  and  trusted  them  with  an  absolute 
and  undoubting  faith.  This  was  the  most  costly  of  all  his  extravagances. 

The  Trente  et  Quarante  in  the  little  picture-cabinet  was  too  beguiling  to  be 
quickly  left;  the  gold  changed  hands  like  lightning,  not  going  less  quickly  for 
the  iced  hock  and  the  claret  and  seltzer  that  washed  it  down,  and  the  gay  pass- 
ages with  the  pretty  Easterns  that  interrupted  it.  It  was  past  six  in  the  morning 
when  D'Orvale  broke  up  the  bank  and  gave  the  signal  for  departure,  he  with 
Chandos  having  been  the  chief  losers.  The  latter  cared  only  for  the  gay  excite- 
ment of  hazard;  when  the  game  was  over,  whether  it  had  been  favorable  to  him 
or  not,  he  cared  not  one  straw.  Generous  to  great  excess,  he  never  heeded  the 
loss  of  money,  as,  it  is  true,  he  had  never  learned  the  value  of  it. 

Ever  since  he  could  remember,  money,  in  as  much  abundance  as  he  wanted 
it,  was  his  to  throw  away  by  handfuls,  if  it  gave  him  any  pleasure;  and  all  that 
money  could  bring  was  his  at  a  word,  without  seeking  it.  Such  an  atmos- 
phere from  his  childhood  up  was  not  one  to  supply  a  nature,  by  instinct, 
lavish  as  the  winds  and  careless  to  a  fault,  with  any  thought  of  care  for,  or  of 
caution  in,  expenditure. 


64 


QUID  AS     WORKS. 


As  he  went  through  the  corridors  to  his  own  chamber,  after  his  guests  had 
at  last  left  him,  to  take  a  few  hours'  sleep  in  the  opening  day,  the  deep,  rich, 
melancholy  roll  of  organ-notes,  hushed  by  closed  doors,  but  pealing  the 
Tantum  Ergo,  caught  his  ear  in  the  silence.  Music  had  been  a  passion  with 
him  from  his  infancy;  wealth  had  enabled  him  to  indulge  the  passion  to  the  full, 
and  its  strains  drew  him  towards  it  now. 

"  Lulli  is  beginning  a  new  day  while  we  are  going  to  bed,"  he  thought,  as 
he  turned  down  a  short  passage  and  opened  the  door  that  shut  in  the  melody. 
The  daylight  in  the  chamber  looked  strangely  white  and  pure  and  subdued 
after  the  glare  of  the  myriad  gas  and  wax  lights;  and  his  form,  with  the 
rich  silks,  laces,  and  velvets  of  the  Edward-the-Fourth  dress,  and  the  sparkle 
of  the  Clarencieux  diamonds,  looked  as  strange  upon  the  threshold  of  this  quiet 
and  antique  room, — a  room  almost  like  an  oratory  in  the  midst  of  the  luxurious 
palatial  Park  Lane  house,  with  its  splendor,  its  crowds,  its  dissipations,  and  its 
unending  gayeties.  The  apartment  was  long,  lighted  by  two  windows,  through 
which  the  just-arisen  sun  poured  in,  and  the  antique  shape  of  the  walnut-wood 
furniture,  the  ebony  music  and  reading-desks,  and  the  carved  ivory  Christ 
above  a  table  in  a  recess,  gave  it  the  look  of  a  reglious  retreat,  especially  as  at 
the  farther  end  stood  an  organ,  with  its  glided  tubes  glistening  against  the  dark 
walnut  of  its  case,  while  from  its  chords  there  swelled  the  harmony  of  the  great 
Sacramental  Hymn. 

The  musician  was  a  man  of  five-  or  six-and-twenty,  whose  head  had  the 
spiritual  beauty  of  Shelley's;  the  features  fair  and  delicate  to  attenuation;  the 
eyes  large,  dark,  and  lustrous;  the  mouth  very  perfect,  both  in  form  and 
expression;  the  whole  face  of  singular  patience  and  singular  exaltation.  His 
lower  limbs  were  ail-but  useless,  they  were  slightly  paralyzed  and  much  crippled, 
and  his  shoulders  were  bowed  with  a  marked  but  in  noway  repulsive  deformity. 
Music  grand  as  Beethoven  ever  dreamed  or  Pasta  ever  sang  woke  from  his 
genius  into  life.  But  in  the  ways  of  the  world  Guido  Lulli  was  unlearned  as  a 
child;  for  the  labors  of  earth  he  was  as  helpless  as  any  bird  whose  wings  are 
broken.  Men  would  have  called  him  a  half-witted  fool;  in  the  days  of  Alcuin 
or  of  Hildebrand  he  would  have  been  held  a  saint;  simply,  he  was  but  a  cripple 
and  an  enthusiast,  whom  nature  had  cruelly  maltreated,  but  whom  genius  had 
divinely  recompensed. 

At  the  opening  of  the  door  he  turned,  and  a  radiation  of  pleasure  broke  like 
iunlight  over  his  face,  while  into  his  eyes  came  the  glorious  look  of  love  and  of 

hty  that  beams  for  us  in  the  clear  brown  noble  eyes  of  a  dog. 

He  strove  to  rise,— to  him  a  matter  of  so  slow  and  painful  an  effort 

e  could  do   so,   Chandos  crossed  the  room  lightly  and  swiftly,  and 

s  hands  on  the  musician's  shoulders  with  a  kind  and  almost  caressing 

gesture. 


CHAN  DOS.  C5 

"Ah,  Lulli  !  you  are  awake  and  employed  before  I  have  yet  been  in  bed. 
You  shame  me  here  with  your  flood  of  sunlight.  No  !  do  not  rise;  do  not 
leave  off;  go  on  with  the  Tantum  Ergo  while  I  listen.  It  is  a  grand  hymn  to 
the  day. 

Lulli  looked  at  him  still  with  that  loving,  reverent,  grateful  look  of  a  dog's 
deathless  fidelity. 

"  Monseigneur,  the  sound  of  your  voice  to  me  is  like  the  sound  of  water  to 
the  thirsty  in  a  desert  place,"  he  said,  simply,  in  sweet,  soft,  Southern  French, 
giving,  in  earnest  veneration  to  his  host  and  master,  the  title  that  Trevenna 
often  gave  in  jest. 

Chandos  smiled  on  him, — a  sunlit,  generous  smile,  gentle  as  a  woman's. 

"  And  so  is  your  music  to  me:  so  there  is  no  debt  on  either  side.     Go  on." 

"  My  life  is  one  long  debt  to  you.     God  will  pay  it  to  you:  I  never  can." 

The  words  were  heartfelt,  and  his  eyes,  looking  upward,  still  uttered  them 
with  still  more  eloquence.  Contrast  more  forcible  than  these,  as  they  were  now 
together,  could  scarcely  have  been  found  in  the  width  of  the  world.  The  at- 
tenuated and  enfeebled  cripple,  with  his  useless  limbs,  his  bowed  shoulders, 
and  his  life  worn  with  physical  suffering  that  bound  him  like  a  captive  and 
robbed  him  of  all  the  power  and  the  joy  of  existence,  beside  the  splendid  grace 
of  the  man  who  stood  above  him,  in  a  strength  too  perfect  for  dissipation  to 
leave  the  slightest  trace  of  weariness  upon  it,  and  with  a  beauty  dazzling  as  a 
woman's,  fresh  from  every  pleasure  of  the  sight  or  sense,  and  full  of  all  the 
proudest  ambitions,  the  richest  enjoyments,  and  the  most  careless  insouciance 
of  a  superb  manhood  and  a  cloudless  fortune.  A  contrast  more  startling  nor, 
for  one,  more  bitter  could  not  have  been  placed  side  by  side.  But  there  was 
no  envy  here.  The  loyal  gratitude  of  Lulli  had  no  jealous  taint  upon  it  that 
could  have  made  him,  even  for  one  moment,  see  anything  save  gladness  and 
gentleness  in  the  gracious  presence  of  the  man  to  whom  he  owed  more  than 
existence.  He  could  no  more  have  felt  envy  to  his  benefactor  than  he  could 
have  taken  up  a  knife  and  stabbed  him. 

Six  years  before,  travelling  through  southern  Spain,  an  accident  to  his 
carriage  had  detained  Chandos  at  a  wayside  inn  in  the  very  heart  of  the  Vega. 
Whiling  away  the  tedium  of  such  detention  by  sketching  an  old  Moorish  bridge 
that  spanned  a  torrent,  high  in  the  air,  he  heard  some  music  that  fixed  his  at- 
tention,— the  music  of  a  violin  played  with  exquisite  pathos.  He  inquired  for 
the  musician.  A  handsome  gitana,  with,  a  basket  of  melons  on  her  head,  gladly 
answered  his  inquiries.  The  violinist  was  a  youth  dying,  as  she  thought,  in  a 
chalet  near.  He  was  alone,  very  poor,  and  a  stranger.  The  words  were  suffi- 
cient to  arrest  Chandos:  he  sought  out  the  chalet  and  found  the  musician,  lying 
on  a  straw  pallet,  and  dying,  as  the  girl  had  said,  rather  from  hunger  than  any 
other  illness,  but  with  his  large  burning  eyes  fixed  on  the  sun  that  was  setting 

VOL.  III.— 3 


66 


QUID  AS     WORKS. 


beyond  the  screen  of  tangled  vine-leaves  that  hung  over  the  hut-door,  and  his 
hands  still  drawing  from  the  chords,  in  wild  and  mournful  strains,  the  music 
for  which  life  alone  lingered  in  him.  He  was  a  mere  lad  of  twenty  years,  and 
was  a  cripple.  Chandos  only  saw  to  rescue  him.  Food,  hope,  and  the  sound 
of  a  voice  that  spoke  gently  and  pityingly  to  him,  fused  fresh  existence  into  the 
dying  boy:  he  lived,  and  his  life  from  that  moment  was  sheltered  by  the  man 
who  had  found  him  perishing  on  the  Spanish  hills. 

Guido  Lulli  had  lived  in  Chandos'  household,  now  in  town,  now  at  Claren- 
cieux,  never  treated  as  a  dependant,  but  surrounded  by  all  that  could  alleviate 
or  make  him  forget  his  calamity,  out  of  the  worldly  his  own  choice  as  utterly 
as  though  he  were  in  a  monastery,  spending  his  days  and  nights  over  his  organ 
and  his  music-score,  and  never  having  harder  task  than  to  organize  the  music 
of  those  concerts  and  operas  in  the  private  theatre  at  Clarencieux  for  which  his 
natron's  entertainments  were  noted. 

Guido  Lulli's  was  far  from  the  only  life  that  Chandos,  the  pleasure-seeker 
and  the  voluptuary,  had  redeemed,  defended,  and  saved. 

Obedient  to  his  wish,  the  melody  of  the  Catholic  chant  rolled  through  the 
stillness  of  the  early  morning,  succeeding  strangely  to  the  wit,  the  laughter, 
the  revelry,  and  the  hazard  of  a  few  moments  previous.  It  was  precisely  such 
a  succession  of  contrasts  of  which  his  life  was  made  up,  and  which  gave  it  its 
vivid  and  unfading  color;  closely  interwoven  and  ever  trenching  one  upon 
another,  the  meditative  charm  of  art  and  of  thought  succeeded  with  him  to  the 
pleasures  of  the  world.  He  would  pass  from  all  the  intoxication  and  indul- 
gence of  an  Alcibiades  to  all  the  thoughtful  solitude  of  an  Augustine;  and  it 
was  this  change,  so  complete  and  so  perpetually  variable,  which,  while  it  was 
produced  by  the  mutability  of  his  temperament,  made  in  a  large  degree  the 
utter  absence  in  his  life  of  all  knowledge  of  satiety,  all  touch  of  weariness. 

He  listened  now,  leaning  his  arm  on  the  sill  of  the  open  window  that  looked 
out  upon  the  gardens  below,  fresh,  even  in  town,  with  the  breath  of  the  spring 
on  their  limes  and  acacias,  and  the  waking  song  of  the  nest-birds  greeting  the 
day.  The  rolling  notes  of  the  organ  pealed  out  in  all  their  solemnity,  the 
cathedral  rhythm  swelling  out  upon  the  silence  of  the  dawn,  that  had  been 
heard  by  him  so  often  in  the  splendor  of  St.  Peter's  at  Easter-time,  in  the  hush 
of  Notre  Dame  at  midnight  mass,  and  in  the  stillness  of  Benedictine  and 
Cistercian  chapels  in  the  chestnut-woods  of  Tuscany  and  the  lonely  mountain- 
sides of  hill-locked  Austrian  lakes.  A  thousand  memories  of  foreign  air  were 
in  the  deep-drawn  and  melodious  chords;  a  thousand  echoes  of  the  dead 
glories  of  mediaeval  Rome  rose  with  the 

Tantum  ergo  Sacra  mentum 
Veneremur  cernui. 


CHANDOS.  67 

A  helpless  and  fragile  cripple  in  the  world,  no  stronger  than  a  reed,  and 
ignorant  of  all  things  save  his  art,  once  before  his  organ,  once  in  the  moment 
of  his  inspiration,  Guido  Lulli  had  the  grandeur  of  a  master,  the  force  and  the 
omnipotence  of  a  king.  In  his  realm  he  reigned  supreme,  and  Chandos  not 
seldom  left  his  titled  associates  and  his  careless  pleasures  to  come  and  listen  to 
these  melodies  in  his  protege's  still,  monastical  chamber,  as  he  heard  them 
now. 

He  leaned  against  the  embrasure,  looking  out  into  the  tangled  mass  of 
leaves  beneath,  and  letting  his  thoughts  float  dreamily  down  the  stream  of 
sound,  blent  with  the  lustre  of  the  smiling  eyes  and  the  gleam  of  the  imperial 
beauty  that  had  newly  caught  his  memory  and  his  fancy.  Entangled  with  the 
imaginations  of  his  own  Byzantine  poem,  she  haunted  him  with  that  early  care- 
less whisper,  soft,  idle,  and  painless,  of  love  in  its  first  moments, — love  that  is 
but  a  mere  momentary,  passionate  impulse  and  may  never  ripen  to  more.  The 
lull  of  early  morning,  the  measure  of  the  music  passing  onward  without  pause 
into  the  masses  of  Mozart  and  Mendelssohn,  fell  gently  and  mellowly  on  him 
after  the  crowded  hours  of  the  past  night  and  day.  As  the  chords  thrilled 
through  the  silence  of  the  breaking  day,  joining  the  clear  notes  of  the  awaken- 
ing birds  beneath  amidst  the  leaves,  his  thoughts  wandered  away,  dreamy  and 
disconnected,  ranging  over  the  cloudless  years  of  a  successful  life,  in  which  all 
the  memories  were  painted  as  with  an  Elizabethan  pencil,  without  shadow.  In 
them  he  had  never  known  one  gray  touch  of  disappointment,  far  less  still  one 
dark  taint  of  calamity;  in  them  woman's  lips  had  never  betrayed  him,  nor  man's 
hand  been  raised  against  him.  Fortune  had  favored  and  the  world  had  loved 
him.  No  regret  lay  on  him,  and  no  unfulfilled  desire  left  its  trial.  There  was 
nothing  in  his  career  he  wished  undone;  there  were  no  memories  in  it  that  it 
would  have  been  pain  to  open;  there  were  no  pages  of  it  that  were  not  bright 
with  soft,  rich,  living  color.  He  had  passed  through  life  having  escaped 
singularly  all  the  shadows  that  lie  on  it  for  most  men;  and  he  had,  far  more 
than  most,  what  may  be  termed  the  faculty  for  happiness,  a  gift,  in  any  tem- 
perament, whose  wisdom  and  whose  beauty  the  world  too  little  recognizes. 

His  thoughts  floating  on  with  the  melodious  chords  that  swelled  in  wave  on 
wave  of  sound  through  the  quiet  of  the  morning,  drifted  back  by  some  unfol- 
lowed  chain  of  association  to  the  remembrance  of  the  hot  autumn  sunset  at 
Clarencieux,  when,  as  a  child,  he  had  dreamt  his  chivalric  fancies  over  the 
story  of  Arthur,  and  had  told  his  father  what  his  future  should  be. 

"  Have  I  kept  my  word  ?  "  he  mused,  as  he  leaned  his  arms  on  the  em- 
brasure of  the  window,  while  the  early  light  fell  on  the  gold  and  the  jewels  of 
his  Plantagenet  masquerade-dress. 

The  lofty,  idealic,  impossible  dreams,  so  glorious  in  their  impracticability, 
so  fair  in  their  sublime  folly,  in  which  boyhood  had  aspired  to  a  soilless  fame 


68 


QUID  AS     WORKS. 


and  an  heroic  sovereignty  such  as  this  earth  has  never  seen  and  never  can  see, 
recurred  to  him  with  something  that  was  almost,  for  the  moment,  a  passing 
sadness,— the  same  sadness  which,  in  the  words  of  Jean  Paul,  lies  in  music, 
"  because  it  speaks  to  us  of  things  that  in  all  our  life  we  find  not,  and  never 

shall  find." 

"Have  I  kept  my  word?"  he  thought.  "I  rule  the  world  of  pleasure;  but 
I  meant  then  a  wider  world  than  that.  They  follow  me  because  I  lead  the 
fashion;  because  I  amuse  them  better  than  any  other:  because  they  gain  some 
distinction  by  cutting  their  coats  and  wearing  their  wrist-bands  like  mine;  but 
that  is  not  the  fame  either  he  or  I  meant  in  those  years.  They  talk  of  me;  they 
imitate  me;  they  obey  me;  they  quote  me;  they  adore  my  works,  and  they 
court  my  approbation.  But  am  I  very  much  more,*after  all,  than  a  mere 
idler  ? " 

The  genius  latent  in  him,  which  in  his  present  life  only  found  careless  ex- 
pression in  glittering  bagatelles  and  poems,  half  Lucretian,  half  Catullan,  stirred 
in  him  now  with  that  restlessness  for  higher  goals,  that  refusal  to  be  satisfied 
with  actual  and  present  achievement,  which  characterize  genius  in  all  its  forms, 
— that  unceasing  and  irrepressible  "  striving  towards  the  light "  which  persued 
Goethe  throughout  life  and  was  upon  his  lips  in  death.  Dissatisfaction  in  no 
shape  ever  touched  Chandos;  his  years  were  too  cloudless,  and  too  full  of 
fairest  flavor,  for  discontent  ever  to  be  known  in  them.  It  was  but  rarely,  now 
and  then,  when,  in  the  pauses  of  his  pleasures  and  his  fame,  the  remembrance 
of  his  childhood's  grand,  visionary,  impalpable  ambitions  came  back  to  him, 
that  the  thought  swept  across  him  of  having  insufficiently  realized  them,  of 
having  been  in  some  sort  untrue  to  them,  of  losing  in  a  dazzling  celebrity  the 
loftier  purity  of  those  early  and  impossible  dreams. 

It  was  not  wholly  true,  nor  wholly  just  towards  himself.  Egotism  had  little 
place  in  his  life:  full  though  it  was  of  a  Greek-like  softness  and  Greek-like 
idolatry  of  beauty  and  of  pleasure,  of  an  Epicureanism  that  shunned  all  pain 
and  abhorred  all  roughness  and  all  harshness,  the  calamities  of  others  were 
widely  succored  by  him,  and  the  bead-roll  was  long  of  those  who  owed  him  the 
most  generous  gifts  that  man  can  owe  to  man.  He  enjoyed,  but  he  never  for- 
got that  others  suffered.  He  loved  the  ease,  the  beauty,  and  the  serenity  of 
existence;  but  he  also  did  his  uttermost  that  others  should  know  them  too. 

I  enjoy"  he  thought  now,  as  he  leaned  out  into   the  morning   sunshine. 

the  supreme  wisdom  of  life,  and  the  best  gift  of  the  gods  is  to  know  it ! 

The  Greeks   were  right,  and  in  this  age  men  remember  it  too  little.     Old  Guy 

Patm  was  a  million  times  wiser  than  all  the  Frondeurs,  sitting  under  the  sum- 

Jhade  of   his   Cormeille   cherry-trees,  with   Lucretius   and   Lucilius  and 

Antonmus,  while  his  friends  killed  each  other  with  fret  and  fume.     Bonaparte 

I  have  conquered  Cairo,  Milan,  and  Paris  in  less  than  two  years,  and 


CHANDOS.  69 

yet  if  I  died  to-morrow  I  should  only  get  half  a  page  in  any  biographical  dic- 
tionary; '  but  to  get  a  line,  or  even  only  to  get  an  obituary  notice  and  oblivion, 
men  toil  a  life  away  and  consume  their  years  in  thankless,  grinding,  ceaseless, 
labor.  The  benighted  opticism  of  vanity  !.  '  The  succession  of  the  nations  is 
but  as  a  torch-race.'  What  is  it  to  feed  the  flame  of  one  of  the  torches  for  a 
passing  second, — a  spark  that  flares  and  dies  ?  The  Greek  ideal  ol  Dionysus, 
with  the  ivy  on  his  brow  and  the  Thyrsus  in  his  hand,  bringing  joy  wherever 
he  moved,  while  the  wine  flowed  and  nature  bloomed  wherever  the  god's  foot 
fell,  is  the  ideal  of  the  really  happy  life,  the  life  that  knows  how  to  enjoy." 

The  thoughts  drifted  through  his  mind  lightly,  dreamily,  as  the  swell  of  the 
organ-notes  poured  on.  It  was  true,  he  enjoyed,  and  his  temper,  like  the  tem- 
per of  the  Greeks,  asked  only  this  of  life. 

Chandos  was  not  only  famous,  not  only  gifted,  not  only  stepped  to  the  lips 
in  delicate  and  sensuous  delight;  he  was  much  more  than  all  these:  he  was 
happy. 

How  many  lives  can  say  that  ? 

The  music  paused  suddenly,  dropping  down  in  its  gorgeous  festival  of 
sound  as  a  lark  suddenly  drops  to  the  grass  in  the  midst  of  its  flood  of  song. 
Chandos  turned  as  it  ceased,  and  broke  his  idle  thread  of  musing  revery,  while 
he  laid  his  hand  gently  on  the  musician's  shoulder. 

"  Dear  Lulli,  while  one  hears  your  music,  one  is  in  Avillion.  You  make 
me  dream  of  the  old  serene  and  sacred  ueipara  yai^.  Tell  me,  have  you  every- 
thing you  wish  ?  Is  there  nothing  that  can  bring  you  more  pleasure  ?  " 

Guido  Lulli  shook  his  head,  lifting  up  his  lustrous  Southern,  antelope  eyes 
— the  eyes  of  Provence — with  the  fidelity  and  gratitude  that  were  rivalled  in 
him  by  his  art  alone. 

"  I  should  be  little  worthy  all  I  owe  to  you,  if  I  could  find  one  want 
unsatisfied." 

"  Owe  !  You  owe  me  nothing.  Who  would  give  me  such  music  as  you  can 
give  ?  It  is  not  everyone  who  is  fortunate  enough  to  have  a  Mozart  in  his 
house.  I  wish  I  could  serve  you  better  in  the  search  that  is  nearest  your  heart. 
We  have  done  all  we  could,  Guido." 

His  voice  was  very  gentle,  and  had  a  certain  hesitation.  He  approached  a 
subject  that  had  a  bitterness  both  of  grief  and  of  shame  to  his  listener;  and 
Chandos,  carelessly  disdainful  "of  a  prince's  wishes,  was  careful  of  the  slightest 
jar  that  could  wound  the  sensitiveness  of  the  man  who  was  dependent  on 
him. 

Lulli's  head  sank,  and  a  dark  shadow  passed  over  his  face, — a  flush  of 
shame  and  of  anger,  as  heavy  and  as  passionate  as  could  arise  in  a  tempera- 
ment so  visionary  and  tender  to  feminine  softness,  mingled,  too,  with  a  sorrow 
far  deeper  than  wrath  can  reach. 


70  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

"It  is  enough,'  he  said,  simply,  his  ^  words  hushed,  low,  and  bitter  in  his 
throat  "  We  are  certain  of  her  shame." 

«  Not  certain  "  said  Chandos,  compassionately,  while  his  hand  still  lay  lightly 
on  the  musician's  shoulder.     "Where  there  is  a  doubt  there  is  always  hope; 
and  judgment  should  never  be  passed  till  everything  is  known. 
harsh  to  he*,  even  in  thought." 

"  Harsh  ?     Am  I  harsh  ?  " 

Lulli's  head  drooped  till  it  rested  on  his  hands,  while  in  the  accent  of 
words  there  was  a  grief  beyond  all  words,  and  a  self-reproach  piteous  in  its 

contrition. 

«  Not  in  your  heart  ever,  I  know,"  said  Chandos,  with  that  almost  caressing 
tenderness  of  pity  which  always  came  upon  him  for  this  childlike  and  unworldly 
visionary,  who  felt  so  passionately  yet  could  only  act  so  feebly. 

"  Not  to  her,  not  to  her,— no  !  "  murmured  the  Provencal,  while  his  face 
was  still  sunk  on  his  hands;  "but  to  him.  Not  even  to  know  his  name; 
not  even  to  know  where  he  harbors;  not  to  tell  where  she  is,  that  when  she  is 
deserted  and  wretched  she  might  be  saved  from  lower  depths  still  !  " 

A  terrible  pain  shook  and  stifled  his  voice,  and  Chandos  was  silent.  The 
musician's  sorrow  was  one  to  which  no  consolation  could  be  offered  and  no 
hope  suggested. 

"I  have  had  all  done  to  trace  her  that  is  possible,"  he  said,  at  last;  "b'ut 
two  years  have  passed,  and  there  seems  no  chance  of  ever  succeeding;  all  clue 
appears  lost.  Do  you  think  she  may  have  gone  by  another  name  at  the  time 
that  her  lover,  whoever  he  may  be,  first  saw  her  ? " 

"  It  is  possible,  monseigneur;  I  cannot  tell,"  said  Lulli,  slowly,  with  a  pathos 
of  weariness  more  touching  than  all  complaint  and  lament.  "  Be  it  as  it 
will,  she  is  dead  to  me;  but — but — if  we  could  know  him,  helpless  cripple  as  I 
am,  I  would  find  strength  enough  to  avenge  my  wrong  and  hers." 

He  raised  himself  as  he  said  it,  his  slight,  bent  form  quivering  and  instinct 
with  sudden  force,  his  pale  and  hollow  cheek  flushed,  his  eyes  kindling.  It  was 
like  electric  vitality  flashing  for  one  brief  moment  into  a  dead  man's  limbs. 

Chandos  looked  at  him  with  a  profound  pity.  To  him,  a  man  of  the  world, 
a  courtier,  a  lover  of  pleasure,  the  untutored,  chivalrous  simplicity  of  this  idealist 
roused  infinite  compassion.  He  saw  brought  home  to  Guido  Lulli,  as  a  terrible 
and  heart-burning  anguish,  those  amours  which'  in  his  own  world  and  his  own 
life  were  but  the  caprice  and  amusement  of  idle  hours,  the  subject  of  a  gay,  in- 
different jest.  He  had  never  before  reflected  how  much  these  careless  toys 
may  chance  to  cost  in  their  recoil  to  others. 

He  leaned  his  hand  with  a  warmer  pressure  on  the  musician's  shoulder. 
"I  wish  I  could  aid  you  more,  Guido;  but  there  is  nothing  that  I  know  of 
that  has  been  left  untried.     Strive  to  forget  both;  neither  is  worth  enough  to 


CHANDOS.  71 

give  you  pain.  You  believe  at  least  that  I  have  had  every  effort  used  for  you, 
although  it  has  been  in  vain  ! " 

Lulli  looked  at  him  with  a  slight  smile, — a  smile  that  passed  over  the  suffer- 
ing and  the  momentary  passion  on  his  face  like  an  irradiation  of  light.  It  was 
so  full  of  sublime  and  entire  faith. 

"Believe  you,  monseigneur?    Yes,  as  I  believe  in  God." 

It  was  the  simple  truth,  and  paid  back  to  Chandos  his  own  love  for  men, 
and  faith  in  them,  in  his  own  coin.  He  was  touched  by  the  naif  words. 

"  I  thank  you.  I  am  your  debtor,  then,  Lulli,"  he  said  gently.  "  I  must 
leave  you  now,  or  I  shall  have  no  sleep  before  the  day  is  fairly  up;  but  I  will 
see  you  again  some  time  during  the  morning.  If  you  think  of  anything  that 
has  not  been  done,  or  might  be  done  again,  with  any  hope  to  find  Valeria,  tell 
me,  and  I  will  give  directions  for  it.  Adieu  !  " 

He  left  the  chamber,  the  flash  of  his  diamonds  and  the  imperial  blue  of  his 
dress  glancing  bright  in  the  beams  of  the  young  day.  Lulli  turned  his  head, 
and  followed  him  with  the  wistful  gaze  that  seemed  to  come  from  so  far  a  dis- 
tance,— followed  him  as  the  eyes  of  a  dog  follow  the  shadow  of  its  master. 

"  So  generous,  so  pitiful,  so  gentle,  so  noble  !  If  I  could  only  live  to  repay 
him  !  "  he  murmured,  half  aloud  as  the  door  closed  upon  the  kingly  grace  and 
splendid  manhood  of  his  savior  and  his  solitary  friend.  Vast  as  was  the  con- 
trast, hopelessly  wide  as  was  the  disparity,  between  them,  there  was  not  one 
pang  of  jealousy  in  the  loyal  heart  of  the  crippled  musician. 

Then,  with  the  last  echo  of  his  patron's  step,  his  head  dropped  again,  and 
the  listless,  lifeless  passiveness,  the  weary  and  suffering  indifference,  which 
always  lay  so  heavily  upon  him,  save  at  such  times  when  his  affections  or  his 
art  struck  new  vitality  through  him,  returned  once  more,  while  his  fingers  lay 
motionless  upon  the  ivory  keys.  Although  happy  (as  far  as  happiness  could  be 
in  common  with  his  shattered  and  stricken  life)  in  the  artistic  seclusion  in  which 
he  was  allowed  to  dwell,  and  in  the  unbroken  pursuit  of  his  art  which  Chandos 
enabled  him  to  enjoy,  there  was  one  sorrow  on  him  weightier  than  any  of  his 
personal  afflictions. 

The  only  thing  that  had  ever  loved  him  was  a  child,  several  years  younger 
than  himself,  his  cousin,  orphaned  and  penniless  like  himself,  a  bright,  caress- 
ing child,  to  keep  whom  in  some  poor  shape  of  comfort  in  their  old  home 
of  Aries  Lulli  had  beggared  his  own  poverty  till — sending  to  her  every  coin  that 
he  possessed — he  had  been  near  his  grave  from  sheer  famine  when  Chandos 
had  found  him  among  the  hills  of  the  Vega.  For  some  time  he  had  never 
mentioned  the  name  of  Valeria  to  his  patron,  from  the  shrinking  and  sensitive 
delicacy  of  his  nature,  which  dreaded  to  press  another  supplicant  and  depend- 
ent on  his  patron's  charity.  All  he  could  give  (and  Chandos'  provision  for  him 
made  that  now  not  inconsiderable, — indeed,  what  seemed  a  mine  of  wealth  to 


72 


QUID  AS     WORKS. 


the  simplicity  of  the  Provencal)  he  sent  to  Aries  for  Valeria  Lulli,  who  was 
lodged  with  an  old  canoness  of  the  city,  and  began  to  be  noted,  as  she  grew 
older,  as  the  most  perfect  contralto  in  the  girls'  choir  in  all  Southern  France. 
See  her  he  could  not;  a  sense  of  duty  to  the  man  by  whom  he  had  been  re- 
deemed from  death,  and  the  infirmities  of  his  own  health,  which  that  nigh  ap- 
proach of  death  had  more  utterly  enfeebled,  prevented  him  from  returning  to 
Provence.  But  he  heard  of  her;  he  heard  from  her;  he  knew  that  she  was 
drawing  near  womanhood  in  safe  shelter,  and  a  happy,  if  obscure,  home,  through 
him;  and  it  sufficed  for  him.  His  affection  for  her  was  the  tender  solicitude  of 
a  brother,  shut  out  from  any  tinge  of  a  warmer  emotion,  both  through  his  own 
sense  of  how  utterly  banned  from  him  by  his  calamity  was  all  thought  of 
woman's  love,  and  through  his  own  memory  of  Valeria,  which  was  but  of  a  fair 
and  loving  child. 

Two  years  before  this  morning  in  which  Chandos  had  listened  to  the  Tantum 
Ergo,  a  heavy  blow  fell  on  the  musician,  smiting  down  all  the  fond,  vague 
thoughts  with  which  he  had  associated  Valeria's  dawning  womanhood -with  the 
dawning  success  of  his  own  ambition  in  his  art.  A  long  silence  had  passed  by, 
bringing  no  tidings  of  her,  when  his  anxiety  grew  uncontrollable  and  knew 
itself  powerless;  he  passionately  repented  of  the  silence  he  had  preserved  on 
her  name  to  his  only  friend.  He  inquired  tidings  of  the  canoness,  but  received 
none.  Chandos  was  away,  yachting  in  the  Mediterranean,  and  spending  the  late 
summer  and  the  autumn  in  the  East;  the  winter  also  he  spent  in  Paris.  When, 
with  the  spring,  Lulli  saw  him  once  more,  he  told  him  then  of  Valeria,  and  en- 
treated his  aid  to  learn  the  cause  of  the  silence  that  had  fallen  between  him  and 
Aries.  Chandos  gave  it  willingly;  he  sent  his  own  courier  abroad  to  inquire 
for  the  young  choral  singer.  All  answer  with  which  he  returned  was  that  the 
canoness  had  died  in  the  course  of  that  summer,  that  Valeria  Lulli  had  disap- 
peared from  the  city,  and  that  neither  priest  nor  layman  could  tell  more,  save 
that  it  was  the  general  supposition  she  had  fled  with  a  handsome  milord  Anglais, 
who  had  visited  the  cathedral,  heard  her  singing,  learned  her  residence,  and 
visited  her  often  during  the  summer  months.  He  too  had  left  Aries  without 
anyone  remembering  his  name  or  knowing  where  he  had  gone.  The  gossips  of 
the  still  solemn  old  Roman  city,  had  noted  him  often  with  Valeria  at  vesper- 
time,  and  underneath  the  vine-hung,  gray  stone  coping  of  her  casement  in  the 
canoness's  little  tourelle.  And  Valeria  had  grown  up  into  all  the  rich  traditional 
beauty  of  the  magnificent  women  of  Aries. 

So  the  history  ran,— brief,  but  telling  a  world.     To  Guido  Lulli  there  was 

room   neither  for  doubt   nor  hope;  it  was   plain  as  the  daylight  to  him,  and 

eeded  not  another  line  added  to  it.     It  cut  him  to  the  heart.     Shame  for  the 

lonor  of  his  name,  which,  though  sunk  into  poverty,  claimed  descent  from  him 

whose  divine  strains  once  floated  down  the  rose-aisles  of  Versailles;  passionate 


CHANDOS,  73 

bitterness  against  the  unknown  stranger  who  had  robbed  him;  grief  for  the  loss 
and  dishonor  of  the  one  whom  he  had  cherished  from  her  childhood, — all  these 
were  terrible  to  him;  but  they  were  scarcely  so  cruel  as  the  sting  of  ingratitude 
from  a  life  that  he  alone  had  supported,  and  for  which  he  had  endured,  through 
many  years,  deprivations  uncounted  and  solicitude  unwearying.  He  said  but 
little,  but  the  iron  went  down  deep  into  his  gentle  suffering  nature,  and  left  a 
wound  there  that  was  never  closed. 

No  more  had  ever  be  learned  of  the  fate  of  Valeria;  it  sank  into  silence, 
and  all  the  efforts  exerted  by  his  patron's  wealth  and  by  the  ingenuity  of  his 
hirelings  failed  to  bring  one  light  on  the  surface  of  the  darkness  that  covered 
her  lost  life.  As  Lulli  had  said,  she  was  dead  to  him.  But  the  pain  she  had 
dealt  was  living,  and  would  live  long.  Natures  like  Lulli's  suffer  silently,  but 
suffer  greatly;  and  now,  when  the  monastical  silence  closed  in  again  around 
him  as  the  sound  of  Chandos'  steps  died  off  the  morning  stillness,  and  the 
early'  rays  only  strayed  on  the  ivory  whiteness  of  the  carved  Passion  above  the 
little  shrine  of  his  antique  chamber,  he  sat  there,  listless  and  lost  in  thought, 
his  head  sunk,  his  hands  resting  immovable  upon  the  keys  with  which  he  could 
give  out  fit  music  for  the  gods,  the  sadness  on  him  which  ever  oppressed  him 
when  he  came  back  from  his  own  best-beloved  world  of  melodious  sound  into 
the  coarse,  harsh,  weary  world  of  fact  and  of  existence. 

He  thought  of  the  bright  Southern  child  whose  desolate  life  he  had  succored, 
as  he  had  used  to  see  her,  with  the  sunlight  on  her  hair  while  she  gathered  bow- 
ing crowns  of  summer  lilies,  and  feathery  wealth  of  seeding  grasses,  among  the 
giant  ruins  of  the  Roman  Amphitheatre,  where  the  Gaul  and  the  Frank,  the 
Latin  and  the  Greek,  lay  mouldering  in  the  community  of  death,  while  the 
arrowy  Rhone  flashed  its  azure  in  the  light,  and  the  purple  grapes  grew  mellow 
in  the  golden  languor  of  a  Southern  noon. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

LATET   ANGUIS   IN   HERBA. 

"  LOTS  of  news  !  "  said  Trevenna,  crushing  up  a  pile  of  journals  as  he  sat 
at  breakfast  in  Park  Lane, — his  second  breakfast,  of  course,  for  which  he  com- 
monly dropped  in  as  Chandos  was  taking  his  first.  He  managed  all  his  friend's 
concerns,  both  monetary  and  household,  both  in  town,  in  Paris,  and  at  Claren- 
cieux,  and  had  always  something  or  other  on  which  to  confer  with  his  patron  at 
the  only  hour  in  the  day  at  which  Chandos  was  ever  likely  to  be  found  disen- 
gaged; some  stud  from  which  to  suggest  a  purchase:  some  new  pictures  com- 


74  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

ing  to  the  hammer  of  which  to  bring  a  catalogue;  some  signature  to  a  check  or 
a  deed  to  require;  or  some  expensive  temptation  to  suggest  to  one  who,  as  he 
well  knew,  had  never  been  taught  providence  and  never  been  accustomed  to 
resist  either  pleasure  or  inclination.  This  last  was  a  Mephistophelian  occupa- 
tion to  which  Trevenna  was  specially  suited.  He  tempted  delightfully,  always 
putting  in  just  so  much  of  bantering  dissuasion  to  enchance  the  charm, 
and  spur  on  the  tempted,  as  would  furnish  the  truffles  to  the  game,  till  the 
trufft  he  held  out  became  irresistible. 

"  Lots  of  news  !  "  he  cried,  now  washing  the  quantity  down  with  a  draught 
of  Yquem.  "  Queer  thing  a  paper  is;  sort  of  prosaic  phcenix,  eh  ?  Kings  die, 
ministers  die,  editors  go  to  pot,  its  staff  drops  under  the  sod,  governments 
smash,  nations  swamp,  actors  change;  but  on  goes  the  paper,  coming  out  im- 
perturbably  every  morning.  Nothing  disturbs  it;  deaths  enrich  it;  wars  en- 
large it;  if  a  royal  head  goes  into  the  grave,  it  politely  prints  itself  with  a  black 
border  by  way  of  gratifying  his  soul,  and  sells  itself  to  extreme  advantage  with 
a  neat  dovetailing  of  '  Le  roi  est  mort,'  and  '  Vive  le  roi.'  Queer  thing,  a 
paper ! " 

"A  melancholy  thing  in  that  light,"  said  Chandos,  as  he  drank  his  choco- 
late. "  To  think  of  the  swarm  of  striving  life  pressed  into  a  single  copy  of  the 
Times  is  as  mournful  as  Xerxes'  crowds  under  Mount  Ida,  though  certainly  not 
so  poetic." 

"  Mournful  ?  Don't  see  it,"  responded  Trevenna,  who  never  did  see  any 
thing  mournful  in  life,  except  the  miserable  mistake  by  which  he  had  not  been 
born  a  millionaire.  "  It's  rather  amusing  to  see  all  pother  and  bother,  and 
know  that  they'll  all  be  dead,  every  man  of  'em,  fifty  years  hence;  because  one 
always  has  an  unuttered  conviction  that  some  miracle  will  happen  by  which  one 
won't  die  oneself.  How  thoroughly  right  Lucretius  is  !  it  is  so  pleasant  to  see 
other  men  in  a  storm  while  one's  high  and  dry  beyond  reach  of  a  drop;  and  to 
watch  them  all  rushing  and  scuttling  through  life  in  the  Times  columns  is 
uncommonly  like  watching  them  rush  through  a  tempest.  You  know  they'll  all 
of  them  get  splashed  to  the  skin,  and  not  one  in  ten  thousand  reach  their  goal." 

Chandos  laughed. 

"  But  when  you  are  in  the  tempest,  my  friend,  I  fancy  you  would  be  very 
glad  of  a  little  more  sympathy  than  you  give,  and  would  be  very  grateful  for  an 
umbrella?" 

"  Oh,  the  devil  take  sympathy  !     Give  me  success." 
"  The  selection  is  not  new  !     But  in  defeat- 


in  suc- 


defeat  ?  let  it  go  ten  leagues  further  to  the  deuce  !     Sympathy  h.  „_- 

genuine;  people  would  scramble  for  the  bonbons  I  dropped-  but 

sympathy  ,        ;feat  was  never  any  thing  better  yet  than  a  sneer  delicately 


CHANDOS  75 

"  Poor  humanity  !  You  will  allow  nothing  good  to  come  out  of  Nazareth; 
a  sweeping  verdict,  when  by  Nazareth  you  mean  mankind.  Well,  I  would  rather 
give  twenty  rogues  credit  for  being  honest  men,  than  wrong  one  honest  man 
by  thinking  him  a  rogue.  To  think  evil  unjustly  is  to  create  evil;  to  think  too 
well  of  a  man  may  end  in  making  him  what  you  have  called  him." 

Trevenna  smiled, — his  arch,  humorous  smile,  that  danced  in  the  mirth  of 
his  eyes,  and  twinkled  so  joyously  and  mischievously  about  the  corners  of  his 
mouth. 

"If  it  be  your  preference  to  think  too  well  of  men,  trescher,  you  can 
hardly  miss  gratifying  it.  Rogues  grow  thick  as  blackberries.  Only  when 
Turcaret,  whom  you  think  the  mirror  of  honor,  makes  you  bankrupt,  and 
Gingillino,  whom  you  believe  the  soul  of  probity,  makes  off  with  your  plate,  and 
Tartuffe,  whom  you  have  deemed  a  saint  of  the  first  water,  forges  a  little  bill 
on  your  name,  blame  nobody  but  your  own  delightful  and  expensive  optimism; 
that's  all  !  Don't  you  know  you  think  too  well  of  me?" 

There  was  a  shade  of  earnestness  and,  for  the  instant,  of  regret  in  his  bold, 
bright  eyes,  as  they  fastened  themselves  on  Chandos'  ;  there  was,  for  the 
moment,  one  faint  impulse  of  compunction  arid  of  conscience  in  his  heart.  He 
knew  that  the  man  before  him  trusted  him  so  utterly,  so  loyally;  he  knew  that 
the  witness  of  the  world  to  sink  and  shame  him  would  only  have  made  the  hand 
of  Ernest  Chandos  close  firmer  on  his  own.  That  hand  was  stretched  out  now 
in  a  gesture  of  generous,  frank  grace,  of  true  and 'gallant  friendship.  The 
action  was  very  rare  .with  Chandos,  and  spoke  with  a  great  eloquence. 

"  You  know  I  have  no  fear  of  that.     Our  friendship  is  of  too  old  a  date." 

Trevenna  hesitated  a  moment,  one  slight,  impalpable  second  of  time,  not 
to  be  counted,  not  to  be  noted;  then  his  hand  closed  on  that  held  out  to  him. 

The  momentary  better  thought  had  gone  from  him.  When  he  took  the 
hand  of  Chandos  thus,  few  criminials  had  ever  fallen  lower  than  he.  Were 
Catholic  fancies  true,  and  "  guardian  angels  with  us  as  we  walk,"  his  guardian 
spirit  would  have  left  Trevenna  then  forever. 

"  Well,"  he  said,  with  his  mirthful  and  ringing  laugh,  like  his  voice,  clear 
and  resonant  as  a  clarion,  "  you  found  me  in  no  irreproachable  place,  mon  prince, 
at  any  rate:  so  yo.u  can't  complain  if  I  turn  out  a  scamp.  A  debtor's  prison 
wasn't  precisely  the  place  for  the  lord  of  Clarencieux  to  choose  an  ally." 

"  Many  a  '  lord  of  Clarencieux,'  has  gamed  away  his  wit  and  his  health, — 
which  was  your  only  sin  then,  my  dear  fellow.  I  am  not  afraid  of  the  con- 
sequences. So  many  people  who  speak  well  of  themselves  are  worth  nothing, 
that  by  inverse  ratio,  Trevenna,  you,  who  speak  so  ill  of  yourself,  must  be  worth 
a  great  deal.  You  look  at  some  things  from  too  low  a  standing-point,  to  my 
fancy,  to  be  sure;  but  you  see  as  high  as  your  stature  will  let  you,  I  suppose." 

"  Of  course.     Literally  and  metaphorically,  you're  a  very  tall  man,  and  I'm 


76  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

a  very  short;  and,  literally  and  metaphorically,  if  you  see  stars  I  don't,  I  see 
puddles  you  don't;  if  you  watch  for  planets  I  forget,  I  watch  for  quicksands 
you  forget.  '  My  stature  will  be  the  more  useful  of  the  two  in  the  end. 
Apropos  of  quicksands,  the  first  architect  of  them  in  the  country  was  magnifi- 
cent on  the  Cat  Tax,  last  night." 

"  Who  ?     Milverton  ?  " 

"  Yes,  Milverton  !  As  if  you'd  forgotten  who  was  exchequer  !  If  he  were 
a  handsome  coryphfr,  now,  you'd  be  eager  to  hear  every  syllable  about  the 
debut.  The  speech  was  superb  !  To  hear  him  !  he  drew  the  line  so  admirably 
between  the  necessary  and  humble  mouser,  helpmate  of  the  housewife,  and  the 
pampered  idle  Angora,  fed  on  panada  and  kept  from  caprice;  he  touched  so 
inimitably  on  the  cat  in  Egypt  and  Cyprus,  tracing  the  steps  by  which  a  deity 
had  become  a  drudge,  and  the  once-sacred  life  been  set  to  preserve  the  pantries 
from  mice;  he  threw  so  choice  a  sop  to  the  Exeter  Hall  party  by  alluding  to  its 
fall  as  a  meet  judgment  on  a  heathen  deity,  and  richly  merited  by  a  creature 
that  was  mentioned  in  Herodotus  and  not  in  the  Bible;  he  sprinkled  the  whole 
so  classically  with  Greek  quotations  that  it  greatly  imposed  the  House,  and 
greatly  posed  it,  its  members  having  derived  hazy  Attic  notions  from  Greek 
cribs  at  the  'Varsities  and  Grote  on  rainy  afternoons  in  the  country.  By  Jove 
the  whole  thing  was  masterly  !  The  Budget  will  pass  both  chambers." 

Chandos  laughed  as  he  ate  the  mellowest  of  peaches. 

"And  that  you  call  p'ublic  life  ?  a  slavery  to  send  straws  down  the  wind,  and 
twist  cables  of  sand  !  The  other  evening  I  drove  Milverton  to  Claire  Rahel's. 
Just  at  her  door  a  hansom  tore  after  us,  his  Whip  dashed  up;  the  House  was 
about  to  divide;  Milverton  must  go  down  directly.  And  he  went !  There  is 
an  existence  to  spend  !  Fancy  the  empty  platitudes  of  the  benches,  instead  of 
the  bright  mots  at  Rahel's;  the  empty  froth  of  place-men  patriots,  instead  of  the 
tasteful  foam  of  sparkling  Moselle  !  " 

"  Fie,  fie,  Chandos  !  You  shouldn't  satirize  St.  Stephen's  out  of  filial  re- 
spect." 

"  The  St.  Stephen's  of  my  father's  days  was  a  very  different  affair.  They 
are  not  politicians  now,  they  are  only  place-men;  they  don't  dictate  to  the  Press, 
the  Press  dictates  to  them;  they  don't  care  how  the  country  is  lowered,  they 
nly  care  to  keep  in  office.  When  there  is  a  European  simoon  blowing  through 
the  House,  I  may  come  and  look  on:  so  long  as  they  brew  storms  in  the 
saucer,  I  have  no  inclination  for  the  tea-party.  Would  you  like  public  life, 
Trevenna  ? " 

What's  the  good  of  my  lining  any  thing?     I'm  a  Pariah  of  the  pave, 

the  clubs;  I  can  only  float  myself  in  dinner-stories  and  gossip." 
1  Gossip !    You  inherit  the  souls  of  Pepys  and  Grimm.     That  such  a  clever 
fellow  as  you  can " 


CHANDOS.  77 

"  Precisely  because  I  am  a  clever  fellow  do  I  collect  what  everybody  loves, 
except  raffineurs  like  yourself.  I  am  never  so  welcome  as  when  I  take  about 
a  charmingly  chosen  bundle  of  characters  to  be  crushed  and  reputations  to  be 
cracked.  To  slander  his  neighbor  is  indirectly  to  flatter  your  listener;  of  course, 
slander  is  welcome.  Every  one  likes  to  hear  something  bad  of  somebody  else; 
it  enhances  his  comfort  when  he  is  comfortable,  and  makes  him  think  '  some- 
body's worse  off  than  I  am '  when  he  isn't." 

Chandos  laughed. 

"  I  wonder  if  there  were  ever  such  a  combination  of  Theophrastus's  bitter- 
ness and  Plautus's  good  humor  in  any  living  being  before  you,  Trevenna  ? 
You  judge  humanity  like  Rochefoucauld,  and  laugh  with  it  like  Falstaff ;  and 
you  tell  men  they  are  all  rascals,  as  merrily  as  if  you  said  they  were  all  angels." 

"  A  great  deal  more  merrily,  I  suspect.  One  can  get  a  good  deal  of  merri- 
ment out  of  rogues;  there  is  no  better  company  under  the  sun;  but  angels 
would  be  uncommonly  heavy  work.  Sin's  the  best  salt." 

"  Mr.  Paul  Leslie  is  waiting,  sir,"  said  the  groom  of  the  chambers,  ap- 
proaching his  master.  "  He  says  that  he  comes  by  appointment,  or " 

"  Quite  right;  I  will  see  him  in  the  library,"  said  Chandos,  as  he  rose,  hav- 
ing finished  his  breakfast,  and  heard  all  the  various  things  with  which  his  prime 
minister  had  come  charged. 

"  Paul  Leslie  ?  That's  a  new  name;  I  don't  know  it,"  said  Trevenna,  who 
made  a  point  of  knowing  every  one  who  came  to  his  host,  no  matter  how 
insignificant. 

"Very  likely.     He  never  gives  dinners,  and  could  not  lend  you  a  sou." 

There  was  a  certain  careless,  disdainful  irony  in  the  words,  half  unconscious 
to  Chandos  himself.  He  had  all  the  manner  of  the  vieille  cour,  all  its  stately 
grace,  and  all  its  delicate  disdain;  and,  cordial  as  was  his  regard  for  Trevenna, 
and  sincere  as  was  his  belief  that  the  bluntness  and  professed  egotism  of  the 
man  covered  a  thousand  good  qualities  and  proclaimed  a  candor  bright  and 
open  as  the  day,  he  was  not,  he  could  not  be,  blind  to  the  fact  that  Trevenna 
never  sought  or  heeded  any  living  soul  except  those  who  could  benefit  him. 

"  I  understand,"  laughed  Trevenna;  with  a  riding-whip  about  his  shoulders 
he  would  still  have  laughed  good-naturedly.  "  One  of  your  proteges,  of  course; 
some  Giotto  who  was  drawing  sheep  when  the  Clarencieux  Cimabue  saw  him; 
some  starving  Chatterton  who  has  plucked  up  heart  and  grace  to  write  and  ask 
the  author  of  Lucrhe  to  give  him  the  magna  nominis  umbra.  Tell  him  to  turn 
navvy  or  corn-chandler,  Chandos,  before  he  worships  the  Muses  without  having 
five  thousand  a  year  to  support  those  dissipated  ladies  upon;  and  twenty  years 
hence  he'll  thank  you  while  he  eats  his  fat  bacon  with  a  relish  in  the  pot-house, 
or  weighs  out  his  pottles  of  barley  in  sensible  contentment." 

"You  are  a  thorough  Englishman,  Trevenna;  you  would  make  a  poet  an 


QUID  AS     WORKS. 

exciseman,  and  expect  him  to  be  serenely  grateful  for  the  patronage  !  Pray, 
how  many  of  those  whcf  honor  •  the  Muses,'  as  you  call  them,  had  five  thou- 
sand a  year,  or  had  even  their  daily  bread  when  they  started,  for  that  matter? 
I  must  give  this  boy  his  audience,  so  I  may  not  see  you  till  we  meet  in  the  park 
or  the  clubs.  You  dine  with  me  to-night  ?  There  are  a  triad  of  serene  high- 
nesses coming,  and  German  royalty  is  terribly  oppressive  society." 

«  Oh,  I  will  be  here,  monseigneur;  I  obey  orders.  You  want  me  at  your 
dinners  as  Valois  wanted  Triboulet,  eh  ?  The  jester  is  welcomed  for  the  non- 
sense he  talks,  and  may  be  more  familiar  than,  guests  of  higher  degree." 

Chandos  turned  as  he  was  leaving  the  room,  struck  by  a  certain  tone  in  the 
words,  all  light  and  good-humored  as  they  were;  and  he  leaned  his  hand  on 
John  Trevenna's  shoulder  with  the  selfsame  gesture  he  had  used  to  the  musician 

Lulli. 

"  Triboulet  ?  What  are  you  thinking  of  ?  Men  of  your  talent  bring  their 
own  welcome,  and  are  far  more  creditor  than  debtor  to  society.  Surely, 
Trevenna,  you  never  misdoubt  the  sincerity  of  my  friendship  ?  " 

The  other  looked  up  with  his  bright  bonhomie. 

"  You  are  a  Sir  Calidore  of  courtesy.  No;  I  am  as  sure  of  the  quality  of 
your  friendship  as  I  am  of  the  quality  of  your  claret.  I  can't  say  more;  and, 
as  the  world  bows  down  before  you,  the  distinction  of  it  is  very  gratifying. 
Besides,  you  have  the  best  chef  in  town ;  and  I  dearly  love  a  friend  that  gives 
good  dinners." 

Chandos  laughed.  Trevenna  always  amused  him;  the  utter  absence  of 
flattery  refreshed  him,  and  he  knew  the  world  too  well  not  to  know  that  sincerity 
and  warmth  of  feeling  were  full  as  likely  to  lie  under  the  frankly-confessed 
egotism  as  under  the  suaver  protestations  of  other  men.  Yet  the  answer  chilled 
him  ever  so  slightly,  jarred  on  him  ever  so  faintly.  A  temperament  that  is 
never  earnest  is  at  times  well-nigh  as  wearisome  as  a  temperament  that  is  never 
gay;  there  comes  a  time  when,  if  you  can  never  touch  to  any  depth,  the  cease- 
less froth  and  brightness  of  the  surface  will  create  a  certain  sense  of  impatience, 
a  certain  sense  of  want.  He  felt  this  for  the  moment  with  Trevenna.  Tre- 
venna would  never  be  serious;  he  never  gave  anything  deeper  than  his  merry 
and  good-humored  banter. 

"  No  wonder  the  women  are  so  fond  of  the  caresses  of  those  mains  blanches; 
they  are  as  white  and  soft  and  as  delicate  as  a  girl's — curse  him  ! "  thought 
Trevenna,  while  his  eyes  glanced  from  Chandos'  hand,  as  it  fell  from  his 
shoulder,  and  on  to  his  own,  which  was  broad,  strong,  and  coarse,  both  in  shape 
and  in  fibre,  though  tenacious  in  hold  and  characteristic  in  form.  The  hand 
of  Chandos  was  the  hand  of  the  aristocrat  and  of  the  artist  molded  in  one; 
Trevenna's  that  of  the  working-man,  of  the  agile  gymnast,  of  the  hardy  moun- 
tain-climber. 


CHANDOS.  79 

The  thought  was  petty  and  passionate  as  any  woman's — the  envy  puerile  and 
angered  to  a  feminine  and  childish  littleness.  But  this  was  Trevenna's  one 
weakness,  this  jealousy  of  all  these  differences  of  caste  and  of  breeding,  as  his 
sonnets  were  Richelieu's,  as  his  paintings  were  Goethe's,  as  his  deformed  limb 
was  Byron's. 

The  warm  friendship  offered  him  and  proved  to  him  was  forgotten  in  the 
smart  of  a  small,  wounded  vanity.  A  straw  misplaced  will  make  us  enemies;  a 
millstone  of  benefits  hung  about  his  neck  may  fail  to  anchor  down  by  us  a  single 
friend.  We  may  lavish  what  we  will, — kindly  thought,  loyal  service,  untiring 
aid,  and  generous  deed, — and  they  are  all  but  as  oil  to  the  burning,  as  fuel,  to 
the  flame,  when  spent  upon  those  who  are  jealous  of  us. 

Despite,  however,  his  hearty  curse  upon  his  host,  Trevenna  went  on  with  his 
breakfast  complacently,  while  Chandos  left  him  to  give  audience  (and  some- 
thing more)  to  the  young  artist,  a  clever  boy  without  a  sou,  with  the  talent  of 
a  Scheffer  and  the  poverty  of  a  Chatterton,  whom  he  was  about  to  enable  to 
study  in  peace  in  Rome.  Trevenna  was  a  sagacious  man,  a  practical  man,  and 
did  not  allow  his  own  personal  enmities,  or  the  slight  circumstance  of  his  having 
mentally  damned  the  man  whose  hospitality  he  enjoyed,  to  interfere  with  his 
appreciation  of  hi-s  lobster-cutlets,  liqueurs,  pates,  and  amontillado. 

In  truth,  to  eat  and  drink  like  Lucullus  and  Sancho  Panza  merged  in  one, 
at  the  expense  of  Chandos,  had  a  certain  relish  for  Trevenna  that  gave  the  meals 
a  better  flavor  than  all  Dubosc's  sauces  could  have  achieved.  Trevenna  was 
only  the  choicest  of  gourmets  at  table,  but  he  was  the  most  insatiable  of  gour- 
mands in  enmity. 

Then,  when  he  had  fairly  finished  a  breakfast  that  would  have  done  honor 
to  the  inventions  of  a  Ude,  he  went  out  to  the  clubs, — it  was  two  o'clock  in  the 
day, — to  keep  up  his  reputation  as  a  popular  talker,  with  a  variety  of  charming, 
damaging  stories,  and  inimitable  specimens  of  inventive  ingenuity,  such  as 
made  him  welcome  at  all  the  best  tables,  and  well  received  even  in  the  smoking 
sanctum  of  the  Guards'  club.  Trevenna  had  not  dined  at  his  own  expense  for 
ten  years;  he  knew  so  well  how  to  amuse  society.  His  manufactures  were 
matchless:  they  were  the  most  adroit  and  lasting  slanders  of  all, — slanders  that 
had  a  foundation  of  truth. 

"  What's  up,  Charlie  ?  You  look  rather  blue,"  said  that  easiest  and  most 
familiar  of  "  diners-out,"  whom  no  presence  could  awe  and  no  coolness  could 
ice,  as  he  sauntered  now  down  Pall  Mall  with  a  young  dandy  of  the  Foreign 
Office,  who  had  played  so  much  chicken-hazard,  and  planned  so  many  Crown 
and  Sceptre  and  Star  and  Garter  fetes  in  the  mornings  which  he  devoted  to  the 
State,  that  he  had  come  to  considerable  grief  over  "  floating  paper." 

Charlie  nodded  silently,  pulling  his  amber  moustaches.  He  was  rather  a 
handsome,  gallant  young  fellow;  England  shows  his  style  by  the  dozens  any 


80  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

day  in  the  season,-a  good  style,  too,  when  it  comes  out  to  the  test  in  Cana- 
dian winters,  Crimean  camps,  and  mountain-India  campaigns 

«Tiskt  eh?  Dal  won't  bleed?"  asked  Trevenna,  with  a  good-natured, 
almost  affectionate  interest.  -Dal "was  Lord  Dallerstone,  Charlie's  elder 

brother.  T  .     . 

"Bleed?   No.    He's  up  a  tree  himself,"  murmured  the  victim. 

confounded  Tindall  &  Co.  people;  they've  got  bills  of  mine,— bought  them  in, 
—and  they  put  the  screw  on  no  end." 

"  Tindall  &  Co.?    Ah  ?     Hard  people,  a'n't  they  ? " 

"  Devils  ! "  murmured  Charlie,  still  in  the  sleepiest  of  tones.  "  It's  that  vile 
old  Jew  Mathias,  you  know;  he's  the  firm,  no  doubt  of  it,  though  he  keeps  it  so 

dark.     '  Pay  or '     That's  all  they  say;  and  I've  no  more  idea  where  to  get 

any  money  than  that  pug." 

"  Bought  your  paper  up  ?  that  is  awkward  work,"  said  Trevenna,  musingly. 
"  I  hardly  see  what  you  can  do.  I  know  the  Tindall  people  are  very  sharp,— 
old  Hebrew  beggar  is,  as  you  say,  at  least.  How  much  breathing-time  do  they 
give  you  ? " 

"  Only  till  Thursday." 

Charlie  turned  a  little  pale  as  he  said  it,  and  gnawed  the  yellow  silk  of  his 
moustaches  with  a  terrible  anxiety  at  his  heart.  The  gay  young  fellow,  the 
fashionable  butterfly  of  the  F.  O.,  knew  little  more  of  business  than  a  child  un- 
born; he  only  knew  that  somehow  or  other,  thanks  to  tailors,  coryphtes,  wine, 
and  whitebait,  he  had  gone  the  pace  too  hard,  and  was  now  all  down  hill  with 
the  "  traces  broke." 

"  Humph  !  only  forty-eight  hours;  close  shave  !  "  said  Trevenna.  "  Of 
course  you  can't  do  anything,  if  you're  not  able  to  get  the  money.  They've  the 
law  on  their  side." 

Charlie  looked  at  him  a  little  wistfully.  Men  always  confided  in  Trevenna, 
not  certainly  because  he  was  simpatico, — rather  because,  in  the  first  place,  he 
was  always  good-natured  and  ready  to  give  them  his  shrewd,  clear,  practical 
counsels,  and,  again,  because  the  quick  resources  of  his  adroit  wits  and  the 
prompt  energy  of  his  temperament  inspired  them  with  instinctive  confidence 
and  hope. 

"  Cant  you  think  of  anything?  You're  such  a  clever  fellow,  Trevenna  !  " 
asked  the  embryo  diplomatist,  whose  personal  diplomacy  was  at  'its  wits'  end. 

"  Thanks  for  the  compliment,  bon  garfon,  but  I'm  not  clever  enough  to  make 
money  out  of  nothing.  How  people  would  rush  to  my  laboratory,  if  I  were  ! 
I  should  cut  out  all  the  pet  preachers  with  the  women.  I  really  haven't  an  idea 
what  advice  to  give  you.  I'd  see  these  Tindall  rascals  with  pleasure  for  you; 
but  I  don't  suppose  that  would  do  any  good." 

"  Try  !  there's  a  good  fellow  !  "  said  the  boy,  with  more  eagerness  than  he 


CHANDOS,  81 

had  ever  thrown  into  his  sleepy,  silky  voice  in  all  the  days  of  his  dandyism. 
"  Oh,  by  George,  Trevenna,  what  a  brick  you'd  be  !  they'd  listen  to  you,  you 
know,  ten  to  one — — " 

Trevenna  shook  his  head. 

"  I'm  afraid  not.  A  Jew  hears  no  reason  that  doesn't  satisfy  his  pocket. 
Still,  I'll  try  what  I  can  do;  I'll  ask  them  to  let  you  have  longer  time,  at  any 
rate.  Perhaps  they'll  be  persuaded  to  renew  the  bills.  Anyway,  I'm  more  up 
to  City  tricks  than  you  are,  Charlie.  Let's  see:  what's  their  place  of  business  ? 
I  remember, — that  wretched,  dirty  place  in  Piffler's  Court,  isn't  it.  I'll  go  down 
there  to-morrow  morning." 

Charlie's  languid  eyes  brightened  with  delighted  hope,  and  he  thanked  his 
friend  over  and  over  again  with  all  that  cordial  but  embarrassed  eagerness 
which  characterizes  Young  England  when  it  is  warmly  touched  and  does  not 
like  to  make  a  fool  of  itself.  Charlie's  heart  was  a  very  kind  and  a  very  honest 
one,  under  the  shell  of  dandy  apathy,  and  it  held  Trevenna  from  that  moment 
in  the  closest  gratitude. 

"  Such  a  brick  of  a  fellow,  to  go  bothering  himself  into  that  beastly  City 
after  my  affairs  !  "  he  thought,  as  he  turned  into  Pratt's  for  a  game  of  billiards, 
while  Trevenna  sauntered  on  down  the  shady  side  of  the  street. 

"It's  as  well  to  oblige  him;  we  should  get  nothing  by  putting  the  screw  on 
him;  he  is  only  worth  the  tobacco-pots  and  art -trash  he's  heaped  together  in  his 
rooms,  and  that  chestnut  back  that  he's  never  paid  for.  It's  as  well  to  oblige 
him.  Dal  will  kill  himself  sooner  or  later  at  the  rate  he  goes,  and  the  next 
brother's  an  invalid;  Charlie's  sure  to  have  the  title,  I  fancy,  some  day  or  other," 
thought  Trevenna,  as  he  went  along,  encountering  acquaintances  at  every  yard, 
and  receiving  a  dozen  invitations  to  luncheon  in  as  many  feet  of  the  trottoir. 
This  was  Trevenna's  special  statesmanship, — to  cast  his  nets  so  forward  that 
they  took  in  not  only  the  present  but  the  future.  He  sought  the  society  and 
the  friendship  of  young  men:  who  knew  what  use  they  might  not  be  some  day  ? 

Men  thought  him  "  a  pushing  fellow,  but  then  so  deucedly  amusing,"  and 
liked  him.  He  was  almost  everywhere  welcome  to  them;  for  he  was  not  only 
a  popular  wit  and  a  gossiper,  but  he  was  a  surpassing  whist  and  a  capital  billiard- 
player,  an  excellent  shot,  a  splendid  salmon-fisher,  and  as  unerring  a  judge  of 
all  matters  "  horsy"  as  ever  pronounced  on  a  set  of  Rawcliffe  yearlings  and 
picked  out  the  winner  from  the  cracks  at  Danetury.  They  thought  him 
"nobody,"  and  looked  on  him  as  only  Chandos'  protege  and  homme  d'affaires, 
but  they  liked  him.  Women  alone  never  favored  him,  and  held  him  invariably 
at  an  icy  distance,  partly,  of  course,  from  the  fact  that  women  never  smile  upon 
a  man  who  has  nothing.  Ladies  are  your  only  thorough  Optimates.  You  like 
a  man  if  he  be  a  good  shot,  a  good  rider,  a  good  talker,  they  must  first  know 
"  all  about  him;"  you  laugh  if  the  wit  be  ben  trovato,  they  must  learn,  before 


82  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

they  smile,  if  the  speaker  be  worth  applauding;  you  will  listen  if  the  brain  be 
well  filled,  they  must  know  that  the  purse  is  so  also.  Women  therefore  gave 
no  sort  of  attention  to  Trevenna,  but  only  spoke  of  him  as  «  a  little  man,— 
odious  little  man,  so  brusque;  he  keeps  a  cab,  and  lives  no  one  knows  how; 
hangs  on  to  great  men,  and  rich  men,  like  Chandos." 

Besides,  Trevenna  offended  ladies  in  other  ways.     If  not  a  great  disciple  of 
truth  in  proprid  persona,  he  scattered  a  good  many  truths  about  in  the  world, 
though  he  lied  with  an  enchanting  readiness  and  tact  when  occasion  needed. 
He  nevertheless  satirized  hypocrisy  and  humbug  with  a  genuine  relish  in  the 
work;  his  natural  candor  relieved  itself  in  the  flagellations  he  gave  humanity. 
He  had  a  rich  Hudibrastic  vein  in  him,  and  he  was  not  the  less  sincere  in  his 
ironies  on  the  world's  many  masks  because  his  sagacity  led  him  to  borrow  them 
to  serve  his  own  ends.     Now,  Truth,  is  a  rough,  honest,  helter-skelter  terrier, 
that  none  like  to  see  brought  into  their  drawing-rooms,  throwing  over  all  their 
dainty  little  ornaments,  upsetting  their  choicest  Dresden  that  nobody  guessed 
was  cracked  till  it  fell  with  the  mended  side  uppermost,  and  keeping  every  one 
in  incessant  tremor  lest  the  next  snap  should  be  at  their  braids  or  their  boots, 
of  which  neither  the  varnish  nor  the  luxuriance  will  stand  rough  usage.     Tre- 
venna took  this  unmuzzled  brute  about  with  him  into  precincts  where  there 
were  delicacies  a  touch  would  soil,-  frailties  a  brush  would  crack,  and  smooth 
carpets  of  brilliant  bloom  and  velvet  gloss  that,  scratched  up,  showed  the  bare 
boards  underneath  and  let  in  the  stench  of  rats  rotting  below.     Of  course  he 
and  the  terrier  too  were  detested  by  ladies.     Such  a  gaucherie  would  have  been 
almost  unbearable  in  a  duke  !     They  would  have  had  difficulty  to  control  the 
grimace  into  a  smile  had  the  coarse  and  cruel  pastime  been  a  prince's:  for  a 
penniless  man-about-town  it  was  scarcely  likely  they  would  open  their  boudoir- 
doors  to  such  a  master  and  to  such  an  animal.     Women  abominated  him,  and 
Trevenna  was  too  shrewd  to  underrate  the  danger  of  his  enemies.     He  knew 
that  women  make  nine-tenths  of  all  the  mischief  of  this  world,  and  that  their 
delicate  hands  demolish  the  character  and  the  success  of  any  one  whom  they 
dislike;  but  to  have  given  himself  to  conciliate  them  would  have  been  a  task 
of  such  infinite  weariness  to  him  that  he  let  things  go  as  they  would,  and  set 
himself  to  achieve  what  he  purposed  without  reference  to  them.     He  was  quite 
sure  that  if  success  shone  on  him  the  fair  sex  would  smile  too,  and  would  soon 
find  out  that  he  was  the  most  "delightful  original  in  the  world  ! " 

"  Chandos,"  said  Trevenna,  an  hour  or  two  later,  taking  his  friend  and 
patron  aside  for  a  second  in  one  of  the  windows  in  White's.  He  was  not  a 
member  there;  even  Chandos'  influence  could  not  as  yet  exclude  three  or  four 
inevitable  black  balls  to  his  name;  but  he  dropped  in  now  and  then  on  the  score 
f  needing  to  see  his  friend.  Men  could  do  under  the  shadow  of  Chandos' 
name  or  wish  what  they  never  could  have  done  otherwise.  « I  want  to  tell  you 


CHANDOS.  83 

something.  That  young  brother  of  Dallerstone's  has  come  to  grief, — fallen  in 
Jew's  hands, — got  up  a  tree  altogether.  Dal  can't  help  htm;  he's  as  bad  him- 
self; and  they'll  be  down  upon  Charlie  on  Thursday." 

"  Poor  boy  !     Cannot  we  stop  that  ? " 

Chandos  was  watching  the  carriage-beauties  roll  past,  and  was  not  heeding 
very  much;  but  his  natural  impulse  was  to  help  anybody. 

''Well,  you  could,  of  course;  but  it  is  asking  a  great  deal  of  you.  I  have 
promised  him  to  see  Tindall's  people." 

"  Who  are  they  ? " 

"Jew  firm  in  the  City;  hold  a  good  many  of  your  aristocratic  friends  in 
their  teeth,  too.  But  I  was  going  to  say  I  can't  do  anything  for  him  unless  I 
take  them  some  security  that  they  will  have  their  money.  Now,  if  I  could  use 
your  name,  though  there  is  no  reason  in  life  why  you  should  give  it " 

"  My  name  ?  Oh,  I  will  serve  him,  certainly,  if  he  be  in  difficulties.  He 
is  a  nice  young  fellow,  Charlie.  What  is  it  you  want  done  ?  " 

"  Merely  your  name  to  get  the  bills  renewed.  They'll  trust  that.  They 
wouldn't  take  any  more  of  Master  Charlie's  signatures,  or  of  his  dandy  young 
F.  O.  friends  of  straw;  but  if  you  back  him  up  I  daresay  I  can  get  him  a 
reprieve." 

"  Oh,  yes;  I  will  do  that.  But  I  suppose  his  debts  are  not  very  great  ? — he 
is  such  a  lad.  Would  it  not  be  better  to  buy  his  paper  out  of  these  Hebrew's 
hands  ? " 

"  Mercy  on  us,  monseigneur  !  "  cried  Trevenna.  "  If  you  don't  talk  as 
coolly  of  buying  up  any  unknown  quantity  of  bills  as  of  buying  a  cigar-case  ! 
No  :  there  is  no  necessity  for  doing  anything  of  the  kind.  If  you  will  just 
give  your  name  to  renew  the  acceptances,  it  will  serve  him  admirably.  Mind, 
this  is  entirely  my  idea;  he  doesn't  dream  of  it;  but  I  know  you  are  always  so 
willing  to  aid  any  one." 

"  I  shall  be  most  happy  to  do  him  any  good, — poor  young  fellow  !  You 
can  have  my  signature  when  you  like,  though  I  think  I  might  as  well  buy  the 
bills  at  once;  for  most  likely  i£  will  end  in  my  paying  the  money,"  laughed 
Chandos,  as  he  dropped  his  eyeglass  and  turned  to  shake  hands  with  the  Duke 
of  Crowndiamonds.  Trevenna's  eyes  smiled  with  self-contented  amusement 
as  he  stood  a  moment  watching  the  roll  of  the  carriages  down  St.  James's 
Street. 

"  That  was  a  very  good  thought,"  he  mused  to  himself.  "  I  shall  oblige 
Charlie, — what  an  angel  he  will  think  me  ! — and  we  shall  get  another  of  the 
Prince  of  Clarencieux's  signatures  into  Tindall  &  Co.'s  hands.  Ah  !  there  is 
nothing  like  combination  and  management." 

"  How  does  that  man  live,  Ernest?  "  asked  Cos  Grenvil,  as  Trevenna  drove 
from  the  doors  of  White's  in  his  very  dashing  little  tilbury. 


84  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

"  Live,  my  dear  fellow  ?    I  don't  know.     What  do  you  mean  ? " 

"  How  does  he  get  the  money  to  keep  that  trap  ?  The  mare's  worth  five 
hundred  guineas.  He  always  vows  he  hasn't  a  sou." 

"  A  man  must  drive  something,"  said  Chandos,  who  knew  that  the  mare 
had  come  out  of  his  own  stables.  "  Trevenna  always  dines  out,  you  know; 
and  rooms  in  a  .quiet  street  cost  nothing." 

"  Where  was  it  you  first  met  him  ? " 

"  I  ?    At  Baden,  years  and  years  ago." 

"Ah?"  yawned  Grenvil:  "plenty  of  scoundrels  to  be  picked  up  there." 

Chandos  laughed. 

"Thanks  for  the  information,  Cos.  You  are  prejudiced  against  Trevenna. 
Don't  believe  all  the  nonsense  he  talks  against  himself  :  there  is  not  a  better 
fellow  living." 

" '  On  aime  mieux  dire  du  mal  de  soi-meme  que  de  n'en  point  parler,' " 
murmured  Grenvil.  "I  fancy  that's  your  prime  minister's  reason  for  black- 
guarding himself  so  candidly,  /don't  like  him  !  Who  is  he,  by  the  way?" 

"  I  am  sure  I  can  scarcely  tell  you.  I  believe  his  father  was  a  consul,  and 
died  abroad  somewhere;  so  he  told  me,  at  the  least.  I  never  asked  any  more. 
I  know  he  is  an  infinitely  clever  fellow, — a  thorough  scholar  too,  though  he 
never  shows  off  his  scholarship.  Ah,  there  is  the  Lennox  !  How  splendidly 
that  woman  wears  !  she  must  be  thirty,  but  she  is  lovely  as  she  was  ten  years 
ago." 

"  Beatrix  ?  Yes.  Berkeley  considers  himself  plus  fin  que  tous  les  autres; 
but  even  he  says  he's  never  thoroughly  sure  of  being  quite  up  to  Tricksy 
Lennox." 

"What  a  compliment  she  will  deem  it !  She  is  dangerous,  I  suppose;  her 
ecart£  is  costly,  but  then — her  eyes  are  so  lovely  !  I  always  liked  Mrs.  Len- 
nox; she  is  really  perfect  style,  and,  besides " 

Chandos  did  not  conclude  his  sentence  as  to  his  regard  for  the  subject  of 
it,  but  looked  after  her  a  moment.  A  lovely  woman,  as  he  had  said,  with  hazel 
eyes  and  hair  and  a  half-disdainful,  half-melancholy  glance  from  under  her 
drooping  lids,  who  was  driving  a  team  of  cream  Circassian  ponies.  "  L' Empire, 
c'est  moi"  was  written  in  every  line  of  her  proud,  classic  features,  Queen  of 
the  Free  Lances  as  she  was,  daring  and  unscrupulous  Bohemian  as  the  world 
notoriously  declared  her. 

Trevenna,  farther  down  St.  James's  Street,  arm-in-arm  with  a  young  M.P., 
who,  having  little  brains  of  his  own,  was  very  glad  to  glean  a  few  of  the  witty 
sayings  and  the  sagacious  notions  of  the  man-about-town,  saw  Beatrix  Lennox 
too,  as  her  four  creams  dashed  along  like  fiery  little  fanciful  animals  as  they 
were. 

"Confound  that  woman!"  said  the  astute  diplomatist  to  himself ;  but  he 


CHANDOS.  85 

took  off  his  hat  to  her  with  his  merriest,  brightest,  and  most  pleasant  smile. 
"  Rather  a  superfluous  bit  of  ceremonious  homage  to  Tricksy  Lennox,  eh  ? "  he 
said  to  the  young  member,  as  he  put  his  white  hat  on  again. 

Women  had  a  just  prevoyance,  after  all,  in  their  dislike  to  Trevenna.  No- 
body on  earth  could  more  irretrievably  blot  and  blast  their  reputations  with  a 
laugh. 

"  This  note  came  for  you,  sir,  during  the  morning,"  said  Alexis,  his  head 
valet,  as  Chandos  went  into  his  chamber  to  dress  for  dinner  at  the  French 
Embassy. 

"  Who  brought  it  ? " 

"  I  really  don't  know  who,  sir;  a  commissionnaire.  He  could  not  tell  who 
the  servant  was  that  gave  it  him,  but  said  he  was  to  beg  me  to  see  it  personally 
shown  you,"  said  Alexis,  to  whom  the  commissionnaire  had  brought  a  consider- 
able douceur  to  induce  him  to  perform  this  office,  all  the  letters  that  were  sent 
to  Chandos  in  unknown  hands  passing  to  his  secretary. 

He  took  it  as  he  went  into  his  dressing-room,  and  glanced  at  it  indifferently. 
Like  all  well-known  men,  he  received  so  many  communications  from  strangers 
that  he  never  looked  at  any  letters  save  those  he  especially  cared  to  open.  We 
are  all  more  or  less  martyrs  to  letters,  and  get  a  salutary  dread  of  them  as  years 
roll  onward.  But  this  little  note  was  so  delicate,  so  perfumy,  so  pretty,  and 
looked  so  like  a  love-missive,  that  Chandos  for  once  broke  both  his  rule  and  its 
seal.  Little  of  Love  repaid  him;  the  note  was,  of  most  unfeminine  brevity, 
though  of  thoroughly  feminine  mystery. 

"CHANDOS: — 

"  Believe  in  evil  for  once  in  your  life  if  you  can.  The  man  you  took  out  of 
a  debtor's  prison  hates  you,  if  ever  there  were  hate  in  this,  world.  Under  his 
bright  good  humor  there  lies  a  purpose  very  fatal  to  you.  What  purpose  ?  I 
cannot  tell  you.  Watch,  and  you  may  unmask  it.  All  I  entreat  of  you  is,  be 
on  your  guard;  and  do  not  let  your  own  heedless  generosity,  you  own  loyal  and 
gallant  faith,  betray  you  into  the  hands  of  a  traitor.  Give  no  trust,  give  no 
friendship,  to  Trevenna:  '  latet  anguis  in  herba.' 

"  Your  most  sincere  well-wisher." 

Chandos  read  the  note,  then  crushed  it  up  and  flung  it  from  him. 

A  certain  chilliness  had  passed  over  him  at  the  words  that  attacked  in  the 
dark  the  man  whom  he  had  so  long  trusted  and  befriended.  Belief  in  it,  even 
for  a  second,  had  not  power  to  touch  him.  An  anonymous  note  of  course 
brought  its  own  condemnation  with  it;  but  suspicion  in  any  shape  was  so  utterly 
alien  and  abhorrent  to  him  that  its  mere  suggestion  repelled  him.  Suspicion, 
to  frank  and  generous  tempers,  is  a  cowardice,  a  treachery,  a  vile  and  creeping 


86 


QUID  AS     WORKS. 


thing  that  dares  not  brave  the  daylight.  The  attack,  the  innuendo,  the  unau- 
thenticated  charge,  only  rallied  him  nearer  him  whom  they  impugned,  not  from 
obstinacy  or  from  waywardness,— his  nature  was  too  gentle  to  have  a  touch  of 

either, but  simply  from  the  chivalry  in  his  temperament  that  drew  him  to 

those  who  were  slandered,  and  the  loyalty  in  his  friendship  that  clung  closer  to 
his  friend  when  in  need. 

"  Poor  Trevenna  !  Some  lady's  vengeance,  I  suppose.  If  she  were  not  too 
clever  for  any  such  folly,  and  too  generous  for  any  such  slander,  I  should  say 
the  writing  was  Beatrix  Lennox's:  it  is  very  like,  though  disguised,"  he  thought, 
as  he  glanced  at  the  note  where  it  lay  among  the  azure  silk  and  laces  of  his 
bed,  where  it  had  fallen. 

It  left  a  transient  pain,  impatience,  and  depression  on  him  for  ten  minutes 
after  its  reception.  To  have  read  the  mere  suggestion  of  perfidy  in  the  man 
he  trusted  made  Chandos  fell  himself  a  traitor;  and  to  his  careless,  insouciant, 
serenity-loving  temper,  any  jar  of  a  harsher  world,  any  breath  of  doubt  or  of 
treachery,  was  as  repellant  to  his  mind  as  the  east  wind  was  to  his  senses. 

He  took  his  bath,  of  whose  perfumes  he  was  as  fond  as  a  Greek,  dressed, 
aud  went  to  dinner  at  the  French  Embassy,  and  thence  to  the  succession  of  en- 
tertainments and  pleasures  that  awaited  him,  closing  the  night  at  four  o'clock 
in  the  morning  over  the  gay  sonper  a  huis  clos  of  that  new  Adrienne  Lecouvreur, 
Claire  Rahel;  and  throughout  the  night  he  did  not  think  once  of  the  little  note 
that  lay  hidden  among  the  silk  folds  of  the  curtains,  crumpled  and  forgotten, 
vain  and  useless,  as  most  warnings  are,  and  as,  certainly,  anonymous  warnings 
deserve  to  be,  however  good  their  intention. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

A  JESTER   WHO   HATED   BOTH    PRINCE   AND   PALACE. 

"  LADY  CHESTERTON,  is  vowing  Cherubino  is  divine.     What  queer  divinity  ! 

What  would  Michael  Angelo  have  said  to  an  archangel  in  a  tail-coat,  a  lace 

cravat,  and  a  pair  of  white  kid  gloves,  holding  a  roll  of  music,  and  looking  a 

between  a  brigand,  a  waiter,  and  a  parson  ? "  said  Trevenna  to  the  Com- 

;e  de  la  Vivarol.     Madame  de  la  Vivarol  was  the  only  woman  who  in  any 

ray  countenanced  and  liked  Trevenna,  the  only  one  of  the  grandes  dames,  of 

isive  leaders  of  ton,  who  ever  deigned  to  notice  his  existence;  and  she 

\  by  his  impudence,  his  sang-froid,  and  his  oddity,  and  paid  him  only 

s  much  attention  as  Montespan  and  other  great  ladies  of  Versailles  paid 


CHANDOS.  87 

their  Barbary  monkey  or  their  little  negro  dwarf,  according  the  pet  liberties  be- 
cause of  its  strangeness  and  its  insignificance. 

"  Droll  life,  a  public  singer's,"  went  on  Trevenna,  who  could  not  keep  his 
tongue  quiet  even  through  a  morning  concert,  and  who,  moreover,  hated  music 
heartily,  and  could  not  have  told  "Mosein  Egitto"  from  "Yankee  Doodle." 
"Subsists  on  his  clavicle,  and  keeps  his  bank-balance  in  his  thorax;  knows  his 
funds  will  go  down  if  he  hatches  up  a  sore  throat,  and  loses  all  his  capital  if  he 
catches  a  cough;  lunches  off  cutlets  and  claret  to  come  and  sing  'The  moon 
rides  high,'  in  broad  daylight;  and  cries  <Io  son  ricco  e  tu  sei  bella,'  while  he's 
wondering  how  he  shall  pay  his  debts,  and  thinking  what  an  ugly  woman  the 
singer  with  him  in  the  duo  is.  Ah,  by-the-by,  madame, — apropos  of  plain 
women, — the  Marchesa  di  Santiago  has  given  some  superb  malachite  candelabra 
as  a  votive  offermg  to  Moorfields,  for  the  same  reason,  they  do  say,  as  the 
Princess  de  Soubise  gave  gold  lamps  to  Bossuet,  '  pour  le  pouvoir  de  pecher  a 
1'ame  tranquille.' " 

"Chut!  I  detest  scandal,"  smiled  Madame  de  la  Vivarol;  "and  license 
has  its  limits,  M.  Trevenna.  Madame  di  Santiago  is  my  most  particular  friend." 

"  Exactly;  of  your  enemy,  madame,  I  know  a  detrimental  story  would  not 
be  half  so  piquant !  To  hear  ill  of  our  foes  is  the  salt  of  life,  but  to  hear  ill  of 
our  friends  is  the  sauce  blanche  itself,"  responded  Trevenna  the  Impertur- 
bable. 

The  countess  laughed,  and  gave  him  a  dainty  blow  with  her  satin  pro- 
gramme. 

"  Most  impudent  of  men  !  When  will  you  learn  the  first  lesson  of  society, 
and  decently  and  discreetly  apprendre  &  vous  effacert  " 

"  A  m'effacer  ?  The  advice  Lady  Harriet  Vandeleur  gave  Cecil.  Very 
good  for  mediocre  people,  I  dare  say;  but  it  wouldn't  suit  me.  There  are  some 
people,  you  know,  that  won't  iron  down  for  the  hardest  rollers.  M'effacert  No! 
I'd  rather  any  day  be  an  ill-bred  originality  than  a  well-bred  nonentity." 

"  Then  you  succeed  perfectly  in  being  what  you  wish  !  Don't  you  know, 
monsier,  that  to  set  yourself  against  conventionalities  is  like  talking  too  loud  ? 
— an  impertinence  and  an  under-breeding  that  society  resents  by  exclusion  ? " 

"  Yes,  I  know  it.  But  a  duke  may  bawl,  and  nobody  shuts  out  him;  a 
prince  might  hop  on  one  leg,  and  everybody  would  begin  to  hop  too.  Now, 
what  the  ducal  lungs  and  the  princely  legs  might  do  with  impunity,  I  declare 
I've  a  right  to  do,  if  I  like." 

"£&asse.f"  said  madame;  "no  one  can  declare  his  rights  till  he  can  do 
much  more,  and — purchase  them.  Have  a  million,  and  we  may  perhaps  give 
you  a  little  license  to  be  unlike  other  persons;  without  the  million  it  is  an  ill- 
bred  gaucherie." 

"  Ah,  I  know  !     Only  a  nobleman  may  be  original ;  a  poor  penniless  wretch 


88 


QUID  AS     WORKS. 


upon  town  must  be  humbly  and  insignificantly  commonplace.  What  a  pity  for 
the  success  of  the  aristocratic  monopolists  that  nature  puts  clever  fellows  and 
fools  just  in  the  reverse  order  !  But  then  nature's  a  shocking  socialist." 

"  And  so  are  you." 

Trevenna  laughed. 

"  Hush,  madame.     Pray  don't  destroy  me  with  such  a  whisper." 

"  And  be  silent  yourself,"  said  Madame  la  Comtesse.  "  You  are  the  most 
incorrigible  chatterer  out  of  a  monkey-house;  and  one  cannot  silence  you  with 
a  few  nuts  to  crack,  for  the  only  thing  you  relish  is  mischief.  Chut  !  I  want 
to  hear  the  concerto." 

"  Apprendre  A  m'effacer"  meditated  Trevenna.  "  Life  has  wanted  to  teach 
me  that  lesson  ever  since  I  opened  my  eyes  to  it.  'Fall  in  with  the  ruck; 
never  think  of  winning  the  race;  never  dare  to  start  for  the  gold  cups  or  enter 
yourself  for  the  aristocratic  stakes:  plod  on  between  the  cart-shafts;  toil  over 
the  beaten  tracks;  let  them  beat  you,  and  gall  you,  and  tear  your  mouth  with 
the  curb,  and  never  turn  against  them;  but,  though  you  hate  your  existence 
with  all  your  might  and  main,  bless  the  Lord  for  your  creation,  preservation, 
and  salvation.'  That  was  the  lesson  they  tried  to  teach  me.  I  said  I'd  be  shot 
if  I'd  learn  it;  all  the  teachers  and  law-givers  couldn't  force  it  down  my  throat. 
I  am  a  rank  outsider;  nobody  knows  my  stable  or  my  trainer,  my  sire  or  my 
dam;  nobody  would  bet  a  tenner  on  my  chances.  N'importe  !  a  rank  out- 
sider has  carried  the  Derby  away  from  the  favorite  before  now." 

With  which  consolatory  metaphor  of  the  turf,  Trevenna  leaned  back  to 
Lady  Chesterton  with  as  familiar  a  sans  fa$on  as  though  he  were  the  Duke  of 
Crowndiamonds. 

"Pretty  landscape,  that  Hobbema  ?  Nothing  but  a  hovel  among  birch 
trees.  Why  on  earth  is  a  tumble  down  cottage  so  much  prettier  on  canvas 
than  a  marble  mansion  ?  One  likes  crooked  lines  better  than  straight  ones,  I 
suppose,  in  art  and  out  of  it.  Humanity  has  a  natural  weakness  for  the 
zigzag." 

Lady  Chesterton  made  him  a  distant  bow,  and  a  stare  of  such  unutterable 
insolence  as  only  a  great  lady  can  command. 

"  That  insufferable  person  !  Such  an  odious  ton  de  garnison  !  I  cannot 
think  how  Chandos  can  countenance  him,"  said  her  ladyship,  without  deigning 
to  murmur  any  lower  than  usual,  to  the  Marchioness  of  Sangroyal  beside  her. 

The  concert  at  which  Trevenna  was  solacing  himself  for  the  martyrdom  of 

melody  by  watching  with  his  bright  eyes  for  waifs  and  strays,  for  hints  and 

grounds  of  future   scandalous  and  entertaining  historiettes,  was  one  of  the 

musical  mornings  for  which  the  house  in  Park  Lane  was   famous;  concerts   of 

loicest,  under  the  organization  of  Guido  Lulli,  most  delicate,  most  mas- 

:rly  of  musical  geniuses,  with  the  repertoire  as  full  of  artistic  light  and  shade 


CHAN  DOS.  89 

as  any  Titian,  and  the  performance,  by  the  first  singers  of  Europe,  just 
sufficiently,  and  only  sufficiently,  long  to  charm  without  ever  detaining  the 
ear.  These  concerts  were  invariably  in  the  picture-galleries,  so  that  while  the 
glories  of  Gluck  and  Handel  and  Rossini  and  Meyerbeer  floated  on  the  air,  the 
companion-art  was  always  before  the  eyes  of  the  audience,  while  beyond,  aisle 
upon  aisle  of  color  and  blossom  opened  from  the  conservatories.  The  softest 
of  south  winds  blew  gently  in  now  from  the  paradise  of  floweis  glowing  there: 
the  sunlight  fell  into  some  deep-hued  Giorgione,  some  historical  gathering  of 
Veronese,  or  some  fair  martyr-head  of  Delaroche;  the  dilettanti  murmured 
praise  of  a  fugue  in  D  or  a  violin  obligate;  the  gold-corniced,  purple-hung 
shadowy  gallery  was  filled  with  a  maze  of  bright  hues  and  perfumy  laces  and 
the  fair  faces  of  women;  and  Chandos,  lying  back  in  his  fauteuil  near  an  open 
window,  listened  dreamily  to  the  harmonies  of  Beethoven,  and  let  his  eyes 
dwell  on  the  Queen  of  Lilies. 

In  the  high-pressure  whirl  and  incessant  amusement  of  his  life,  it  was  diffi- 
cult for  any  one  impression  to  be  made  so  indelibly  upon  him  that  it  could  not 
be  chased  away  and  surpassed  by  fifty  others  as  fascinating;  but,  as  far  as  he 
could  be  haunted  by  one  exclusive  thought,  that  thought,  since  the  night  of  his 
ball,  had  been  the  young  Lily  Queen. 

"  In  many  mortal  forms  I  rashly  sought 
The  shadow  of  that  idol  of  my  thought!" 

he  mused  to  himself,  with  a  smile.  "  Have  I  found  it  at  last,  I  wonder  ? 
Surely." 

He  did  not  think  that  to  seek  it  here  might  be  to  the  full  as  rash,  and  to  the 
full  as  vain,  as  any  other  phantom-search  that  had  before  beguiled  him."  Who 
ever  does  think  so  in  the  first  sweetness  of  the  aerial  vision  ? 

The  moment  when  he  had  seen  her  as  Lucrece  had  been  fatal  to  him;  he  had 
from  that  moment  lost  the  power  of  judging  or  of  reading  her  with  truth  and 
calmness ;  for  from  that  moment  she  had  become  the  mortal  form  of  his  ideal 
among  women.  The  shell  was  so  perfect,  he  never  doubted  that  the  pearl 
within  was  as  fair. 

His  glance  met  hers  now  as  he  sat  beside  her  just  within  the  shade  of  one  of 
the  purple  curtains,  where  she  was  framed  in  a  setting  of  South  American  flowers, 
with  one  faint  tint  of  the  sunlight  straying,  rose-hued  and  mellow,  across  them 
and  her. 

The  softness  of  a  beautiful  warmth  passed  over  her  face  as  she  met  his 
glance,  wavering,  delicate,  the  flush  of  unconcious  love  and  half-startled 
pleasure;  he  did  not  ask  if  it  were  but  from  the  rays  of  the  sun,  or  if  it  were 
from  the  rays  of  the  sun  brighter  and  more  precious  to  us  than  the  sun  of  the 
heavens, — that  God  of  Light  we  call  Gratified  Vanity. 


90  OU IDA'S     WORKS. 

He  bent  to  her  with  an  almost  caressing  homage,  though  he  only  spoke 
commonplace  words. 

"  I  had  the  whole  selection  classical  music  to-day,  Lady  Valencia.  I  re- 
membered you  had  said  Mendessohn  was  your  favorite  master." 

She  smiled,— a  sweet,  glad  smile,  full  of  pleased  surprise. 

"You  remembered  my  idle  words?" 

"No  words  can  be  idle  to  me  that  you  have  spoken." 

No  one  heard  the  answer  as  the  serene,  sublime  harmonies  of  the  great 
Israelite  floated  through  the  air,  and  he  leaned  forward  towards  her  chair,  think- 
ing how  like  to  one  another  were  the  pure  music  that  thrilled  his  ear  and  the 
proud  yet  soft  loveliness  that  charmed  his  heart.  It  was  his  way  to  say  gentle 
things  to  all  women,  and  to  mean  them  indeed  while  he  uttered  them;  but  here 
he  meant  them  more  deeply  than  in  the  mere  gallantries  of  a  courtly  society. 

She  looked  at  him  almost  shyly  under  the  shadow  of  her  long  eyelashes. 
The  touch  of  shyness  that  was  on  her  with  him  lent  a  subtler,  sweeter  beguile- 
ment  to  the  young  patrician, — so  tranquil  in  her  power  commonly,  so  haughty 
in  her  delicate  disdain  to  all  others  who  ever  sought  her. 

"You  will  make  me  bold  enough,"  she  said  with  a  smile,  "  to  venture  to  ask 
you  a  favor  that  I  have  hopelessly  been  meditating  for  the  last  half-hour." 

"  It  is  granted  unasked.     And  now ? " 

"  And  now — how  strange  you  will  think  it ! " 

"  Have  no  fear  of  that.  If  I  can  please  you  in  any  thing,  I  shall  be  honored 
enough.  Your  wish  is ?" 

"  Well,"  she  answered,  with  a  low  laugh  that  scarcely  disturbed,  or  was  told 
from,  the  music,  it  was  so  like  it  in  sweetness,  "  I  want  you  to  show  me  the 
room  "where  Lucrhe  was  written.  You  do  not  let  the  world  in  there,  they  tell 
me;  but  I  fancy  you  will  not  refuse  me  my  entreaty  to  enter  the  sacred 
precincts." 

"  Who  could  refuse  you  any  thing  ? "  he  asked  her,  in  turn.  "  Where  I 
wrote  Lucrece  was  chiefly  in  the  East;  but  I  will  gladly  let  you  honor  my 
sanctum,  though  the  thoughts  that  have  been  sufficient  for  methere  will  scarcely 
be  so  any  longer  when  once  you  have  left  the  memory  of  your  presence  to 
haunt  it." 

They  spoke  no  more,  as  the  richest  melody  of  the  selection  rolled  in  all  its 

randeur  down  the  air,  bearing  with  it  all  the  life  and  soul  of  the  Provencal 

ician.     To  those  who  were  gathered  here— save  to  Chandos,  indeed,  who 

lever  heard  a  perfect   rhythm  of  harmony  but  that   he  glided  on  its  chords 

>ugh  dreamy,  Shelley  fancies— the  music  was  but  a  pastime  of  the  hour,  a 

onable  distraction  to  amuse  a  languid  moment,  a  cover  to  flirtation;  but  to 

it  was  the  very  breath  of  existence.     Shrinking  from  every  strange  glance 

d  voice,  and  shunning  all  publicity  as  he  did  at  all  other  times,  he  was  now- 


CHAN  DOS.  91 

now  that  he  was  absorbed  in  his  art — as  sublimely  unconcious  of  the  gaze  or 
presence  of  that  aristocratic  and  indifferent  crowd  as  though  they  were  peasant- 
children  listening  to  his  notes.  He  was  as  insensible  to  them  as  though  they 
had  no  existence.  What  were  they  to  him, — those  cold  dilettanti,  those  airy 
coquettes,  those  critical  dandies,  those  beautiful  idiots,  who  talked  art-jargon 
without  a  throb  of  art  within  their  souls  ?  Nothing.  They  had  no  part  nor 
share  with  him.  He  lived  in  the  world  he  created,  he  lived  in  the  heaven  of 
melody  that  was  around  him;  and  any  other  world  was  forgotten.  And  in  that 
oblivion  the  man  grew  grand,  the  timid,  suffering,  helpless  cripple  became  a 
king  in  his  own  right,  a  sovereign  in  his  own  domain, — an  empire  that  lay  far 
away  from  the  fret  and  fume  of  men,  far  away  from  the  unworthiness  of  life. 
His  head  was  proudly  borne;  his  haggard  cheek  was  bright  with  the  youth  that, 
save  in  dreams,  he  had  never  known;  his  eyes  were  alit  with  the  blaze  of  the 
South  and  the  light  of  the  conqueror;  and  those  among  the  guests  who  thought 
to  notice  this  lame  creature  with  the  heart  of  a  Beethoven  would  put  up  their 
glasses  and  give  him  a  curious  look  as  though  he  were  a  medium  or  piece  of 
china,  and  say  to  each  other,  to  forget  it  the  next  moment, — 

"  That  poor  mad  cripple  ! — quite  a  genius  !  Odd  fancy  of  Chandos  to  keep 
him,  but  certainly  he  conducts  wonderfully  well." 

Ah  me  !  Socrates  was  poisoned,  and  Gracchus  and  Drusus  slaughtered,  and 
Hildebrand  driven  to  die  in  exile,  and  Dante  banished,  and  Shakspeare  un- 
k'nown  by  his  generation,  and  Spenser  killed  for  lack  of  bread,  and  Cervantes 
left  to  rot  in  a  debt-prison,  and  Keats  assassinated  with  neglect,  and  we  are 
none  the  wiser.  We  know  what  is  among  us  no  better  for  it  all. 

"  And  all  at  once  they  leave  you,  and  you  know  them; 
We  are  so  fool'd,  so  cheated." 

Yes:  so  fooled  because  we  are  blind  in  our  own  conceit  and  gather  no  col- 
lyrium  from  the  past. 

"  What  a  beautiful  place  !  "  cried  the  Queen  of  Lilies,  as  she  entered,  at 
the  close  of  the  concert,  that  room  which  simply  a  desire  to  be  able  to  com- 
mand perfect  solitude,  if  he  desired  it,  had  made  him  deny  to  all  guests,  and 
even  to  all  servants  unsummoned, — a  natural  wish  enough,  which  had,  as  is 
usual,  excited  a  myriad  of  vague  and  utterly,  irreconcilable,  contradictory 
rumors  as  to  its  uses.  Even  Lady  Valencia  was  a  little  disappointed  to  find 
that  there  was  no  mystery  whatever  in  this  closed  Eleusinian  temple,  but 
merely  that  grace  and  refinement  of  beauty  and  of  artistic  color  which  Chandos, 
without  effeminacy,  demanded  as  the  summum  bonum  of  life,  and  insisted  on, 
like  the  Greeks;  in  the  shape  and  habit  of  every  commonest  household  thing. 

"Too  beautiful  to  dedicate  to  solitude,"  she  said,  as  he  led  her  in  with 
words  of  complimentary  welcome.  "  How  connoisseurs  would  envy  all  the 


92  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

Coustons  and  Canovas,  all  the  pictures  and  bronzes,  buried  in  this  single  room! 
Why,  your  very  choicest  art-treasures  are  hidden  here  ? " 

He  smiled. 

"  I  believe  they  are.     But  the  envy  of  the  virtuosi  would  not  enhance  their 

beauty  or  my  pleasure  in  it." 

"  No  ? "     She  did  not  understand  him.     To  her  a  diamond  was  no  more 
worth  than  a  stone,  unless  it  were  seen  and  coveted  of  others.     "  This  room  is 
like  a  vision  of  Vathek.     No  wonder  they  call  you  a  sybarite  ! " 
He  laughed. 

"  Do  they  call  me  so  ?  And  yet  I  would  have  rather  lived  on  a  date  in  Per- 
icles' Athens  than  have  been  king  in  Sybaris.  Ah  !  I  told  you  it  was  cruel 
kindness  to  come  here,  Lady  Valencia;  my  Daphne  will  have  no  smile,  and  my 
Danae  no  bloom,  any  longer.  My  art-idols  will  have  no  charm  beside  one 
memory." 

He  looked  down  on  her  with  a  glance  that  made  his  words  no  empty  flattery, 
as  they  stood  beside  a  writing-cabinet  that  had  belonged  to  Tullia  d'Arragona. 
She  laid  her  hand  on  the  manuscripts  and  papers  that  strewed  it,  and  laughed, 
half  gayly,  half  mournfully,  as  she  touched  them. 

"  But  those  papers  contain  what  no  woman  will  rival.  An  author  always  has 
one  sovereign  that  no  one  can  dethrone, — in  his  own  dreams." 

She  must  have  known  that  it  would  have  been  hard  for  even  a  poet's  im- 
agining to  conjure  any  fancy  more  fair  than  her  own  reality,  where  she  stood 
leaning  slightly  down  over  the  ebony-and-gold  cabinet  of  Strozzi's  mistress, 
alone  with  the  art  which  had  no  other  story  to  tell  than  the  love  it  embodied, 
no  other  thought  to  create  than  the  eternal  history  of  human  passion, — -alone 
with  the  golden  lingering  light  of  the  sunset  playing  about  her  feet  and  shining 
in  the  deep-brown  lustre  of  her  glance. 

He  stooped  towards  her,  made  captive  without  reflection,  without  heed. 
"  But  doubly  happy  the  author  who  finds  his  fairest  dream  made  real  !    The 
sovereign  of  the  fancy  must  yield  her  sceptre  when  her  very  smile  is  found  in 
the  living  sovereign  of  the  heart." 
It  was  almost  a  love-declaration. 

At  that  moment,  through  the  open  doorway  floated  Madame  de  la  Vivarol, 
her  pretty  chimes  of  laughter  softly  ringing  on  the  ear,  her  trailing,  silken  skirts 
followed  by  Cos  Grenvil  and  the  Duke  of  Crowndiamonds. 

"Ah,  monsieur!  so  you  have  thrown  this  sacred  and  mystical  chamber 
open  at  last  to  profane  feet  ?  How  charming  it  is  !— like  a  piece  of  descrip- 
tion out  of  Monte-Christo  !  "  she  cried,  with  charming  carelessness,  as  she  flut- 
tered, butterfly-like,  about  the  room,  criticizing  a  tazza,  glancing  at  a  manu- 
script, admiring  a  miniature,  trying  an  ivory  pistol,  commenting  on  a  statuette. 
"  So  this  is  your  solitude  ! "  she  went  on,  remorselessly  (while  none  but  he 


CHANDOS.  93 

caught  one  swift  glance  that  meant,  "  You  desert  me  ?  aliens  !  you  shall  re- 
gret it  !  ").  "  Really,  mon  ami,  it  is  more  agreeable  than  most  men's  enter- 
tainments. We  shall  know  now  how  pleasant  your  retreat  is  when  you  are  oc- 
cupied— in  solitude — with  your  paperasses  and  your  palette  !  " 

"  Ah,  madame,  "  said  Chandos,  laughingly,  though  he  knew  very  well  what 
was  concealed  under  that  airy  challenge,  "  fair  memories  will  be  left  to  my 
room,  but  its  spell  and  its  peace  will  be  broken  forever.  As  I  was  saying  to 
Lady  Valencia,  I  can  never  summon  shapes  to  paper  or  canvas  now  that  its 
loneliness  will  be  haunted  with  such  recollections." 

"  Mon  ami,"  said  La  Vivarol,  with  the  prettiest  mocking  grace  in  the  world, 
"  are  you  so  very  constant  to  the  absent  ?  " 

And  while  she  floated  hither  and  thither,  fluttering  over  a  Vita  Nuova,  rich 
in  Attavante  miniatures,  lifting  her  eyeglass  at  a  little  Wouverman,  murmuring, 
"  Que  c'est  joli  !  que  c'est  joli  !  "  before  a  grand  scene  of  David,  and  slightly 
shrugging  her  shoulders  at  a  bewitching  Greuze,  because  it  was  a  different 
style  of  beauty  from  her  own,  none  could  have  dreamed  that  madame  had  a 
trace  of  pique  on  her.  Yet,  as  they  left  for  their  carriages  a  few  moments 
later,  it  would  have  been  hard  to  say  which  had  the  most  bitter  pang  against 
her  rival  treasured  in  silence, — the  fair  Lily  Queen,  who  had  lost  the  one  mo- 
ment when  warm  words  had  so  nearly  been  won  on  his  lips,  or  the  French  count- 
ess, who  had  found  another  given  the  entrance  to  that  writing-room  to 
which  admittance  had  been  so  often,  and  so  steadily  though  gayly,  denied 
her. 

As  for  Chandos,  he  consoled  himself  easily  with  the  happy  insouciance  of 
his  nature,  and  went  down  to  dine  at  his  "  bonbonniere  "  at  Richmond.  Among 
his  party  were  Beatrix  Lennox,  a  clever  woman  and  a  brilliant, — a  woman  with 
the  talent  of  Chevreuse  and  the  fascination  of  a  L'Enclos;  a  woman  whose  wit 
was  never  weary,  and  whose  voice  charmed  like  the  sound  of  a  flute  through  a 
still,  aromatic,  tropical  night;  a  woman  in  whose  splendid  eyes  there  came  now 
and  then,  when  she  ceased  to  speak,  a  look  of  unutterable  pain,  a  look  that 
passed  very  quickly,  too  quickly  to  be  ever  seen  by  those  around  her. 

Chandos,  amused  by  those  nearest  to  him,  who  laid  themselves  out  to  so 
amuse  him  with  all  the  brightness  of  their  ready  esprit,  all  the  gayety  of  their 
airy  laughter,  all  the  infectious  mirth  of  their  vivacious  chansons,  was  too  well 
distracted  to  notice  or  perceive  that  Trevenna  studiously,  though  with  all  his 
customary  tact,  prevented  any  opportunity  occurring  for  Mrs.  Lennox  to  ap- 
proach her  host  or  be  able  to  address  him  in  any  way  apart.  He  did  not  notice, 
either,  though  she  was  a  favorite  with  him,  that  the  haughty,  resistless,  victori- 
ous lionne,  usually  so  disdainful  and  so  despotic  in  her  imperious  grace,  allow- 
ed Trevenna  to  use  an  almost  insolent  off-hand  brusquerie  to  her  unreproved, 
and  once  or  twice  took  the  cue  of  her  words  from  him,  and  obeyed  his  glance 


94  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

as  a  proud  forest-born   deer  tamed  by  captivity  might  obey  the  hand  of  its 
keeper,  compulsorily  but  rebelliously. 

Chandos  had  the  too  ready  trustfulness  of  a  woman;  but  he  had  nothing 
of  that  subtle  power  at  the  perception  of  trifles,  and  the  clairvoyant  divination 
of  their  meaning,  which  atone  to  women  for  the  risks  of  their  over-faith. 

The  world  amused  him  so  well,  what  need  had  he  to  probe  beneath  its  sur- 
face or  ask  its  complex  springs  ?  That  work  was  Trevenna's  business,  and  to 
Trevenna's  taste.  As  a  boy,  that  alert  humorist  had  never  seen  a  conjuror's 
legerdemain  but  to  buy  the  trick  of  it,  a  piece  of  machinery  but  to  investigate 
its  principle,  a  stage  but  to  go  behind  the  scenes,  a  watch  but  to  break  it  in  try- 
ing to  find  out  its  manufacture;  he  did  the  same  now  with  human  life.  All  its 
weaknesses,  all  its  crimes,  all  its  secrets,  all  its  intricacies  and  conspiracies  and 
veiled  motives  and  plausible  pretexts,  it  was  his  delight  to  pierce  and  learn  and 
uncover  and  hold  in  abject  subjection.  To  walk  as  it  were  in  the  underground 
sewers  of  the  moral  nature,  and  to  watch  all  the  wheels  within  wheels  of  the 
world's  rotation,  was  an  exquisite  amusement  to  Trevenna.  Nor  did  he  ever 
get  cynical  with  it.  He  thought  very  badly  of  humanity,  to  be  sure;  but  it 
tickled  his  fancy  that  men  should  be  such  rascals  as  he  thought  them;  it  never 
for  an  instant  made  him  sour  at  it.  He  was,  as  Chandos  had  said,  an  odd  mix- 
ture of  Theophrastic  bitterness  and  Plautus-like  good  humor.  He  never  con- 
demned anything;  he  only  found  everything  out.  He  had  not  the  slightest  ob- 
jection that  men  should  be  scoundrels;  on  the  whole,  it  was  more  conven- 
ient that  they  should  be  so;  all  he  cared  was  that  he  should  be  up  to  their 
moves. 

Nor  was  it  a  brief  or  a  light  labor  by  which  he  became  so.     A  marvellously 

unerring  memory,  an  acumen  of  the  finest  intelligence,  a  universality  that  could 

adapt  itself  pliably  to  all  forms,  a  penetration  that  never  erred,  a  logic  that  could 

never  be  betrayed  into  the  ignoratio  elemhi,  and,  above  all,  a  light,  off-hand. 

perfect  tact  that  could  successfully  cover  all  these  from  view,  were  the  severe 

acquirements  that  were  necessities  for  his  success;  and  by  a  perseverance  as 

intense  as  ever  scholar  brought  to  his  science,  or  warrior  to  his  struggle,  he  had 

gained  them  in  such  proportion  at  least  as  any  man  can  ever  hope  to  attain 

them  all.     There  was  strong  stuff,  there  was  great  stuff,  in  the  man  who  could 

put  himself  voluntarily  through  such  a  course  of  training  as  Trevenna  had  now 

pursued  through  long  years,— to  the  world's  view  of  him  an  adventurer,  an  idler, 

a  diner-out,  a  hanger-on  to  men  of  rank  and  riches,  in  real  truth  a  man  whom 

t  one  trifle  of  the  passing  hour  escaped,  by  whom  the  slightest  thread  that 

be  useful  in  the  future  was  never  neglected,  and  who,  after  pleasures  and 

affronts  m  turn  that  would  have  alternately  enervated  and  heart-sickened  any 

rther  less  sturdily  in  earnest  than  himself,  could  come  back  to  his  cheap  lod- 

:o  plunge  into  intellectual  labor  and  to  grind  political   knowledge  as  ardu- 


CHAN  DOS.  gr> 

ously  and  as  steadily  as  though  he  were  a  lad  studying  for  his  Greats  at  a 
university. 

The  qualities  he  brought  to  his  career  were  admirable  beyond  all  average 
of  ordinary  power;  the  purpose  of  his  career  was  more  questionable.  He  would 
have  said,  and  so  far  with  fair  justice,  that  it  was,  at  any  rate,  the  same  which 
sent  Alexander  into  the  heart  of  the  East,  which  placed  Mahomet  at  the  head 
of  the  wondrous  legions  of  El-Islam,  which  sent  William  of  Orange  to  the  throne 
of  Great  Britain  and  the  young  Corsican  to  the  dais  and  diadem  of  Louis  Qua- 
torze, — the  motive  of  self-aggrandizement.  And,  in  truth,  there  was  in  this 
good-humored,  impudent,  imperturbable,  brusque,  amusing  man-about-town, 
who  jested  to  get  a  dinner  and  put  up  with  slights  to  purchase  a  day's  shooting, 
the  same  element  of  indomitability  as  there  was  in  Caesar,  the  same  power  of 
concentration  as  there  was  in  Columbus,  and  the  same  strength  of  self-training 
as  there  was  in  Julian.  Only  his  Rome  was  the  House  of  Commons,  his  Terra 
Nuova  was  the  table-land  where  adventurers  were  denied  to  mount,  and  his 
deities  were  Money,  Success,  and  Vengeance, — gods,  it  must  be  confessed,  in 
all  ages  fair  to  men  as  Venus  Pandemos,  and  more  potent  with  them  than  all 
the  creeds  from  Cybele's  to  Chrysostom's. 


9tj  QUID  AS     WORKS. 


BOOK    THE    SECOND. 


O  ye  gods  !  what  a  number 
Of  men  eat  Timon,  and  he  sees  them  not  ! 

SHAKSPEARE. 

O  Jealousy  !  thou  most  unnatural  offspring 

Of  a  too  tender  parent,  that  in  excess 

Qf  fondness  feeds  thee,  like  the  pelican, 

But  with  her  purest  blood;  and  in  return 

Thou  tear'st  the  bosom  whence  thy  nurture  flows. 

FROUDE. 


CHAPTER  I. 

UNDER   THE   WATERS   OF   NILE. 

IT  was  night  in  the  low,  crooked,  dirty,  unsavory  court  in  which  stood  the 
little  rickety  door,  with  its  yellow  panes  of  opaque  glass,  that  was  lettered  Tin- 
dall  &  Co.     An  unpretentious  place,  untempting,  dusty,  and  boasting  in  no  way 
of  itself, — its  shop  or  counting-house  (for  it  was  a  cross  between  the  two)  sug- 
gestive of  no  particular  trade,  but  chiefly  filled  with  a  few  old  pictures,  a  few 
old  blackened  bronzes,  a  piece  or  two  of  quaint  armor,  a  violin  dit  de  Stradu- 
arius,  a  little  china,  and  much  lumber.     These  things,  however,  remained  there 
week  after  week;  it  was  not  in  them  that  Tindall  &  Co.  dealt,  and  they  were  too 
straightforward,  too  affluent  people  to  care  to  palm  these  broken  antiquities  and 
mock  virih  off  upon  their  clients;  that  was  not  their  way  of  doing  business  at 
all.    The  brown  pictures,  the  cracked  china,  the  old  pair  of  Modenese  carvings, 
the  helmet,  or  the  fiddle,  were  only  trifles  on  the  surface,  immaterial  garnish- 
ings  to  answer  the  curious  eyes  of  the  multitude  when  those  eyes,  in  passing, 
peered  in  and  wondered  what  was  traded  in  behind  the  opaque  panes  of  glass. 
Underneath  them,  as  the  crocodile  sits  hidden  with  the  sullen,  reddish  waters 
and  the  broad,  fan-like  leaves  of  the  Nile  above  his  scaly  head  and  opened  jaws, 
so  might  be  said  to  sit  Tindall  &  Co.,  eating  all  manner  of  strange  things  that 
dropped  between  their  fangs,— youth  and  age,  broad  estates  and  ancient  halls, 
wooded  acres  and  gallant  names,  boyhood  with  the  gold  on  its  hair,  and  man- 


CHAN  DOS.  97 

hood  with  the  shot  of  the  suicide  through  its  heart,  eating  them  all,  and  mashing 
them  together  impartially,  and  churning  them  all  down  without  distinction  into 
one  vast,  even,  impotent,  shapeless  mass  of  ruin. 

This  was  what  Tindall  &  Co.  did  under  the  flowing  mud-hued  Nile-tide  of 
London  life,  and  then  lay  basking,  alligator-like,  waiting  for  more.  This  is 
what  Tindall  &  Co.,  and  such-like  spawn  of  Nile,  can  do  under  the  beneficent 
laws  which,  by  restricting  usury  with  a  penalty,  compel  despair  to  pay  double 
for  the  straw  it  grasps  at, — laws  which  forget  that,  despite  them  all,  the  supply 
will  always  continue  to  meet  the  demand,  and  that  their  only  issue  is  to  make 
the  one  who  supplies  insist  on  treble  payment  as  indemnity  for  the  risk  he  runs 
through  them.  Ah !  wise,  calm  voice  of  Political  Economy,  will  it  ever  be 
heard  ?  will  its  true  justice  ever  outweigh  the  gushing  impulses  of  cruel  senti- 
ment ?  will  it  ever  be  known  that  its  immutable  impartiality  is  as  truly  gentle 
as  the  world  at  present  calls  it  hard  ?  When  it  shall  be,  the  crocodiles  will  be 
crushed  in  turn,  and  crocodile-tears  flow  no  more;  but  the  millennium  is  very 
far  away. 

The  premises  of  Tindall  &  Co.  were  cut  up  into  various  small  rooms;  privacy 
was  an  essential  of  their  pursuits.  It  would  warn  away  the  antelope  that  steals 
down  to  the  treacherous  edge  to  slake  its  thirst  within  fatal  distance  of  the 
alligator's  jaws,  if  it  were  to  see  signs  of  the  bones  and  skin  of  a  lately  devoured 
brother  lying  near.  They  were  all  dingy,  dull,  smoke-dried  little  chambers, 
with  a  musty,  repellant  odor  that  involuntarily  brought  remembrance  of  the 
Morgue.  In  one  of  them  to-night,  the  poorest  of  the  lot,  which  bore  traces  of 
constant  occupation  in  its  poor  furniture,  was  the  old  Castilian  Jew,  standing  in 
the  tawny  light  of  a  hand-lamp  burning  near  him,  whose  yellow  gleam  flickered 
over  his  long  black  garments,  his  snow-white  patriarchal  beard,  and  his  cap, 
like  the  round  cap  of  a  Rubens  picture,  of  worn  dark  velvet,  scarce  darker  than 
his  olive  brow,  with  the  straight  line  of  the  eyebrows,  and  the  piercing  eyes, 
whose  lustre  even  age  could  not  dim.  Before  him,  in  the  shadow,  was  a  young 
boy,  a  boy  at  most  of  seventeen  or  eighteen  years,  beautiful  as  a  Murillo  head, 
with  the  rich  red  lips,  the  black,  long,  tender  eyes,  the  falling  silken  locks  of  a 
Spanish  picture,  and  the  appealing  softness  of  an  extreme  youth  blent  in  him 
with  the  fixed  misery  of  a  shameful  grief.  There  were  heavy  tears  on  his 
dropped  lashes,  and  his  lips  were  slightly  apart  like  those  of  one  who  is  worn 
out  and  faint  with  pain.  Between  the  two  stood  Trevenna,  with  his  bright, 
open,  pleasant  face  and  its  shrewd  blue  English  eyes,  dressed  for  the  evening, 
with  the  lamplight  falling  on  the  polish  of  his  Paris  boots  and  the  laced  ends  of 
his  neck-tie,  as  he  leaned  in  comfortable  indifference,  like  one  who  is  master 
of  the  house  and  master  of  the  situation,  against  the  wooden  ledge  of  the  painted 
mantel-piece. 

"  Much  more  sensible  to  come  back,  little  Benjamin,"  he  said,  with  a  shrug 

VOL.  III.-4 


IIS 


OUIDAS     WORKS. 


of  his  shoulders.  "Never  try  dodging  with  me;  it  isn't  the  least  bit  of  use. 
Only  riles  me,  as  the  Yankees  say,  and  can't  serve  you  in  the  slightest.  Bless 
your  heart,  my  little  felon,  do  you  suppose  if  you  were  to  hide  yourself  in  the 
African  sands,  or  bury  yourself  in  the  Arctic  ice,  /  shouldn't  ferret  you  out  when 

I  wanted  you." 

His  laughing,  merry  eyes  flashed  a  single  glance  into  the  lad's  drooped  face; 
and  the  boy  shuddered  and  trembled,  and  turned  pale  as  though  he  were  an 
accused  between  the  irons,  wrenched  with  another  turn  of  the  rack. 

"  Not  the  smallest  use  in  dodging,"  pursued  Trevenna,  as  good-naturedly 
and  agreeably  as  though  he  offered  him  a  glass  of  sherry.  "  Shows  great  inex- 
perience to  try  it.  World's  made  up  of  flies  and  spiders  ;  you're  a  fly,  and  all 
the  world's  a  net  for  you;  glide  through  one  web,  another'll  catch  you.  Listen; 
you'd  better  understand  it  once  for  all.  Do  what  you  like  with  yourself,  go 
where  you  like,  burn  yourself  up  in  the  tropics,  bury  yourself  down  in  the 
mines,  grow  old,  marry,  grow  gray,  get  children,  make  money;  but  don't  think 
to  escape  me.  When  I  want  you,  or  when  you  forfeit  leniency,  I  shall  have 
you.  Just  think  !  twenty  years  hence  perhaps  you  may  be  fancying  the  thing 
blown  over,  you  may  be  living  in  luxury,  even  ! — who  knows  ? — yonder  there 
among  your  precious  Spanish  vines;  you  may  be  in  love  and  have  some  soft 
Andalusian  for  your  wife;  you  may  have  friends  who  think  you  a  mirror  of 
probity,  brats  who  will  own  your  name,  all  sorts  of  stakes  in  life,  all  sorts  of 
ties  to  it;  and  just  then,  if  I  want  you — Presto  !  I  shall  be  down  upon  you.  So 
never  ieel  sure,  that's  all;  and  never  try  dodging." 

He  watched  the  boy  as  he  spoke,  winding  up  all  these  fancies,  so  foreign 
to  his  natural  speech,  that  he  might  turn  with  each  one  of  them  another  grind 
of  the  rack  to  the  soft  and  helpless  nature  before  him.  It  amused  him  to  see 
the  agony  they  caused.  The  boy  shrank  farther  and  farther,  like  a  hunted, 
stricken  creature,  trembling  and  paralyzed,  his  eyes  fascinated  on  his  tormentor 
as  though  by  a  spell.  The  old  man  stood  mute  and  motionless,  but  an  anguish 
greater  even  than  the  youth's  was  on  him  in  his  silence;  and,  as  his  eyes  turned 
with  piteous  entreaty,  his  dry  lips  murmured  unconsciously, — 

"  Sir,  sir  !  as  you  are  merciful  ! — he  is  so  young." 

"  Precisely  because  he  is  so  young,  my  good  Ignatius,  must  we  have  him 
know  that,  live  as  long  as  he  may,  he'll  never  be  free,"  retorted  Trevenna, 
pleasantly.  "  He  has  a  long  life  before  him,  and  he  might  get  fancying  that 
all  this  would  wear  out;  but  it  won't.  Paper  isn't  sand,  and  that  little  docu- 
ment of  his  will  always  stand." 

The  boy,  Agostino,  as  he  was  called,  the  only  living  thing  of  the  old  man's 

blood  and  name,  looked  up  with  a  low,  gasping  cry.     This  merciless  seizure  of 

1  his  future,  this  damning  denial  of  all  earthly  hope,  this  chain  that  wound 

about  all  years  to  come  ere  yet  they  had  dawned  on  him,  this  despairing  eter- 


CHANDOS.  99 

nity  of  bondage,  were  greater  than  he  could  bear.  He  threw  up  his  arms  with 
a  passionate  moan,  and  flung  himself  at  Trevenna's  feet,  his  bright  brow  bent 
down  on  the  dust,  his  hands  clasping  the  hem  of  his  tyrant's  coat. 

"  Kill  me  !     O  God  of  Israel  !  kill  me  at  one  blow.     I  cannot  live  like  this." 

Trevenna  moved  his  foot  a  little,  as  though  he  pushed  away  a  whining 
spaniel,  and  laughed  as  he  looked  down  on  him. 

"  Cher  Agostino,  you  would  make  a  capital  actor.  I  think  I'll  put  you  on 
the  stage;  you'd  be  a  first-rate  Jtomeo,  or  Ion." 

The  kick,  the  laugh,  the  words,  in  the  moment  of  his  intense  torture,  stung 
and  lashed  the  submissive  spirit  of  the  Israelite  race,  and  the  terror-stricken 
bondage  of  the  boy,  into  a  passionate  life  that  broke  all  bonds.  He  sprang  to 
his  feet,  standing  there  where  the  tawny  circle  of  the  oil-light  fell,  like  a  young 
David,  his  rich  lips  quivering,  his  curls  flung  back,  his  cheek  with  its  glowing 
Murillo  tint  deepened  to  a  scarlet  fire. 

"  What  have  I  done  ? "  he  cried,  aloud,  while  his  voice  rang  piteously 
through  the  chamber.  "  What  have  I  done,  to  be  tortured  like  this  ?  Not  a 
tithe  of  what  is  done  here  every  day,  every  hour  !  If  I  A?  a  thief,  where  is  the 
wonder  ?  Is  there  not  robbery  round  me  from  noon  to  night  ?  Is  not  every 
breath  of  air  in  this  accursed  den  charged  with  some  lie,  some  theft,  some 
black  iniquity  ?  Hundreds  come  here  in  their  ruin;  is  one  ever  spared  ?  Is 
not  a  trade  in  men's  necessities  driven  here  from  year's  end  to  year's  end  ?  Is 
not  poverty  betrayed,  and  ignorance  tempted,  and  honor  bought  and  sold  here 
every  week  ?  How  could  I  learn  honesty  where  all  is  fraud  and  sin  ?  how 
could  I  keep  stainless,  where  everything  is  corruption  ?  If  I  am  a  thief  and  a 
felon,  what  are  you  ?  " 

The  bold  words  poured  out  in  anguish,  their  English  speech  tinged  and 
mellowed  with  the  Castilian  accent.  Suffering  had  made  him  desperate;  he 
writhed  and  turned  and  struck  his  bondmaster.  The  old  man  heard  him, 
trembling  and  aghast;  his  brown  face  blanched,  his  teeth  shook;  he  looked  up 
at  Trevenna  with  a  piteous  supplication. 

"  Oh,  sir  !  oh,  my  master,  forgive  him  !  He  is  but  a  child,  and  he  knows 
not  what  he  says " 

"  He  will  know  what  he  has  to  pay  for  it.  Out  of  my  way,  you  young 
hound." 

The  answer  was  not  even  angered,  not  even  jarred  from  his  customary 
bantering  bonhomie;  but  at  the  glance  of  the  keen  blue  eye  that  accompanied 
it,  all  the  sudden  fire,  all  the  momentary  rebellion,  of  the  boy  died  out;  he  felt 
his  own  utter  powerlessness  against  the  master  he  contended  with;  he  cowered 
like  a  beaten  dog,  dropped  his  head  on  his  breast,  and  burst  into  a  passion  of 
tears. 

"  Shut  up  that,"  said  Trevenna,  carelessly,  while,  as   much  unmoved  as 


100  OUIDA'S     WORKS. 

thoueh  the  young  Jew's  fiery  words  had  never  scathed  his  ear  he  took  out 
^mf^rsTm  hi.  inner  coat-pocket  and  tossed  them  to  Ignatius  Mathias 
"Here  took  alive.  Take  these;  and  don't  do  anything  to  little  Dallerstone  yet 
a  while  If  he  come  here  mind  he  doesn't  know  anything  about  those  signa- 
tures; iet  him  understand  that,  quite  as  a  matter  of  kindness  I  looked  in  to  see 
if  you  could  be  induced  to  take  the  screw  off  him;  let  him  think  that  I  d  in- 
finite trouble  to  get  you  to  do  any  thing  of  the  kind;  and  leave  him  to  fee  that 
you'll  very  likely  be  down  on  him,  and  that  his  only  safety  s  m  me.  Look 
sharp;  you  understand  ?  " 

The  Hebrew  bent  his  head,  holding  the  papers  in  his  withered  hands;  they 
were  the  bills  of  young  Charlie  Dallerstone,  freshly  renewed   on   Chandos' 

acceptation. 

"One  thing  more,"  went  on  Trevenna,  looking  afhis  watch;  for  he  was  go- 
ing to  dine  in  Park  Lane,  and  it  was  nearly  nine.  «  I  find  Sir  Philip  looks 
booked  to  make  a  very  sure  thing  at  the  Ducal.  His  French  horse  is  sure  to 
win,  and  he  may  strike  a  vein  of  luck  again.  Catch  him  while  he's  down;  call 
in  his  '  sliff  '  to-morrow.  He  must  sell  up;  he  can't  help  himself.  As  for  Lady 
Vantyre,— one  doesn't  deal  with  women  usually;  but  she's  been  going  it  very 
fast  in  Venezuelan  bonds  and  California  scrip.  She  wants  some  ready,  and 
she's  quite  safe;  she'll  come  into  no  end  of  money  by-and-by.  I  buy  and  sell 
for  her  in  the  City,  so  I  know  to  a  T  what  she's  worth.  That's  all,  I  think. 
You  may  come  to  me  the  day  after  to-morrow,  if  you've  anything  to  say. 
Good-bye,  young  one;  and  just  remember,  if  you  don't  want  to  see  the  hulks,— 
don't  dodge  ! " 

With  which  valediction,  Trevenna  sauntered  out  of  the  room,  drawing  on 
his  gloves,  to  get  into  his  night-cab  and  drive  to  one  of  those  charming  dinners 
of  princes,  peers,  wits,  authors,  and  artists,  all  chosen  for  some  social  gift  of 
brilliance,  for  which  the  house  of  Chandos  was  celebrated. 

"  What  an  angel  Charlie  will  think  me  !  "  thought  Trevenna,  with  a  laugh,  as 
his  dashing  cab  clattered  his  way  from  Tindall  &  Co.'s,  where  he  had  stopped 
openly  and  left  his  thoroughbred  high  stepper  to  dance  impatiently  before 
the  door  in  full  view  of  any  passer-by.  He  only  went  on  Charlie's  business. 

Those  whom  he  had  left  in  the  little,  close,  and  ill-illumined  chamber  were 
silent  many  moments.  That  laughing,  frank,  clever  face  of  their  tyrant  had 
left  a  shadow  there  dark  as  night.  The  two  forms  were  in  strange  contrast 
with  the  meagre  commonplace  of  their  surroundings, — two  figures  of  Giorgione 
and  of  Rubens  painted  in  upon  the  drab-hued  dusty  panels  of  the  miserable 
City  office-room.  The  youth  Agostino  sat  motionless,  his  head  bowed  down 
upon  his  arms.  The  old  man  watched  him,  his  eyes,  with  all  the  yearning 
tenderness  of  a  woman  in  them,  filling  with  the  slow,  salt  tears  of  age.  He  was 
a  hard  man,  a  cunning  man  may-be,  a  man  chilled  by  a  long  life  of  opprobrium, 


CHANDOS.  101 

of  struggle,  of  persecution,  of  pain;  but  he  was  soft  in  his  heart  as  a  mother  to 
that  beautiful  lad,  the  last  flower  of  a  doomed  and  died-out  house.  He  loved 
him  with  a  great  love,  this  only  living  son  of  his  young,  dead  wife, — this 
Benoni,  who  had  come  to  him,  as  it  seemed,  with  all  the  perfume  and  the 
poetry  of  his  lost  Spain  shed  on  his  vivid  beauty  and  seeming  to  revive  in  his 
happy  grace. 

Therefore  in  his  sin  he  had  clung  to  him,  in  his  shame  he  had  no  reproach 
to  deal  him;  and  through  him,  for  him,  by  him,  the  grand  old  Israelite  became 
weak  as  water,  facile  as  a  reed,  in  the  hands  of  an  inexorable  taskmaster, 
who  was  as  exacting  as  an  Egyptian  of  old. 

He  laid  his  hand  on  the  boy's  bowed  head  and  moved  the  thick  curls  tenderly. 

"  You  were  too  rash,  my  Agostino;  it  is  not  for  the  helpless  to  incense  the 
strong.  I  trembled  as  I  heard.  My  child,  my  child,  your  sole  hope  is  in  his 
sparing  you." 

Agostino  lifted  his  head,  the  tears  heavy  on  his  lids,  his  lips  swollen  and 
parted. 

"  Forgive  me,  father.  I  was  mad  !  And  I  only  said  the  truth  to  him, 
though  the  God  of  Truth  is  my  witness  that  I  had  no  thought  to  wound  you,  or 
to  mean  you,  by  my  words.  If  what  I  see  here  is  evil,  what  I  learn  from  you  is 
good, — so  lofty  that  it  should  outweigh  it  a  thousand-fold.  My  guilt  is  my 
own;  I  meant  no  reproach  to  you." 

"  I  know,  I  know,"  said  the  old  man,  wearily.  "  But  you  angered  him,  my 
child ;  I  saw  it  by  his  eye,  and — and — we  are  in  his  power.  He  has  been  good 
to  us, — good  to  us.  We  are  bound  to  bear  the  stripes  that  he  may  deal." 

It  was  said  patiently,  firmly,  and  in  sincerity.  Trevenna  had  bought  his 
invaluable  tool  by  a  few  arts  which  were  on  the  surface  benevolent  and  lenient, 
and  were  in  literal  fact  far-sighted  plans  to  purchase  a  fine  instrument  at  a 
small  price.  But  the  perception  of  this,  even  where  it  dawned  on  him,  did  not 
avail  to  shake  the  old  Israelite's  sense  of  grateful  bondage;  nor  would  it  have 
done  so  even  had  it  not  been  accompanied  with  the  auxiliaries  of  necessity  and 
fear  which  through  Agostino  he  was  moved  by  as  well. 

"  Good  !  "  the  youth's  eyes  flashed,  and  his  mouth  quivered.  "  I  would  to 
Heaven,  but  for  the  shame  on  you,  that  he  would  give  me  up  to  justice,  and 
send  me  out  to  any  fate,  rather  than  force  me  to  live  in  this  yoke  an  hour 
longer.  It  kills  me  !  it  kills  me  !  Under  his  eye  I  have  no  will ;  under  his 
law  my  very  breath  seems  his.  What  is  it  to  be  spared,  to  be  dogged  by  such 
a  doom  as  he  told  out  to  me  ? — a  never-ending  dread  !  " 

The  old  man  shuddered,  and  on  his  face  there  deepened  that  terrible,  haunted 
look  of  fear  for  one  dearer  than  himself,  which  had  gleamed  out  from  the  light 
of  his  sunken  eyes  throughout  Trevenna's  presence. 

"  Agostino,  the  life  of  a  convict  for  you  f     The  irons  on  your  young  limbs, 


1(r.  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

the  brutal  work  for  your  delicate  strength,  the  captivity,  the  travail,  the  shame, 
the  misery " 

His  voice  failed  him;  he  could  not  think  of  the  near  approach  of  such  a 
doom  for  the  only  thing  left  to  him  on  earth  without  his  anguish  mastering 
him.  Agostino  trembled  and  shrunk  back,  crouching,  bowed,  and  prostrate,  in 
the  same  paralysis  of  horror  which  had  subdued  him  when  Trevenna  had  spoken. 
He  could  not  have  faced  his  fate.  There  was  on  the  Spanish  splendor  of  his 
boyish  loveliness  a  wavering,  womanish  weakness,  a  cowardice,  the  result  not 
of  selfishness,  but  of  changing  and  painful  sensitiveness;  it  was  this  instability, 
this  cowardice,  which  had  drawn  him  into  a  crime  wholly  at  variance  with  the 
candid  tenderness  of  his  regard,  and  which  made  him,  through  his  fear,  ductile 
as  wax  to  mold  even  into  the  very  thing  he  loathed.  He  might  say  that  he 
longed  for  justice  in  the  stead  of  being  spared  by  one  -who  played  with  him  in 
his  suffering  as  a  cat  with  a  bird;  but  he  would  have  clung  to  exemption  at  all 
cost  had  he  been  put  really  to  the  test,  and  accepted  life  on  any  terms  to  escape 
the  horror  and  the  ignominy  of  public  retribution. 

The  old  Israelite  looked  down  on  him,  and,  as  he  saw  that  pitiful,  tremulous 
abasement  before  the  mere  conjured  vision  of  a  felon's  life,  lifted  his  withered 
hands  upward  in  a  grand,  unconscious  gesture  of  imprecation  and  of  prayer. 

"  May  the  God  of  Israel  forsake  me  in  my  last  extremity,  if  I  ever  forsake 
him  by  whom  you  have  been  spared  your  doom  ! " 

The  vow  was  uttered  in  all  the  dignity  and  in  all  the  simplicity  of  truth. 
No  matter  what  his  taskmaster  might  be  to  others,  no  matter  how  cruel  the 
tasks  he  set,  no  matter  how  hard  the  lashes  he  gave,  no  matter  how  weary  the 
labor  he  imposed,  to  Ignatius  Mathias  he  was  sacred;  he  had  spared  Agostino. 

In  that  moment  of  his  oath  of  fidelity,  the  Castilian  Jew,  the  white-haired 
usurer,  the  world-worn  toiler  in  many  cities,  the  despised  and  reviled  Hebrew, 
reached  a  moral  height  of  which  John  Trevenna  never  had  a  glimpse. 

He  paused  a  while,  gazing  down  upon  the  boy.     For  many  weeks  they  had 
been  parted,  for  the  first  time  in  their  lives,  and  severed  in  the  tortures  of  sus- 
pense; and  the  sight  of  him,  even  in  their  present  anguish,  even  in  the  bitter- 
ness of  the  guilt  which  had  stained  this  opening  life  with  its  blot,  was  sweet  as 
water  in  a  dry  land  to  the  sear  and  aching  heart  of  the  old  man.     With  his  own 
hands  he  brought  him  wine  and  bread,  and  bade  him  eat,  breaking  through  all 
torn  and  ceremonies  of  his  people,  and  tending  him  with  womanlike 
leness.     It  was  thus  that  he  had  made  Agostino  dependent  and  fragile  as  a 
irl,  and  powerless  to  guide  himself  through  the  rough  winds  and  subtle  temp- 
)f  the  world.     Amidst  the  deprivation  and  misery  that  had  fallen  to  the 
the  Israelite,  the  child  who  had  the  eyes  of  his  lost  darling  had  never 
1  warmth  and  light,  and  the  sight  of  flowers,  and  the  song  of  birds,  and 
som  of  summer  fruits.     Starving  on  a  morsel  of  dried  fish  himself,  he 


CHANDOS.  103 

had  bought  the  purple  grapes  of  their  own  sierras  for  Agostino.  And  there  was 
something  caressing,  vivid,  engaging,  appealing  in  the  boy  which  had  repaid 
this  fully  in  affection,  even  whilst  he  had  gone  farthest  from  straight  paths. 

He  drank  the  Montepulciano  wine  that  was  brought  him  now,  and  with  it  youth 
and  hope  recovered  their  unstrung  powers,  and  the  dread  despair  that  had 
pressed  on  him  in  Trevenna's  presence  relaxed.  Eat  he  could  not;  but  as  he 
leaned  there,  resting  his  Murillo  head  upon  his  arm  and  absently  gazing  at  the 
red  flicker  of  the  lamp-flame  in  the  wine,  something  of  light  flashed  over  his 
face;  he  raised  his  head  with  an  eager  gesture. 

"  Father,  I  have  a  thought  !  Listen.  Last  year,  when  I  was  in  the  Vega,  I 
met  an  Englishman;  it  was  in  the  autumn  morning,  and  I  was  lying,  doing 
nothing,  among  the  grass  as  he  rode  by.  He  rode  slowly,  and  I  saw  him  well. 
I  never  saw  a  face  like  his;  to  look  at  it  was  like  hearing  music.  He  caught 
my  eyes,  and  stopped  his  horse,  and  asked  the  way  towards  Granada;  he  had 
fallen  on  a  by-path  through  the  vines.  I  could  scarcely  answer  him  for  looking 
at  his  face;  it  was  so  beautiful.  He  noticed  it,  perhaps,  for  he  asked  me  what 
I  thought  of,  that  I  was  so  absent;  and  I  told  him  truly,  '  I  was  thinking  you 
look  like  David, — a  poet-king.'  He  laughed,  and  said  none  ever  paid  him  a 
more  graceful  flattery;  but  it  was  not  flattery:  I  was  thinking  so.  Then  he 
smiled,  and  looked  more  closely  at  me.  '  You  are  of  the  pure  Sephardim  race, 
are  you  not  ? '  he  asked  me,  and  I  wondered  how  he  knew;  for  he  was  not  one 
of  us,  but  an  azure-eyed,  golden-haired  Gentile.  I  never  saw  him  again  in 
Spain ;  but  this  year  I  saw  a  gentleman  coming  down  the  steps  of  one  of  the 
great  mansions  to  go  to  his  carriage  in  the  gaslight  and  I  knew  him  again;  he 
was  in  court  dress,  and  I  asked  who  he  was  of  the  people.  They  said  he  was 
very  famous,  very  generous,  very  high  in  all  distinctions,  and  that  none  ever 
asked  him  a  kindness  in  vain.  He  is  great, — you  can  tell  that  by  his  glance; 
he  is  gentle, — you  can  tell  that  by  his  smile.  I  know  his  worst  foe  might  trust  to 
his  honor  and  trust  to  his  pity.  I  will  go  to  him  and  tell  him  all,  and  see  if  he 
can  free  me.  He  knows  him,  for  he  was  with  him  that  night." 

"  And  his  name,  the  crowds  told  you  ?  " 

"  Is  Chandos." 

The  old  Hebrew,  who  had  listened,  half  beguiled  as  by  a  poetic  tale,  started, 
his  hands  clenched  on  the  papers  that  had  been  left  with  him;  a  change  of 
alarm  and  of  eagerness  flashed  over  the  dark  olive  of  his  inscrutable  face;  his 
voice  rose  harsh  and  imperative  in  his  anxiety,  while  a  pang  of  shame  and  of 
disquietude  shook  its  tone. 

"  You  dream  like  a  child,  Agostino  !  Chandos  !  yes,  he  knows  him,  and  by 
that  very  reason  you  must  never  approach  him.  You  have  no  choice  but 
obedience;  you  are  in  his  power,  and  his  first  law  is  silence  on  all  that  connects 
him  with  us.  Break  it  by  a  whisper,  and  he  will  spare  you  not  one  moment 


104  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

more.  Besides,  this  Chandos,  this  fine  gentleman,  this  delicate  aristocrat,— 
he  would  shut  his  doors  to  a  beggared  Jew  !  " 

"  He  would  not,"  murmured  the  boy,  in  a  soft  whisper. 

"  No  matter  whether  he  would  or  no  !  Go  near  him,  and  the  worst  fate  you 
dread  will  teach  you  the  cost  of  disobedience.  Ah,  Agostino,  listen.  Be 
patient,  be  docile;  bear  the  yoke  yet  awhile,  and  I  will  buy  your  safety  with 
my  labor;  I  will  earn  your  liberation  with  my  service.  Only  be  patient,  and 
you  shall  not  suffer." 

The  first  words  had  been  spoken  with  the  stern  authority  of  the  Mosaic 
code;  the  latter  closed  in  the  yearning  tenderness  of  his  infinite  devotion  to 
his  only  son. 

Agostino  bowed  his  head  in  silence;  it  was  not  in  him  to  resist;  it  was 
greatly  in  him  to  fear.  His  head  sank  down  upon  his  arms  once  more  in  the 
abandonment  of  a  dejection  the  more  bitter  and  more  prostrated  because  the 
gleam  of  a  youth's  romantic  hope  had  flickered  over  it  and  had  died  out;  he  thought 
still  that  the  stranger,  who  had  seemed  to  him  like  the  poet-king  of  his  own 
Israel  when  the  crown  was  first  set  on  his  proud,  sunlit,  unworn  brow,  could 
raise  him  from  his  despair  and  loose  his  fetters.  The  yellow  lamp  burned 
sullenly  on,  its  thin  smoke  curled  up  in  the  leaden  noisome  air  of  the  pent  city 
alley;  the  night  passed  on,  and  the  boy  still  sat  listless  and  heart-broken  there, 
while  Ignatius  Mathias,  bent  above  his  desk,  passed  back  to  the  world  of  hard 
acumen,  of  merciless  exaction,  of  unerring  requisition,  of  grinding  tribute: 
with  those  exact  figures,  with  those  names  so  fair  in  the  world's  account,  so 
fouled  in  his,  with  those  passages  which  wrote  out  the  ruin  of  those  in  whom 
the  world  saw  no  flaw,  the  evil  entered  into  his  soul,  and  the  higher  nature 
perished.  He  labored  to  free  his  darling;  what  cared  he  how  many  living 
hearts  might  have  the  life-blood  pressed  out  of  them  under  the  weights  he  was 
employed  to  pile,  so  that  with  that  crimson  wine  his  taskmaster  was  pleased 
and  satiated  ? 

"  //  faut  manger  ou  ttre  mang/."  The  world  is  divided  into  spiders  and 
flies;  Trevenna  had  chosen  to  join  the  former  order,  and  his  webs  were  woven 
far  and  finely. 

And  the  church  clocks  of  the  empty  city  tolled  dully  through  the  misty 
night  the  quarters  and  hours  one  by  one;  and  as  the  lad  Agostino  sat  dream- 
ing of  that  autumn  morning  in  the  Vega,  with  the  hot  light  on  the  bronze 
leaves  and  purple  clusters  of  the  vines,  and  the  joyous  song  of  a  muleteer 
echoing  from  the  distance,  while  the  Moorish  ruins  of  mosque  and  castle  rose 
clear  against  the  cloudless  skies,  the  grand,  bent  form  of  the  old  Israelite, 
once  majestic  as  any  prophet's  of  Palestine,  stooped  over  the  crumpled  papers 
that  bore  the  signature, 

"  ERNEST  CHANDOS." 


CHANDOS.  105 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE   DARK   DIADEM. 

ASCOT  week  came,  and  at  the  cottage  which  Chandos  usually  took  for  the 
races — a  bijou  of  a  cottage  that  was  used  in  the  hunting-season  as  a  hunting- 
box  for  its  proximity  to  the  queen's  stag-hounds — Trevenna,  with  five  or  six 
others,  spent  the  pleasantest  days  in  the  calendar.  The  gayest  and  most 
fashionable  racing-time  in  the  world,  with  its  crowds  of  dainty  beauties  and  its 
aristocratic  throngs,  was  nowhere  more  fully  enjoyed  than  at  that  pretty  Ascot 
lodge,  with  its  merry  breakfasts  before  the  drags  came  round,  and  its  witty 
dinners  after  the  day  was  over.  Dubosc,  the  great  chef  ot  Park  Lane,  went 
thither  daily  in  his  little  brown  brougham  to  superintend  the  meals  of  his  master 
and  his  guests  and  throw  in  that  finishing  artistic  touch  which  made  them  un- 
surpassable. The  party  was  perfectly  chosen,  and  perfectly  attuned  to  each 
other:  there  were  two  peers,  great  on  the  turf,  but  great  as  wits  as  well;  there 
was  a  French  duke,  amusing  as  Grammont;  there  was  an  author  as  racy  as 
Theodore  Hook,  a  famous  French  artist,  brightest  of  bright  satirists,  an  Italian 
prince,  the  best-natured  and  gayest-hearted  of  men,  and  there  was  John  Trevenna, 
who,  though  people  might  call  him  impudent,  audacious,  pushing,  and  even  a 
little  coarse,  was  nevertheless  to  society — especially  this  sort  of  society — what 
a  comet-year  is  to  claret,  and  a  truffle-harvest  to  gourmets.  The  party  was 
charming,  with  its  leaven  of  gay  Bohemianism  mingled  with  its  fashionable 
atmosphere;  and  it  amused  Chandos  admirably,  as  he  was  used  to  be  amused 
by  life.  From  the  time  he  was  three  years  old,  when  princesses  had  played 
ball  with  him  and  ambassadresses  bribed  him  with  bonbons  to  give  them  a  kiss, 
he  had  been  accustomed  to  live  among  those  who  beguiled  his  time  for  him 
without  effort;  and  the  world  seemed  naturally  to  group  itself  round  him  in 
changing  tableaux  that  never  left  him  a  dull  moment.  He  had  no  need  to 
exert  himself  to  seek  pleasure;  pleasure  came  unbidden  in  every  varying  form 
to  him,  seductive  and  protean  as  a  coquette. 

Chandos  loved  horses,  rode  them  superbly,  and  had  all  the  lore  of  the  des- 
ert; but  the  slang  and  the  society  of  the  turf  he  abhorred.  He  hated  the  roar 
of  a  ring,  the  uproar  of  a  betting-room,  the  jargon  of  a  trainer,  the  intrigues  of 
the  flat.  But  the  Clarencieux  establishment  had  long  before  his  time  been 
famous  for  good  things ;  his  grandfather  the  duke  too,  had  won  the  Derby  the 
same  year  that  he  was  given  the  Garter,  and  was  prouder  in  his  heart  of  the  first 
Blue  Ribbon  than  of  the  last;  his  own  horses  had  carried  off  all  the  best  stakes 
in  various  years  at  Newmarket,  Doncaster,  Epsom,  and  Goodwood,  and  he  al- 
ways backed  his  favorites  freely  and  with  great  spirit;  nothing  was  ever  entered 


10G 


OU1DAS    WORKS. 


by  him  that  the  blackest  little  rogue  on  the  flat  could  ever  suspect  might  not  be 
"  meant."  Therefore,  if  his  horses  lost,  of  course  he  lost  considerably,  though 
this,  owing  to  the  superiority  of  the  strains  and  the  excellence  of  his  trainer, 
had'very  rarely  occurred:  nor'was  it  likely  to  occur  at  Ascot,  for  far  and  away 
at  the  head  of  the  field  stood,  almost  untouched  by  any  rival  for  the  Cup,  his 
famous  four-year-old  Sir  Galahad. 

It  caused  him  no  uneasiness  that  in  certain  quarters  there  was  a  disposition 
to  offer  against  the  favorite,  and  that  this  was  done  with  a  regularity  and  a 
caution  which  might  have  suggested  the  fact  of  a  commission  being  out  to  lay 
against  him.  He  noticed  it,  indeed,  but  with  that  carelessness  which  made  him 
too  facilely  persuaded,  and  was  content  to  believe  the  explanation  Trevenna 
offered  him,  that  a  rumor  had  got  abroad  of  Sir  Galahad  having  a  touch  of  cough. 
"  Very  good  thing  for  us,  too,"  said  Trevenna,  shrugging  his  shoulders. 
"  Galahad's  right  as  a  trivet;  and  if  we  can  heighten  the  whisper  to  influenza, 

and  take  all  the  odds  against  him,  there'll  be  a  pot  of  money  to  show " 

He  stopped;  he  perceived  that  for  once  his  acumen  had  been  faulty,  and 
had  overreached  itself;  he  saw  that  he  had  tried  a  dangerous  path  with  a  man 
who,  in  all  other  ways,  was  so  pliant  to  his  hand  through  the  weaknesses  of  in- 
souciance and  of  indolence.  Chandos  turned  to  him  with  a  look  on  his  face 
that  he  had  never  seen  there.  "  Roguery  makes  a  poor  jest,"  he  said  coldly. 
"  If  anyone  win  a  shilling  by  the  rumor,  knowing  its  falsity,  he  may  take  his 
name  off  my  visiting-list.  I  will  see  that  the  horse  is  given  his  next  morning 
gallop  over  the  Heath  as  publicly  as  possible,  so  that  it  may  be  known  he  is  in 
perfect  condition." 

And  he  did  so.  Trevenna  the  Astute  had  made  a  false  step  for  the  sole 
time  in  their  intercourse,  and  thought  to  himself,  "  Chivalry  on  the  flat !  If  it 
ever  come  into  fashion,  we  may  sow  wheat  on  the  Beacon  Course  and  grow 
tares  by  Tattenham  Corner.  Mercy  ! — what  a  fool  he  is,  with  all  his  talents  !  " 
He  did  seem  a  very  great  fool  to  Trevenna;  but  then,  as  Trevenna  reflected, 
there  was  not  much  wonder  in  that,  after  all,  for  the  man  was  a  poet, — in  his 
view,  as  in  Lady  Chesterton's,  synonymous  with  saying  he  was  a  lunatic. 

"  Looks  well,  Ernest,"  said  the  Duke  of  Castlemaine,  where  he  stood,  among 
other  members  of  the  Jockey  Club,  eying  Sir  Galahad  as  he  came  on  the  Heath 
on  the  morning  of  the  Cup-day. 

"  He  can't  be  more  fit,"  answered  Chandos,  with  his  race-glass  up;  "  and  I 
don't  see  what  there  is  to  beat  him." 

"  Nothing,"  said  John  Trevenna,  who  was  always  pleasantly  positive  to  men 
about  their  own  successes.  There  is  not  a  more  agreeable  social  quality.  "  I 
think  the  field's  hardly  strong  enough  to  do  him  full  credit;  there  is  scarce  a 
good  thing  in  it.  Lotus-Lily's  pretty,  no  doubt,  very  taking-looking,  and  her 
arms  and  knees  are  good;  but  she  won't  stay." 


CHAN  DOS.  107 

With  which  Trevenna,  after  his  general  trenchant  fashion,  clenched  the 
matter,  his  authoritativeness  being  usually  forgiven  for  its  exceeding  accuracy: 
he  was  never  found  wrong.  But  it  highly  displeased  the  grand  old  duke,  the 
longest-lived  and  highest-born  of  all  the  dons  of  the  Jockey  Club,  to  have  this 
audacious  dictator  dealing  out  his  opinions  unbidden  at  his  elbow.  He  hated 
the  fellow,  and  hated  to  see  him  there, — so  much,  indeed,  that  he  would  have 
found  means  to  turn  him  out  of  the  stand,  had  he  not  been  brought  thither  by 
and  through  his  grandson.  He  pointed  with  his  glass  to  a  long,  low,  rakish- 
looking  chestnut  that,  with  hood  and  quarter-piece  on,  was  being  walked  quietly 
and  unnoticed  about,  forgotten  among  the  ruck,  while  Sir  Galahad,  Lotus-Lily, 
and  the  rest  of  the  cracks  drew  the  eyes  and  awoke  the  admiration  of  the 
Heath. 

"  You  are  false  to  your  order,  sir,"  he  said,  grimly.  "  There's  the  horse 
you  should  back,  if  you  were  true  to  your  form, — a  <  rank  outsider,'  entered 
under  an  alias,  came  from  nobody-knows-where,  and  foisted  into  running  for  a 
cup  while  he  should  be  standing  in  a  cab.  You  should  have  sympathy,  sir  ?  " 

The  satire  was  significant  enough  without  the  fiery  glance  that  the  duke's 
Plantagenet  eyes,  blue  as  those  tradition  gives  to  Edward  of  York,  flashed  on 
him.  The  haughty  old  noble  traced  descent  from  the  House  of  York. 

Trevenna  could  have  hurled  a  curse  at  his  white  •  hairs,  with  the  snarl  of  a 
furious  dog,  so  bitterly  the  arrow  rankled,  so  keenly  he  felt  that  this  man  alone 
read  him  as  he  was.  But  he  had  trained  himself  better;  he  laughed  without  a 
sign  of  temper. 

"  An  awkward  brute  !  I  don't  fancy  him.  Who  likes  their  own  orders, 
duke  ?  You  find  yours  so  dull  sometimes  that  you  come  to  the  brains  of  No- 
bodies to  amuse  you  !  " 

"  Fellow  can  always  hit  you  back  again,"  thought  his  Grace,  "  and  never 
shows  when  he's  struck.  But  that  overdone  good  humor  means  mischief:  if  a 
man  smiles  under  an  affront,  he  may  be  above,  but  he's  much  more  likely  to 
be  beneath,  resenting  it.  Now,  I'd  have  respected  the  fellow  if  he  had  showed 
fight  in  hard  earnest;  but  he  laughs  at  too  much  not  to  mean  to  take  his  measure 
out  for  it  some  day." 

And  the  duke  adjusted  his  Voigtlander,  and  took  a  long  look  at  the  cracks 
as  the  saddling-bell  rang,  and  Sir  Galahad  passed  him  with  his  flanks  shining 
like  satin,  his  knee-action  beautiful,  and  his  calm  reposeful  glance  proudly 
eying  the  throngs  that  hung  on  his  steps. 

Chandos  looked  at  the  favorite  as  a  man  must  always  look  at  the  nearly- 
certain  winner  of  a  great  stake  when  that  winner  comes  out  of  his  own  estab- 
lishment and  has  been  bred  from  the  famous  strains  that  have  made  the  celebrity 
and  the  success  of  the  stable  for  a  century.  The  passion  of  the  turf  was  impos- 
sible to  him,  and  to  concentrate  his  life  on  the  winning  or  losing  of  money 


108  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

would  have  been  as  grotesque  to  his  fancy  as  to  centre  it  on  eating  or  drinking; 
his  nature  and  his  tastes  led  him  to  so  many  forms  of  enjoyment,  to  so  many 
shapes  of  attraction,  that  the  gaming-pleasures  and  lusts  of  the  "  flat  "  had  but 
little  hold  on  him.  On  the  other  hand,  however,  as  strong  an  interest  centred 
for  him  in  the  running  of  his  horses,  of  whom  he  was  both  naturally  proud 
and  passionately  fond.  In  the  ten  years  gone  by  since  his  majority,  he  had 
won  the  Derby  twice,  and  most  other  cups  and  stakes  of  note  some  time  or 
other.  The  "Chandos  strains"  were  very  celebrated;  and  he  watched  the 
winning  of  his  colors  with  little,  if  any,  thought  of  the  sums  hazarded  on  them, 
but  with  a  loving  pleasure  in  the  triumphs  of  the  gallant  beasts  that  had  known 
his  voice  and  his  touch  from  the  first  days  of  their  colt-  or  filly-hood,  when  they 
had  gambolled  by  their  dam's  side  under  the  broad-spreading  branches  of  the 
oaks  and  elms  at  Clarencieux. 

He  did  not  set  himself  the  value  on  Sir  Galahad  that  he  did  on  a  young 
colt  that  was  looked  on  by  his  trainer  as  a  certainty  for  the  next  Guineas  and 
Derby;  but  the  horse  was  a  brilliant  winner,  and  it  was  next  to  an  impossibility 
that  anything  could  beat  him  on  the  Ascot  course,  unless  indeed  it  were  Lotus- 
Lily, — a  mare  of   considerable   promise  and   performance,  but  who  was  not 
thought  to  have  the  stay  in  her  requisite  for  the  running.     The  saddling-bell 
rang,  the  telegram-board  "was  hoisted  up,  the  start  was  given;  the  field  swept 
out  like  a  fan,  disentangling  one  from  another,  a  confused  mass,  for  a  moment, 
of  bright  and  various  hues.     Then  from  the  press  there  launched  forward,  with 
the  well-known,  light,  stretching  stride  that  covered  distance  so  marvellously, 
the  Clarencieux  favorite,  shaking  himself  clear  of  all  the  running,  and  leading 
at  a  canter,  which,  unextended  and  easy  as  it  was,  left  even  Lotus-Lily  and 
Queen  of  the  Faires  behind  by  two  lengths.     All  eyes  on  the  course  and  the 
stands  were  fastened  on  the  match  between  the  cracks.     Scarce  any  one  noted 
among  the  ruck  one  chestnut  outsider,  ugly,  awkward,  but  with  great  girth  of 
barrel  and  a  power  of  action,  which,  ridden  with  singularly  fine  judgment  by  a 
Yorkshire  jock  of  little-known  and  merely  local  reputation,  was  quietly  singling 
out  from  the  rest,  and  warily  waiting  on,  the  two  favorites, — so  warily  that 
imperceptibly  yet  surely  he  quickened  his  pace,  passed  Queen  of  the  Fairies, 
and  gained  upon  Lotus-Lily  till  he  struggled  with  her  neck  by  neck.     So  little 
known  was  he,  so  dark  had  he  been  kept,  that  as  he  ran  even  with  the  mare, 
two  lengths  behind  the  Clarencieux  crack,  half  the  multitude  upon  the  Heath 
knew  neither  his  name  nor  owner,  and  the  fashionable  gatherings  on  the  stands 
looked  at  their  cards  bewildered  as  to  whom  this  outsider  belonged  to,  with  his 
feather-weight  in  the   unrecognized  gray-and-yellow  with  purple  hoops,  that 
was  even  with  the  aristocratic  scarlet-and-white  of  Lotus-Lily's   jockey,  and 
barely  now  a  length  and  a  half  behind  the  famous  blue-and-gold  of  Chandos' 
popular  colors. 


CHAN  DOS.  109 

Fleet  as  the  lightning  the  three  swept  on,  no  other  near  them  even  by  a  bad 
third,  their  jocks  becoming  but  mere  specks  of  color,  whose  course  was  watched 
with  breathless,  strained  anxiety:  extended  now  to  the  uttermost  of  his  splendid 
pace,  Sir  Galahad,  conscious  for  the  first  time  of  a  rival  not  to  be  disdained, 
and  perhaps  scarcely  to  be  beaten,  ran  like  the  wind,  the  Diadem  chestnut 
gaining  on  him  at  every  yard,  the  mare  behind  by  hopeless  lengths.  Chandos 
leaned  forward,  and  his  breath  came  and  went  quickly.  The  duke,  as  through 
his  glass  he  watched  the  race,  that  had  now  become  a  match,  with  the  eager 
interest  of  the  chief  of  a  great  House  whose  name  had  been  famous  on  the  turf 
since  the  days  of  Eclipse  and  Flying  Dutchman,  shifted  his  Voigtlander  uneasily 
as  he  muttered  in  the  depths  of  his  snow-white  beard, — 

"  The  dark  one  wins,  by  God  ! " 

The  dark  one  did  win.  Nearer  and  nearer,  faster  and  faster,  the  ungainly 
and  massive  limbs  of  the  Yorkshire  horse  brought  him  alongside  the  graceful 
and  perfect  shape  of  the  Ascot  favorite;  and  from  the  vast  crowds  upon  the 
purple  heather  of  the  Heath  the  shouts  echoed  the  old  duke's  words,  "  The 
outsider  wins  !  "  "  The  outsider  has  it  !  "  A  moment,  and  they  ran  neck  to 
neck;  the  gallant  crack  of  the  Clarencieux  stable,  with  all  the  mettle  in  him 
roused  to  fire,  strove  for  a  second  manfully  with  this  unknown  and  unexpected 
foe;  then,  with  a  single  forward  spring,  like  magic,  the  outsider  outstripped  him 
by  a  head,  and  ran  in  at  the  distance,  winner  of  the  Ascot  cup. 

"  A  very  clever  horse,"  said  Chandos,  calmly,  as  he  dropped  his  race-glass. 

"  D — n  you  !  "  thought  one  who  stood  next  him.  "  There  is  no  fun  in  beat- 
ing you;  you  never  will  show  when  you're  down." 

"  Owned  by  some  very  clever  rascals,"  said  the  duke,  as  he  shut  up  his 
lorgnon  with  a  clash,  while  his  eyes  filled  with  the  hot  fiery  wrath  that  in  his 
youth  had  been  swift  and  terrible  as  a  tempest.  "  The  chestnut  has  been  kept 
dark  as  night.  Whoever  is  at  the  bottom  of  it  has  too  much  science  in  him  to 
have  much  honesty  left.  Mr.  Trevenna,  why  did  you  not  take  my  advice  and 
back  your  own  order  ?  The  outsider  wins,  you  see  !  " 

John  Trevenna  laughed, — such  a  merry,  good-natured  laugh  that  it  was 
infectious. 

"  But  I  did  not  believe  in  him,  sir;  nor  do  I  now.  I  shall  hope  you  will 
have  inquiries  made;  for  there  must  be  something  very  dark  here.  Galahad 
looked  well  riden,  and  if  well  ridden,  there  was  nothing,  I  should  have  thought, 
on  the  turf  could  have  beaten  him." 

"This  is  no  case  for  the  Jockey  Club;  you  know  that,  sir,  as  well  as  I  do," 
said  his  Grace,  sharply,  with  peremptory  hauteur.  "  The  chestnut's  won  fairly, 
so  far  as  the  running  goes;  the  roguery  has  been  beforehand." 

Trevenna  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"  It  must  have  taken  a  deuced  deal  of  roguery  to  have  kept  such  a  flier  as 


110  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

that  ugly  brute  dark  all  the  three  years  of  his  life.     Chandos,  how  cool  you 
are  !     If  I  owned  Sir  Galahad,  I  should  tear  that  Diadem's  jock  out  of  saddle." 

Chandos  lifted  his  eyebrows. 

"My  bay  is  beaten;  there  is  no  more  to  be  said.  The  best  thing  to  do  is  to 
forget  it  as  soon  as  possible.  I  will  go  and  talk  to  the  ladies:  they  always  gild 
the  bitter  pills  of  one's  adversities." 

And  he  who  had  never  known  the  single  pang  of  a  real  adversity,  and  who 
now  felt  but  the  wish  to  escape  as  speedily  as  possible  from  the  sting  of  a  mo- 
mentarily keen  and  painful  disappointment,  went,  accordingly,  out  of  the  stand, 
and  through  the  circle  of  his  sympathizers,  to  the  carriages  of  his  fairer  friends. 

"  Oh,  how  grieved  you  must  be  ! — that  beautiful  horse  ! "  murmu;  ed  the 
Queen  of  Lilies,  in  the  sweetest  music  of  her  gentle  voice. 

Chandos  smiled,  a  little  gravely  and  sadly  for  him.  "  I  am  grieved  for 
those  who  lose  their  money  through  my  mistaken  confidence  in  my  own  stable. 
I  cannot  understand  now  how  anything  could  beat  Sir  Galahad." 

"And  you  must  have  lost  heavily  yourself  ?"  she  persued. 

He  laughed, — his  gay  and  careless  mellow  laughter.  "  Oh,  that  only  serves 
me  right.  I  never  make  a  calamity  of  money.  To  talk  of  fairer  things, — at 
what  houses  shall  we  meet  to-morrow  night  ?  You  go,  of  course,  to  Lady 
Glencaster's  ? " 

"  Ernest,  do  you  know  I  have  a  strong  belief  that  your  friend  is  a  most 
ttwsummate  scoundrel  ? "  said  the  Duke  of  Castlemaine,  with  emphasis,  as 
he  took  him  aside  a  moment  before  dinner  in  the  drawing-room  of  the  Ascot 
cottage 

Chandos  looked  at  him  in  excessive  surprise.  "  My  dear  duke,"  he  an- 
swered, gently,  "  that  is  not  the  way  I  can  hear  any  friend  spoken  of,  even  by 
you." 

"  Pshaw  ! "  said  his  Grace,  with  his  fiery  wrath  lighting  again  those  leonine 
eyes  that  had  flashed  over  the  ranks  of  Soult's  and  Junot's  armies  as  he  led  his 
dragoons  down  on  to  the  serried  square.  "  I  suppose,  if  I  see  your  friends 
forging  your  name,  then  I  am  to  be  delicate  to  warn  you  ?  You  are  as  blind 
s  a  woman,  Ernest.  I  will  stake  you  ten  thousand  to  nothing  that  that  fellow 
Trevenna  is  at  the  bottom  of  this  affair  with  the  dark  horse." 

Trevenna  ! "  echoed  Chandos,  in  amazement,  yet  amusedly.     "  My  dear 
sir,  Trevenna  never  bets  the  worth  of  a  fiver.     What  should  he  gain  by  doing 

knowing  of  such  a  thing  ?     He  has  all  the  confidence  of  my  trainer.     If  he 

to  make  money  on  the  turf,  he  would  have  made  it  scores  of  times  ere 

i  my  cracks.     Besides,  think  what  a  horrible  imputation  !  " 

'  His  shoulders  are  broad  enough  to  bear  it,"  said  the  duke,  grimly;  « they 

have  borne  worse  before  now,  I  daresay.     Where  did  you  pick  the  fellow  up  ?  " 

nm  abroad."     Chandos  would  no  more  have  told  how  they  met  at 


CHAN  DOS.  Ill 

Rouge  et  Noir,  and  how  he  rescued  the  young  English  traveller  from  a  debtors' 
prison,  than  he  would  have  counted  the  glasses  of  wine  Trevenna  drank  at  his 
table. 

"  Humph  ! — without  introduction  ?  " 

"  Well,  one  makes  many  acquaintances  so  on  the  continent."  He  smiled 
as  he  thought  that  their  only  introduction  had  been  through  the  Baden  bank 
and  Baden  prison. 

"Certainly;  but  we  don't  often  bring  them  home  with  us,"  rejoined  his 
Grace,  with  a  still  grim  significance.  "  What  account  did  you  have  from  him 
of  himself  ?  " 

"  Really,  I  have  forgotten;  I  was  only  a  boy, — eighteen  or  nineteen,  I 
think." 

The  duke  tapped  his  Louis  Quatorze  snuff-box  with  an  omnious  dissatis- 
faction. 

"  You  are  a  very  clever  man,  Ernest;  but  you  are  too  easily  fooled,  if  you 
will  pardon  my  saying  so.  You  can  believe  it  or  disbelieve  it,  as  you  please; 
but  I  am  as  certain  as  that  I  stand  on  this  hearth-rug  that  the  fellow  you  de- 
fend knows  more  than  he  ought  about  the  history  and  running  of  that  d — d 
Yorkshire  chestnut." 

With  which  the  old  Nestor  of  the  Jockey  Club  took  his  Bolongaro  in  a 
grand  and  silent  wrath,  unappeased,  as  Chandos  smiled  still,  and  answered  him, 
unconvinced, — 

"  It  is  your  over-kindness  for  me,  my  dear  duke,  that  makes  you  so  unus- 
ually suspicious.  I  wish  I  were  as  satisfied  of  every  one's  good  will  to  me  as  I 
am  of  poor  Trevenna's.  Good  heavens  !  I  would  as  soon  believe  that  my 
butler  plans  to  poison  me  in  my  champagne,  and  that  my  valet  means  to  as- 
sassinate me  as  I  dress  for  dinner  !  " 

He  laughed  lightly  as  he  spoke,  and  turned  to  his  other  guests,  who  just 
then  entered  the  drawing-room, — among  them  Trevenna  himself. 

The  dinner  was  of  the  choicest.  Dubosc,  with  a  touch  of  kindly  feeling  that 
this  great  master  was  never  without  (lively  and  sympathetic  Parisian  that  he 
was),  having  heard  of  the  turf  disappointments  of  an  employer  who  seldom 
failed  to  appreciate  his  genius,  tendered  consolation  in  delicate  thoughtfulness, 
by  a  sudden  and  marvellous  inspiration  of  artistic  invention,  producing  results 
with  a  turbot  such  as  Europe  had  never  heard  or  conceived,  and  to  which  he 
positively  attended  with  his  own  hands  throughout  the  criticale  moments  of 
preparation,  watched  breathlessly  by  his  satellites  and  subordinates,  Chandos 
and  his  guests  were  connoisseurs,  on  whom  such  an  tprouvette  positive,  to  use 
Brillat-Savarin's  term,  could  not  be  tried  but  with  fullest  success.  Chandos 
sent  a  mesage  of  appreciation  to  the  great  chef  himself;  and  Dubosc  was  con- 
scious that  the  employer  who  could  have  remembered  a  horse's  running  ill, 


n.,  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

while  he  was  consoled  with  such  a  triumph  as  the  new  turbot  au  Clarencieux, 
would  have  been  a  man  whose  soul  was  dead  indeed. 

«  He/fit  it  ? "  asked  the  master  of  the  kitchen  of  the  stately  fellow-function- 
ary in  black,  with  the  silver  chain  of  office  round  his  neck,  who  brought  him  the 
message  of  recognition.  «  You  think  he  felt  it  !  There  is  so  much  in  soul  !  " 

"  I  am  sure  he  felt  it,"  replied  the  other,  solemnly.  "  He  has  always  proper 
feeling  on  those  matters." 

"Yes,"  sighed  Dubosc,  "but  he  has  not  the  devotion  that  one  could  wish; 
a  fine  taste,  but  careless.  He  thinks  too  much  of  pictures  and  statues,  and  all 
those  trifles,  to  bring  his  mind  rightly  to  the  great  science." 

«  There  is  something  in  that,"  assented  Silver-Chain,  regretfully.  "  To  see 
it  really  felt,  you  should  have  seen  that  little  vuglar  creature,  that  Trevenna, 
taste  it.  There  was  an  fyrouvette  !" 

"  Ah,"  sighed  Dubosc,  still,  "  but  it  is  sad  when  the  good  taste  goes  out  of 
the  great  orders  !  He  felt  it,  did  he?  That  man  will  have  a  career  !" 

Dubosc's  e'prouvette  did  not  fail  to  restore  the  life  and  wit  to  the  party 
which  it  had  in  some  degree  lost  by  the  losing  of  Galahad;  for  all  had  laid 
more  or  less  heavy  sums  on  the  favorite.  Gayety  and  bon  mots  resumed  their 
customary  reign;  the  Italian  prince  and  the  French  artist  were  most  brilliant 
on  the  stimulus  of  the  matchless  turbot  and  the  no  less  matchless  wines. 
Chandos  always  lent  himself  quickly  with  the  easiest  will  to  be  consoled;  and 
the  hours  sparkled  along  on  swift  feet  and  to  pleasant  cadence,  despite  the  dis- 
aster of  the  Cup-day.  Trevenna  was  in  the  highest  spirits,  which  he  checked 
slightly  when  he  caught  the  azure  flash  of  the  duke's  eyes,  but  not  enough  to 
prevent  his  being  the  salt  and  savor  of  the  dinner-party,  as  was  his  custom  every- 
where. They  lingered  long  over  their  pine-apples  and  peaches,  their  Lafitte 
and  Joharmisberger;  and  after  coffee  they  played  whist  in  the  pretty  little  Ascot 
drawing-room  till  the  sun  looked  in  through  the  grape-tendrils  and  vine-leaves 
about  the  casements;  and  by  the  dawn  Chandos  had  forgot  his  first  contre- 
temps, his  first  annoyance,  as  though  it  had  never  been. 

In  the  sunny  summer  morning,  as  Trevenna  sauntered  into  his  bedroom  (he 
had  no  valet,  as  has  been  said,  and  employed  servants  scarcely  at  all),  he  tossed 
thirty  sovereigns,  he  had  won  from  his  host  at  whist,  down  on  his  dressing-table, 
and,  throwing  himself  into  his  arm-chair,  indulged  in  a  genuine  hearty  peal  of 
laughter,  that  rang  out  through  the  open  window  towards  the  quiet  solitary 
heather-purpled  expanse  of  the  Heath. 

"  Sold  the  whole  turf,  by  Jove  !  "  he  murmured;  "  and  forty  thousand  netted 
by  commission,  as  I  live,  if  there's  a  farthing  !  What  a  day's  work  !  Trevenna, 
bon  enfant,  really  you  are  a  clever  fellow." 

He  admired  himself  with  a  cordial,  almost  wondering,  admiration  that  was 
very  different  from  vanity,  and  more  like  the  self-content,  and  self-applause 


CHANDOS.  113 

with  which  a  man  who  has  been  up  every  col  and  peak  in  the  Alpine  range  re- 
gards the  names  of  his  hazardous  and  successful  feats  burnt  in  on  the  shaft  of 
his  Alpenstock.  He  laughed  again,  at  himself,  when  he  lay  back  in  the  cosy 
depths  of  his  chair,  with  his  hands  plunged  into  his  trousers-pockets,  and  gen- 
uine self-satisfaction  brightly  set  on  every  line  of  his  face.  There  is  an  ex- 
hilaration to  the  heart  of  the  successful  engineer  who  sees  every  morass  drained, 
every  ravine  bridged,  every  girder  made  strong,  every  obstacle  overcome,  by 
his  own  indomitable  energy,  and  watches  the  viaduct  of  his  own  rearing  and 
planning  span  the  mighty  distance  that  seemed  at  first  to  laugh  his  puny  efforts 
to  conquer  it  to  scorn.  This  was  the  exhilaration  Trevenna  felt  now.  That  he 
was  reaching  his  success  by  dark,  by  crooked,  by  unscrupulous  ways,  took  noth- 
ing from  his  enjoyment.  They  were  to  him  what  the  morass,  the  ravine,  and 
the  quicksands  are  to  the  engineer.  Had  his  road  been  straight  and  smooth, 
where  would  have  been  this  joyous  excitement  in  his  own  victories,  this  tri- 
umphant zest  in  his  own  engineering  science  ? 

As  he  took  off  his  dress-coat,  undid  his  neck-tie,  and  lighted  a  cigar,  he 
pulled  the  curtain  aside  and  leaned  out  of  the  window  into  the  soft  summer- 
dawn  air.  Not  that  he  cared  a  whit  for  the  heliotrope  and  mignonette  odors 
rising  from  the  garden  beneath,  for  the  dews  on  the  blossoming  lindens,  for  the 
sunrise  on  the  bloom  of  the  heather;  those  things  were  to  Chandos'  taste,  not 
to  his;  but  he  liked  to  look  at  the  quiet  deserted  Heath,  where  the  dark  Diadem 
had  borne  off  the  cup  from  the  favorite.  It  had  put  forty  thousand  in  his 
pocket,  or  rather,  in  those  far-away  American  and  Indian  markets  where  the 
penniless  man-about-town  put  every  penny  even  that  he  won  at  whist  or  loo,  in 
sure  and  secret  speculations;  but  it  had  a  still  sweeter  pleasure  than  lay  in  the 
money  for  him. 

"  So  the  outsider  beat  the  Clarencieux  crack  !  "  he  thought,  with  a  smile. 
"  A  prophecy  !  Duke,  1  won't  quarrel  with  you,  I'll  back  my  order  to  win." 


CHAPTER   III. 

BUTTERFLIES   ON    THE    PIN. 

"  ERNEST,  are  you  going  to  marry  ? "  asked  his  Grace,  dryly,  in  the  bay- 
window  of  White's. 

Chandos  looked  up  in  amazement. 

"  Marry  ?     Heaven  forbid  !  " 

"  Then  don't  go  after  that  beautiful  daughter  of  Ivors.  She  will  marry  you 
in  a  month  or  two  more,  if  you  do,  whether  you  wish  it  or  not." 


1U  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

Chandos  moved  restlessly;  he  did  not  like  the  introduction  of  painful  topics, 
and  marriage  was  a  very  painful  one  in  his  view. 

"  If  you  do  marry,"  pursued  the  duke,  remorselessly,  "  take  the  Princess 
Louise;  she  is  lovelier  than  anything  else  the  sun  shines  on,  and  has  the  only 
rank  from  which  a  woman  can  love  you  without  a  suspicion  of  interested 
motives." 

"  My  dear  duke,  I  am  totally  innocent  of  the  faintest  intentions  to  marry 

anybody  ! " 

Nevertheless,  the  subject  was  not  acceptable  to  him,  and  he  looked  a  little 
absently  out  into  St.  James's  Street  with  a  certain  shade  of  uncertainty  and  of 
restlessness  on  him;  whereas  the  moment  previous  he  had  been  watching  the 
women  in  their  carriages  through  his  eyeglass,  with  the  idlest  and  easiest  lan- 
guor of  a  warm  day  towards  the  close  of  the  season. 

"  Marry  ?  No;  not  for  a  universe,"  mused  Chandos.  A  few  hours  after- 
wards he  entered  his  house  in  Park  Lane,  to  make  his  toilette  for  a  dinner  at 
Buckingham  Palace,  and  turned  with  a  sudden  thought  to  his  maitre  d'hotel,  as 
he  passed  him  in  the  hall.  "  Telegraph  to  Ryde,  Wentwood,  for  them  to  have 
the  yacht  ready;  and  tell  Alexis  to  prepare  to  start  with  me  to-morrow  morning. 
I  shall  go  to  the  East." 

His  yacht  was  always  kept  in  sailing-order,  and  his  servants  were  accus- 
tomed to  travel  into  Asia  Minor  or  to  Mexico  at  a  moment's  notice.  Chandos 
was  used  to  say,  very  justly,  that  the  chief  privilege  of  money  was  that  it  made 
you  quit  of  the  obligation  to  meditate  a  thing  five  minutes  before  you  did  it. 
Looking  long  at  anything,  whether  travel  or  what  not,  always  brushes  the  bloom 
off  it.  He  liked  to  wake  in  the  morning  and,  if  the  fancy  took  him,  be  away 
without  a  second's  consideration  to  the  glow  of  the  new  Western  world  or  the 
patriarchal  poetry  of  the  East;  and  so  well  were  his  wishes  always  provided  for 
that  he  went  to  sleep  in  one  place  and  unclosed  his  eyes  in  another,  almost  as 
though  he  possessed  the  magic  floating  carpet  of  Prince  Hassan. 

The  next  morning  the  Aphordite  steamed  out  of  Ryde  harbor  on  the  way  to 

Italy,  the  Levant,  and  Constantinople,  while  its  owner  lay  under  an  awning,  with 

-R;U  lumps  of  ice  in  his  golden  cool   Rhine  wine,  and  the  handsome  eyes  of 

<lora  de  I'Orme  flashing  laughter  downward  on  him  while  she  leaned  above, 

mning  his  hair  with  an  Indian  feather-screen.     The  duke's  words  had  acted 

e  a  spell;  but  in  his  abrupt  departure  there  was  one  person  he  had  not  for- 

en.     On  his  dressing-table  lay  a  note  to  Trevenna,  bidding  him  to  make 

se  of  his  moors  in  Inverness-shire  with  the  Twelfth  as  he  pleased,  or,  if  he 

t,  give  the  Scottish  shootings  to  any  friend  he  preferred,  and  take 

my  guests  he  liked  clown  to  Clarencieux  for  the  magnificent  preserves  of  that 

ancient  place. 

These  reversions  and  donations  of  windfalls  and  of  pleasant  places  to  lend 


CHAN  DOS.  115 

or  to  invite  to  were  fast  making  Trevenna  very  popular  among  that  large  class 
of  men-on-the-town — dandies,  do-nothings,  authors,  artists,  and  club-loungers 
— who  have  a  certain  reputation  that  floats  them  in  the  world,  but  no  certainty 
of  entree  to  the  good  houses,  and  no  means  to  purchase  for  themselves  the 
pleasures  of  the  moors  and  coverts.  It  began  to  get  him  courted  among  them; 
and  he  was  a  very  genial  host,  royally  lavish  with  Chandos'  wines,  most  good- 
naturedly  ready  with  offers  of  hospitality  to  Chandos'  empty  houses,  so  much 
so  that  men  almost  forgot,  while  they  stayed  with  him,  that  wines  and  houses 
were  not  both  his  own. 

"  Gone  to  the  East  !  By  Jove,  I'll  go  and  find  the  Chesterton,"  thought 
Trevenna,  with  all  the  relish  of  a  schoolboy  for  sowing  mischief,  as  he  read  the 
note  and  heard  of  his  patron's  departure.  He  was  a  little  sorry  Chandos  had 
gone;  he  never  liked  losing  him  from  under  his  eyes;  but  he  was  fully  consoled 
by  the  prospect  of  reigning  as  viceroy  at  Clarencieux  and  of  seeing  the  morti- 
fication of  the  two  daughters  of  Ivors.  They  were  as  poor  as  rats;  they  could 
never  do  him  any  good.  Trevenna  felt  at  liberty  to  tease  them  just  as  he  liked. 
A  restriction  was  too  often  put  on  his  merry  malicious  mousing  by  a  prudential 
recollection  of  the  social  status  of  his  mice,  and  of  the  use  they  might  be  to  him 
in  nibbling  a  way  for  him  into  patrician  pantries.  Here  the  mice  were  very 
poor:  so  he  tracked  Lady  Chesterton  and  her  sister  to  a  garden-party,  and  ate 
his  pine-apple  in  most  admirably  feigned  carelessness  and  unconsciousness  close 
to  the  two  ladies  under  a  Lebanon  cedar.  He  knew  the  consternation  he  should 
scatter  through  society  by  his  news. 

"  I  don't  see  Mr.  Chandos  here  this  morning,"  said  Lady  Chesterton,  turning 
to  him  with  a  bland  smile,  condescending  to  be  civil  because  she  was  curious. 
She  was  also  a  little  uneasy;  otherwise,  be  sure,  she  would  never  have  had 
recourse  to  that  "  vulgar  little  toady,"  as  her  ladyship  designated  the  acute 
outsider. 

"  No,  he  isn't  here,"  assented  Trevenna,  indifferently.  He  had  now  put 
this  handsome  empress  butterfly  on  the  point  of  his  pin,  and  went  leisurely 
about  it. 

"  He  is  well,  I  hope  ?  "  she  pursued. 

Trevenna  shrugged  his  shoulders.  "  Nev^r  was  ill  in  his  life,  that  I  know 
of;  perfect  constitution." 

"What  a  rude  insufferable  bear  !  "  thought  the  unhappy  butterfly;  but  she 
was  still  more  uneasy  than  ever,  and  had  no  recourse  so  good  as  the  bear:  so 
she  resumed  her  inquiries.  "  Do  you  know  where  he  is  to-day  ?  I  have  some- 
thing to  tell  him  about  Rose  Berri  china." 

"Your  ladyship  must  send  it  by  post,  then."  And  Trevenna  laughed  to 
himself  as  he  saw  the  first  irrepressible  writhe  of  his  victim  on  the  pin, 

"  By  post !     Has  he  left  town  ? " 


116  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

Trevenna  looked  at  his  watch. 

«  By  this  time  he  is  midway  across  to  L'Orient.  He  has  taken  his  yacht  to 
go  down  south  and  eastward." 

"  So  early  !  "  Trained  and  icy  woman  of  the  world  though  she  was,  she 
could  not  repress  the  pallor  that  blanched  her  lip,  the  anxiety  that  loomed  in 
her  handsome  eyes.  The  Queen  of  Lilies  stood  near.  Hearing  also,  she  was 
silent  and  very  pale. 

"  Well,  Ascot  was  late,"  answered  Trevenna,  cheerfully.  "  He  generally 
does  stay  for  Goodwood,  to  be  sure;  but,  you  see,  he  has  had  so  many 
London  seasons,  and  there's  such  hard  running  made  on  him,  I  think  he  gets 
sick  of  it. 

This  thrust  the  pins  in  cruelly,  indeed,  through  the  delicate  wings  of  the 
brilliant  butterflies.  "  That  coarse  horror  ! "  thought  Lady  Chesterton,  with  a 
shiver  of  disgusted  wrath;  but  her  heart  was  very  heavy,  and  she  had  to  conceal 
her  chagrin  as  best  she  might  with  all  the  gay  garden-groups  fluttering  around 
her  and  viewing  her  impaled.  "  Will  he  be  away  long  ?  "  she  asked  of  her 
tormentor. 

"  Oh,  dear,  yes,"  said  Trevenna,  carelessly.  "  Gone  to  his  summer-palace 
on  the  Bosphorus;  takes  the  Morea  and  the  Levant  on  the  way.  Poetic  man, 
you  know  !  likes  that  sort  of  thing;  loves  Greece;  enjoys  Corfu.  I  hate  'em 
both.  Snakes  and  old  stones  in  the  one;  rocks,  rags,  and  bad  ragouts  in  the 
other.  '  Ruins  and  scenery,'  they  tell  you.  I  like  stucco  and  pantomime 
scenes.  Besides,  they  always  fry  so  villanously  in  those  hot  places;  glad  to 
get  away  from  the  fire,  perhaps.  When  anybody  talks  of  the  Acropolis  and  the 
Alhambra,  I  always  smell  oil  and  garlic  and  feel  myself  starving  in  memory  on 
a  melon. 

He  glanced  at  his  butterflies  as  he  chattered,  and  saw  that  the  pin  was  enter- 
ing their  souls  like  iron.     He  thrust  it  down  a  little  deeper  as  Lady  Chesterton 
asked,  with  a  voice  that,  despite  herself,  could  not  be  careless, — 
"  Mr.  Chandos  will  be  long  before  he  returns,  then,  I  suppose  ?  " 
"  Won't  come  back  till  next  spring,"  assented  Trevenna.     "  He'll  winter  in 
Paris;  always  does,  as  you  know.     Delicious  hotel  that  is  of  his,  by  the  way,  in 
the  Champs  Elysees.     Clarencieux  isn't  likely  to  see  anything  of  him." 

Which  was  the  unkindest  cut  of  all,  seeing  that  Trevenna  knew  very  well 
that  the  baroness  had  persuaded  her  husband  to  take  a  little  estate  near  Claren- 
cieux for  two  years'  shooting,  on  purpose  that  the  Queen  of  Lilies  might  conquer 
in  the  country  if  she  failed  in  the  town.  The  husband  had  grumbled  because 
he  could  ill  afford  it.  He  was  terribly  poor;  but  he  had  been  persuaded  into  it 
by  the  assurance  from  his  wife  of  Chandos'  admiration  of  his.  fair  sister-in-law; 
and  now  Chandos  was  not  going  to  Clarencieux  ! 

"  I've  paid  you  off,  my  lady,"  thought  Trevenna,  finishing  his  ice.     «  You've 


CHAN  DOS.  117 

found  what  it  is  to  call  me  '  a  vulgar  little  wretch  who  lives  nobody-knows 
where.'  " 

Not  that  Trevenna  had  any  particular  dislike  to  these  two  women,  beyond 
his  general  dislike  to  all  and  any  members  of  the  aristocratic  order;  but  as  the 
boy  feels  no  dislike  to  the  cockchafer  he  spins  on  a  string,  but  finds  amusement 
in  its  pain,  and  therefore  sticks  a  crooked  pin  through  its  poor  humming  body 
and  puts  it  to  pain  accordingly,  so  Trevenna  felt  and  did  with  all  humanity. 

Gilles  de  Retz  enjoyed  the  physical  convulsions  of  his  victims;  Trevenna, 
as  became  a  more  humoristic  temper  and  a  more  refined  age,  enjoyed  seeing  the 
mental  contortions  of  his. 

And  yet  the  fellow  had  his  good  points, — some  very  good  points  indeed. 
He  had  indomitable  energy,  perseverance,  industry,  patience,  self-denial, — the 
greatest  virtues  in  the  Carlylese  school,  which  defies  Work.  Perhaps  it  would 
have  been  well  if  both  Trevenna  and  that  School  had  alike  considered  more 
the  worth  and  meaning  of  the  purpose,  before  they  gave  an  apotheosis  to  the 
fact,  of  labor. 


The  Lily  Queen  and  her  sister  drove  homeward  in  perfect  silence  from  the 
garden-party,  where  society  was  lamenting  with  its  softest  sighs  the  loss  of  its 
idol  and  leader, — a  loss  that  was  much  more  a  blow  to  the  season  than  if  the 
court  had  gone  into  seclusion:  the  true  Royalty  of  society  is  Fashion.  There 
was  a  dead  silence  between  them  till  they  reached  the  pretty  little  violet-and- 
gold  boudoir  on  the  top  of  the  staircase  that  was  specially  dedicated  to  the  use 
of  Lady  Valencia.  Then  the  baroness  unclasped  her  diamond  aigrette,  and 
flung  off  her  Chantilly  laces  with  an  impetuous,  passionate  bitterness  in  the 
action,  and  looked  a  world  of  scorn  out  of  her  black  eyes  on  to  her  fair  sister. 

"  I  told  you  so,  Valencia   !     I  knew  you  would  never  win  him." 

The  Queen  of  Lilies  answered  nothing,  but  stood  there  in  her  still  and 
matchless  grace,  a  slight  flush  of  proud  restrained  pain  only  passing  over  her 
face. 

"  I  told  you  I  knew  it  was  utterly  useless,"  went  on  Lady  Chesterton  with 
woman's  favorite  reproach, — "  Jc  f  avals  Men  dit."  "  Courted,  sought,  flattered, 
worshipped  as  he  is,  do  you  suppose  he  would  surrender  his  liberty  and  marry  ? 
Ridiculous  !  I  told  you  the  Princess  Louise  d'Alve  is  actually  dying  of  love 
for  him;  they  would  give  him  to  her  to-morrow.  She  is  as  beautiful  as  you  are, 
though  you  think  nobody  can  be;  and  Chandos  cares  for  her  no  more  than  he 
cares  for  that  tabouret  at  your  feet.  No  more  he  does  for  you.  No  more  he 
ever  did  for  anybody,  unless  it  were  that  infamous  little  French  countess  who 
has  nothing  in  the  world  but  her  eyes  and  her  figure.  I  told  you  you  could 
never  touch  him  ! " 


lls  O  UIDAS     WORKS. 

Still  the  Queen  of  Lilies  said  nothing.  With  a  haughty  but  admirable  self- 
command,  she  held  her  peace  under  the  lash  of  her  sister's  words.  Great  ladies 
do  not  always  take  their  high  breeding  home  with  them  to  the  privacy  of  their 
own  boudoirs;  and  the  baroness,  though  daughter  to  the  Marquis  of  Ivors  was 
poor,  disappointed,  and  bitterly  at  feud  with  all  creation,  because  she  had  not 
been  born  a  man  to  hold  the  Ivors  title. 

"And  there  is  that  place  near  Clarencieux  hired  for  nothing  !  "  her  ladyship 
bewailed,  with  tears  of  mortification  in  her  eyes.  "  I  am  sure  I  hate  the  coun- 
try. I  would  fifty  times  rather  have  gone  to  Baden  or  somewhere  abroad;  and 
we  shall  be  obliged  to  go  and  live  there.  Chess  won't  let  the  money  be  wasted; 
he  made  such  a  fuss  about  ever  taking  it.  We  might  meet  Chandos  at  Paris,  of 
course,  if  we  were  like  anybody  else;  but  we  haven't  income  enough  to  live  in 
any  style  there,  and  go  to  the  Tuileries  and  all  that,  as  you  must  do  if  you're  in 
Paris  at  all.  We  shall  be  moped  down  at  that  wretched  place  in  the  country  all 
winter  for  nothing.  I  am  positive  you  might  have  made  him  say  something 
serious,  the  night  before  last,  at  the  court  ball.  He  certainly  admired  you, — 
admired  you  very  greatly!  " 

The  baroness  stopped,  for  lack  of  breath,  reckless  that  her  last  charge 
against  her  sister  totally  nullified  her  first  statements, — no  one  ever  stays  to  be 
consistent  in  anger, — and  paused  in  fiery  wrath  and  scorn,  swaying  her  parasol 
to  and  fro  in  impatient  bitterness. 

The  Lily  Queen  lifted  her  drooped  lids. 

"I  regret  you  should  be  put  to  any  inconvenience  through  me,"  she 
said,  coldly.  "You  will  allow  that  /  never  suggested  we  should  go  near 
Clarencieux.  I  never  approved  of  the  appearance  it  would  inevitably 
bear." 

"  That  is  all  the  gratitude  I  receive  ! "  cried  her  sister,  with  considerable 
passion,  the  greater  because  she  was  conscious  that  her  own  manoeuvres  for  the 
brilliant  owner  of  Clarencieux  had  gone  beyond  what  her  sister  deemed  delicate 
or  wise.  "  I  suppose  you  will  say  that  it  was  I  who  suggested  you  should  wear 
the  Lucrece  dress  at  his  fancy  ball." 

"  As  it  was,"  said  the  Lady  Valencia,  calmly. 

"  Indeed!  Oh,  very  well!  "  cried  her  sister,  with  the  laugh  that  with  women 
denotes  the  last  climax  of  passion.  <l  Die  unmarried  and  penniless,  Valencia, 
if  you  choose;  it  is  no  matter  to  me!  Only  remember  you  have  not  fifty  pounds 
a  year  of  your  own,  and  my  milliner's  bills  come  already  to  more  than  my  hus- 
band will  pay  without  recourse  to  his  Jews;  I  shall  add  yours  to  them  no  more 
after  this." 

With  that  last  shaft  home  the  peeress  flashed  from  the  room  in  a  storm  of 
fluttering  lace  and  fiery  wrath.  The  Queen  of  Lilies  stood  silent  and  motion- 
less some  moments  more,  then  she  went  almost  mechanically  to  the  door,  closed 


CHANDOS.  119 

it,  slipped  its  bolt,  and,  sinking  down  on  one  of  the  couches,  dropped  her  proud 
head  on  her  hands  and  sobbed  as  bitter  tears  as  any  woman  ever  shed. 

The  last  evening  light  streamed  through  the  painted  panes  of  her  exotic- 
shrouded  window,  and,  straying  along  the  bright  path  of  the  little,  dainty,  gor- 
geously-colored boudoir,  fell  across  her  fair  brow  and  delicate  hands,  with  their 
antique  rings  gleaming  on  their  whiteness,  which  were  clasped  in  pain  till  the 
glittering  points  of  the  stones  cut  the  skin. 

Was  it  love  or  vanity  that  was  thus  cruelly  wounded?  Was  it  the  broken 
ambition  for  which  she  wept,  or  the  broken  hope  of  a  softer  desire?  Was  it  the 
heart  that  was  lost,  the  voice  that  was  silent,  the  eloquent  eyes  that  looked  on 
hers  no  more,  that  were  so  bitterly  lamented  ?  or  was  it  the  leadership  of  the 
fashion,  the  stately  magnificence  of  Clarencieux,  the  prize  that  all  her  sex 
sought  and  coveted, — the  attained  Marquisate  of  the  Chandos  which  with  any 
moment  might  be  restored, — that  were  the  object  of  that  mortified  and  humil- 
iated grief  ? 

Who  shall  say  ? 

Some  loves,  certes,  there  was  in  it. 


CHAPTER    IV. 

"  STRAIGHT    WAS    A    PATH    OF    GOLD    FOR    HIM." 

IF  the  Lily  Queen  hoped  for  remembrance  from  her  lost  lover,  she  hoped 
for  a  wellnigh  hopeless  thing. 

The  kaleidoscope  of  Chandos'  life  changed  so  incessantly  that  it  was  rarely 
indeed  any  picture  that  had  been  whirled  past  him  retained  the  slightest  claim 
on  his  memory.  He  was  always  seeing  one  that  seemed  better  than  the  last. 
Partly  this  was  traceable  to  his  own  temperament,  but  chiefly  it  was  due  to  the 
avidity  with  which  all  his  world  catered  for  him.  Now,  as  the  yacht  swept  on 
her  gay  way,  there  could  be  nothing  more  charming  than  that  voyage  through 
"  isles  of  eternal  summer  "  and  through  seas  laughing  in  an  endless  sunlight. 
Pausing  when  he  would,  Italian  cities  on  the  fair  sea-coast  gave  him  amuse- 
ment under  their  aisles  of  orange-boughs,  blending  fruit  and  blossom  till  golden 
globes  and  snowy  flowers  swayed  together  against  the  warm,  bright  brows  of 
their  rich  Titian  women.  Becalmed  on  a  sunny,  silent  noon,  he  could  lie 
stretched  at  ease  under  the  deck-tent,  with  all  the  perfumes  of  chestnut-woods 
and  myrtle-slopes,  and  citron-gardens  wafted  to  him  across  the  water,  while  ice- 
cold  wines  sparkled  ready  to  his  hand,  and  light  laughter  or  melodious  music 
whiled  the  hours  away.  Landing  at  his  fancy,  he  would  indolently  watch  the 


120  OU IDA'S    WORKS. 

little  gray  aziola  fly  among  the  ivy-covered  stones  of  the  great  Pan's  broken 
altars,  or  the  fire-flies  gleam  and  glisten  above  a  contadina's  hair  while  she 
gathered  in  her  harvest  of  the  yellow  gold  of  gourds.  Sailing  at  night  through 
silent,  star-lit  leagues  of  sea,  he  would  think  a  poet's  thoughts  in  a  charmed 
solitude,  while  the  phosphor-light  glistened  under  silvery  vintage-moons,  and 
the  ceaseless  swell  of  waves  murmujed  through  the  night.  Or,  when  lighter 
fancies  took  him,  under  the  shade  of  leaning  walnut-trees  and  red  rocks 
crowned  with  Greek  or  Roman  ruins,  where,  the  vessel  moored  in  some  nestl- 
ing bay,  he  wound  the  starry  cyclamen  in  women's  silken  hair,  and  listened  to 
their  liquid  voices  laughing  out  soft  Anacreonic  songs  over  grape-clusters  that 
might  have  brought  back  upon  the  soil  the  gay,  elastic  feet  of  banished  Dion- 
ysus. He  was  not  sated,  he  was  not  wearied ;  he  was  what  thousands  pass  from 
their  cradles  to  their  graves  without  truly  being  for  an  hour:  he  was  happy. 
Oh,  golden  science  !  too  little  thought  of,  too  quickly  abjured  by  men.  That 
glorious  power  of  enjoyment,  we  trample  it  under  foot  as  we  press  through  the 
world,  as  the  herds  seeking  herbage  trample  the  violets  unheeded. 

The  summer  months  passed  swift  with  Chandos;  by  leisurely  loitering, 
the  yacht  at  length  wound  her  pleasant  way  down  to  the  Bosphorus,  and 
dropped  anchor  there  opposite  his  summer-palace  above  Stamboul, — a  fairy- 
place,  with  its  minarets  rising  above  a  wilderness  of  cactus  and  pomegranate, 
of  roses  and  myrtle,  with  the  boughs  of  lemon-  and  orange-  and  fig-trees  topping 
the  marble  garden-walls,  and  the  showers  of  lofty  fountains  flung  cool  and 
fresh  under  the  deep  shadow  of  cedar  and  cypress.  Here,  with  a  French  troop 
of  actors  for  the  bijou  theatre  he  had  some  years  before  annexed  to  the  palace, 
—with  a  score  or  so  of  friends  from  Florence,  Rome,  and  Naples,  brilliant, 
indolent  Italians,  the  very  people  for  the  place, — with  sport,  when  he  cared  for 
it,  in  the  wild  deer  and  other  large  game  of  the  interior, — with  as  complete  a 
solitude  when  he  wished,  and  as  utter  an  absence  of  every  memory  of  the  world 
beyond,  as  though  he  were  a  Hafix  or  Firdousi  amidst  the  Eastern  roses  of  a 
virgin  earth, — here  the  autumn  months  passed  by,  and  all  the  indolent  repose 
and  vivid  color  he  loved  ^blended  in  his  life  were  mingled  to  a  marvel. 

The  very  inconsistencies  of  his  character  made  the  charm  of  his  existence; 
through  them,  turn  by  turn,  he  enjoyed  the  pleasures  of  all  men,  of  all  minds, 
and  of  all  temperaments.     He  who  walks  straight  along  the  beaten  road,  turn- 
ing neither  to  the  right  nor  left,  nor  loitering  by  the  way,  will  reach  soonest  his 
destination;  but  he  enjoys  the  beauty  of  the  earth  best,  who,   having  no  fixed 
foal,  no  pressing  end,  leaves  the  highway  for  every  fair  nook  and  leafy  resting- 
place  that  allures  him,  and  lingers  musing  here  and  hastens  laughing  there, 
insistency  is  excellent,  and  may  be   very  noble;  but  the   Greeks   did   not 
T  when  they  called  the  wisest  man  the  man  who  was  «  versatile."     There  is  no 
such  charm  as  "  many-sidedness." 


CHANDOS.  121 

Chandos  loved  the  East;  he  had  lived  much  there,  either  at  his  summer- 
palace,  or  deeper  in  the  heart  of  it  towards  Damascus;  he  liked,  of  a  summer 
morning,  to  float  down  the  soft,  gray  Bosphorus  water  among  the  fragrant 
water-weeds,  with  the  silver  scales  and  prismatic  hues  of  the  gliding  fish  shining 
through  green  swathes  of  sea-grass  or  drooped  boughs  of  hanging  gardens;  he 
liked  in  the  stillness  of  starry  nights,  when  the  first  call  to  prayer  echoed  up 
from  the  valley  below  as  the  faint  gleam  of  dawn  pierced  the  distance,  to 
sit  alone  upon  the  flat  palace-roof  and  let  his  lonely  thoughts  "  wander  through 
eternity,"  as  thus  upon  the  house-top  under  the  Asian  stars,  yonder  afar  in 
Palestine,  the  great  poet-kings  had  thought,  gazing  on  their  Syrian  skies,  and 
on  the  hushed,  dark,  sleeping  Syrian  world,  and  musing  on  that  vanitas  vanitatum 
which  has  pursued  all  lives  from  theirs  to  ours.  He  loved  the  East,  and  he 
stayed  there  till  the  first  hiss  of  the  winter  storms  was  curling  the  Marmoran 
waves  and  the  first  white  blinding  mists  were  rushing  over  the  sea.  Then  he 
left  that  summer  paradise,  where  more  yet  than  anywhere  he  felt  "  how  good  is 
man's  life, — the  mere  living,"  and  travelled  quickly  across  the  continent  •  to 
Paris,  and  wintered  there  in  all  the  utmost  brilliance  of  its  ceaseless  gayeties. 

He  was  one  of  the  idols  of  Paris;  its  fashionable  world  welcomed  him  as 
one  of  its  highest  leaders,  its  artistic  world  as  one  of  its  truest  friends,  its  liter- 
ary world  as  one  of  its  choicest  chiefs,  its  feminine  world  as  one  of  its  proudest 
conquests.  He  was  never  more  at  home  than  in  Paris,  and  Paris,  from  the 
Tuileries  to  the  atelier,  always  delighted  to  honor  him,  always  flocked  to  his 
fetes  as  the  most  magnificent  since  those  of  Soubise  and  Lauraguais,  quoted 
his  bon  mots,  followed  his  fashions,  painted  him,  sculptured  him,  courted  him, 
made  him  its  sovereign,  and  found  the  wit  of  Rivarol,  the  beauty  of  Richelieu, 
and  the  grace  of  Avaux,  revived  in  this  "  bel  Anglais  aux  cheveux  dores." 

In  this  sparkling  whirpool  of  his  Paris  winter  thought  had  little  entrance, 
remembrance  little  chance;  every  hour  had  its  own  amusement,  every  moment  its 
own  seduction;  ennui  could  not  approach,  "sad  satiety  "  could  not  be  known. 
Yet,  despite  it  all,  now  and  then  upon  him,  in  the  glittering  follies  of  court  mas- 
querade or  the  soft  shadows  of  some  patrician  coquette's  boudoir,  as  in  the 
star-lit  silence  of  Turkish  nights  and  under  the  Asiatic  gloom  of  Lebanon 
cedars,  a  certain  impatient  depression,  a  certain  vague  passionate  restlessness, 
came  on  him,  new  to  his  life,  and  bitter  there. 

It  came  thus,  because  for  the  first  he  could  not  forget  at  his  will,  because 
for  the  first  time  a  passion  he  repulsed  pursued  him. 


,  -  - . ,  O  UIDA '  S     WORKS. 


CHAPTER   V. 


CLARENCIEUX. 


THE  rare  red  deer  herded  in  the  great  forests,  and  the  herons  plumed  their 
silver  wings  in  the  waters,  down  at  Clarencieux.  Kestrels  wheeled  in  the  sunny 
skies,  and  the  proud  gerfalcon  came  there.  The  soft  owls  flitted  among  the 
broken  arches  of  the  ruined  Lady's  Chapel;  and  teal  and  mallard  crowded  in 
the  deep  brown  pools  that  lay  so  still  and  cool  beneath  the  roofing  of  the  leaves. 
It  was  a  paradise  for  all  living  things  of  river,  earth,  and  air;  and  it  was  beau- 
tiful enough  for  an  Eden  where  it  sloped  down  to  the  seas  on  the  southwest 
coast,  in  a  climate  so  tempered  that  the  tall  fuchsia-hedges  grew  wild  as  honey- 
suckle and  the  myrtles  blossomed  as  though  it  were  Sorrento.  Covering 
leagues  of  country,  stretching  over  miles  of  tawny  beach,  of  red-ribbed  rock,  of 
glorious  deer-forest,  and  of  heath  all  golden  with  the  gorse,  Clarencieux  was 
the  great  possession  of  a  great  house;  and  its  castle  bore  the  marks  of  Crom- 
well's petronels,  gained  when  the  Cavalier-lord  of  the  Stuart  times,  Evelyn 
Chandos,  Marquis  of  Clarencieux,  had  held  it  after  Marston  Moor  till  the 
Ironsides  swore  in  their  teeth  that  Satan  fought  there  in  guise  of  that 
"Chandos  with  the  golden  hair," — the  "beautiful  Belial,"  as  they  called  him, 
when,  with  his  long  light  locks  floating,  and  his  velvet  and  lace  as  gay  as  for  a 
court-ball,  he  charged  out  on  them  in  such  fiery  fashion  that  he,  with  his  troop 
of  eighty  (all  that  fire  and  sword  had  left  him),  drove  six  hundred  steel-clad 
besiegers  pell-mell,  like  sheep  to  the  slaughter,  down  through  his  mighty  woods 
and  headlong  to  the  sea.  Raised  in  the  days  when  the  mediaeval  nobles  were 

Building  Royallie 
Their  mansions  curiouslie 
With  turrets  and  with  towers, 
With  halls  and  with  bowres, 
Hanging  about  their  walles 
Clothes  of  gold  and  palles, 
Arras  of  rich  arraye, 
Fresh  as  flowers  of  Maye, 

Clarencieux,  with  its  tall  antique  louver,  its  massive  battlemented  towers,  its 
fretted  pinnacles,  its  superb  range  of  Gothic  windows,  its  foliaged  tracery,  so 
marvellously  delicate  on  such  massive  stonework,  stood  in  all  magnificence 
still,  the  master-work  of  centuries. 

Between  it  and  the  great  marble  pile  adjoining,  of  the  newly-made  Earl  of 
Clydesmore,  stretched  a  wide  impassable  gulf  of  difference  never  to  be  bridged. 
Lilliesford  had  cost  more  than  a  million  in  erection,  and  Europe  had 
been  ransacked  to  adorn  it;  but  the  difference  betwixt  the  two  was  as  intense 


CHAN  DOS.  123 

as  that  betwixt  the  bronze  Perseus  of  Benvenuto  and  the  ormolu  statuette  of  a 
Pall  Mall  goldsmith,  between  old  Rhenish  glowing  in  an  antique  Venetian 
goblet  and  new  Cliquot  hissing  in  a  mousseline  glass  between  paint  and  pearls 
and  silken  skirts  gathered  with  gracious  grace  about  a  noble-born  court-beauty 
and  tinsel  flung  with  heavy  hand  and  tawdry  taste  around  a  stage-queen  uneasy 
in  her  robe  and  in  her  crown. 

Lilliesford  was  very  gorgeous;  but  Clarencieux  alone  was  grand. 

The  setting  sun  was  reddening  all  the  antique  painted  panes  of  its  innu- 
merable lancet-windows;  the  deer  were  leaving  their  couches  in  the  ferns  to 
begin  their  nightly  wanderings;  the  last  light  was  shed  on  the  bold  curve  of 
the  coast-rocks  and  the  sea  that  stretched  beyond;  beneath  the  trees  in  the 
dense  forest  night  was  already  come,  as  the  carriage  swept  through  the  miles 
of  avenue  and  Chandos  came  back  from  the  East  to  his  home.  Though,  in  the 
wayward  love  of  change  which  would  make  us  weary  to  wander  from  eternal 
bliss  itself  if  we  enjoyed  it  with  our  present  natures,  he  lived  much  abroad, 
now  here  and  now  there,  he  loved  Clarencieux  with  a  great  and  enduring  love, 
— a  love  that  mignt  have  almost  been  termed  passionate,  so  constant  was  it, 
and  so  bound  up  with  every  gray  stone  and  hoary  tree.  With  him,  though 
hatred  of  pain  made  him  sometimes  seem  heartless,  and  love  of  pleasure  and 
carelessness  of  temper  made  him  habitually  nonchalant,  the  feelings  were  still 
strong,  and  were  not  sacrificed  either  to  the  intellect  or  the  senses.  He  could 
feel,  as  he  could  enjoy,  vividly;  and  the  most  vivid  sentiment  in  his  heart 
was  the  attachment  to  his  birthplace,  to  his  great  hereditary  possessions,  not 
for  their  worth,  their  splendor  or  their  envied  superiority,  but  from  a  fond  and 
almost  filial  tenderness  for  all  the  venerable  beauty  of  the  noble  place, — for  the 
sound  of  its  sea,  for  the  width  of  its  woodland,  for  the  smile  of  its  sun- 
light, for  the  memories  of  its  past. 

He  leaned  forward  as  the  carriage  drove  swiftly  through  the  great  vales  of 
oak  and  beach  and  elm,  and  looked  at  it  in  the  glow  of  the  cloudless  springtime 
sunset.  Before  him,  in  the  distance,  rose  the  front  of  the  royal  pile,  all  golden 
where  the  sun-rays  glistened  and  lit  its  glass  to  flame,  all  dark  where  the  ivy 
climbed  to  the  height  of  the  battlemented  towers,  and  the  rolling  woods  of  the 
inland  forests  stretched  upward  on  the  hillsides  beyond,  an  endless  stretch  of 
dewy  April  leaf.  "  It  is  almost  ungrateful  ever  to  leave  it,"  he  thought.  "  There 
is  nothing  nobler  abroad.  I  will  live  here  more  for  the  future."  And  a  vague, 
irrepressible  melancholy,  wholly  unlike  his  temperament,  stole  on  him,  despite 
himself,  as  he  looked  at  the  home  of  his  race, — fair  as  it  was  in  the  sunset 
warmth,  sure  as  it  was  in  his  possession.  The  thought  crossed  him  how,  ere 
long,  at  most,  he  must  look  upon  its  loveliness  no  more,  but  lie  among  the  dead 
leaders  of  his  name,  there  yonder  to  the  westward,  where  the  silent  graves  told 
the  vain  story  of  their  lifeless  glories 


124  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

It  was  wellnigh  the  first  time  that  the  «  memento  mori  "  had  ever  crossed 
his  gay  unruffled  years;  nor  did  it  linger  with  him  long. 

Ten  minutes  more,  and  he  was  within  the  immense  circular  and  vaulted  hall 
of  Clarencieux,  in  its  dim  splendor  of  purple  and  gold,  of  Renaissance  hues  and 
Renaissance  carvings,  with  the  gleam  of  armor  and  the  flash  of  Damascus 
blades  from  the  walls,  and  with  the  flood  of  light  pouring  down  the  double 
flight  of  stairs  that  swept  upward  on  either  side  of  the  far  end.  There  was  not 
such  another  hall  as  that  of  Clarencieux  in  the  kingdom  of  England.  At  the 
time  of  the  siege,  Evelyn  Chandos  had  marshalled  and  marched  six  hundred 
royalists  at  ease  in  it  under  the  great  banner  that  still  hung  there,  the  azure  of 
the  Chandos'  colors,  with  their  arms  and  their  lost  coronet,  and  their  motto 
"  Tout  est  perdu,  fors  1'honneur  "  broidered  on  its  folds.  His  descendant  now, 
as  he  entered  it  and  came  into  the  scarlet  glow  of  the  vast  oak-wood  fire  which 
burned  there  almost  all  the  year,  looked  round  it  with  the  affectionate  remem- 
berance  of  the  man  who  conies  back  to  the  place  of  his  brightest  childish  mem- 
ories. "  I  will  not  leave  it  so  long  again,"  he  thought,  once  more,  as  he  passed 
through  the  line  of  bowing  servants. 

His  households  were  always  attached  to  him  with  a  warmer  feeling  than  the 
mere  tie  of  self-interest.  Moreover,  there  were  men  and  women  here  in  the 
Clarencieux  establishment  whose  fathers  had  lived  under  a  Chandos  generation 
after  generation,  from  the  days  of  Flodden  Field  and  Tewksbury.  The  service 
they  rendered  him  was  given  with  a  loving  loyalty,  with  the  old  feudal  allegi- 
ance; and  even  the  fashionable  French  and  Italian  domestics  who  had  left  pal- 
aces to  come  to  him,  such  as  Dubosc  himself,  Alexis,  his  head  valet,  Morivaux, 
the  groom  of  the  chambers,  and  others,  felt  a  certain  pride  in  and  personal 
liking  for  him.  Chandos  had  been  born  with  that  nameless  gift  which  some 
natures  have,  of  insensibly  and  without  effort  attracting  personal  attachment. 
Dogs  and  birds  and  horses  and  human  things  alike  felt  regard  for  him  and 
gentleness  to  him  at  the  first  sound  of  his  voice.  His  temperament  was  one 
that  kills  hatred  as  the  sun  melts  snow.  There  was  but  one  hatred  borne  to 
him,  hard  and  unbending  as  steel,  which  it  could  not  soften,  any  more  than  the 
sun  can  dissolve  marble. 

Out  of  a  doorway  on  the  left,  in  the  warmth  and  the  light,  and  down  the 
staircase,  as  he  heard  his  host  and  patron's  arrival,  came  Trevenna,  mirthful 
and  full  of  bon-homine  as  the  brightness  of  the  leaping  fire  whose  ruddy 
gleams  shone  on  his  handsome  white  teeth  and  his  pleasant  smile  of  welcome. 
"As  your  factor,  steward,  head  butler,  head  secretary,  head  trainer,  minister 
of  the  finance,  and  master  of  the  horse,  let  me  welcome  you  home,  monseig- 
neur,"  he  cried,  as  he  took  the  hand  Chandos  held  out  to  him.  «  London's  in 
desperation  at  your  absence.  What  a  delicious  winter  you've  had  in  Paris  ! 
Never  got  a  bit  tanned  in  the  East,  either.  How  do  you  keep  your  skin  so  fair  ? " 


CHAN  DOS.  125 

"  By  no  cosmetic  but  cold  water,"  laughed  Chandos.  "  Charmed  to  see  you, 
my  dear  Trevenna.  No  one  makes  me  laugh  so  well  even  in  Paris,  except  per- 
haps my  exquisite  Rahel.  Why  didn't  you  join  me  there  ? " 

"  Too  busy,"  rejoined  the  other  shaking  his  head.  He  had  had  delightful 
quarters  at  Clarencieux  through  the  winter,  running  up  to  town  most  weeks  at 
his  inclination,  and  asking  men  down  for  the  pheasants,  the  coursing,  and  the 
deer-drives,  till  he  was  quite  a  popular  and  courted  personage. 

"  What  a  Burleigh  shake  of  the  head  !  I  should  like  to  be  told  what  your 
business  is.  Choosing  cigars  and  gathering  gossip  ? "  laughed  Chandos. 
"  Well,  you  know  you  would  have  been  welcome,  had  you  come.  I  didn't  want 
you  in  the  East,  because  you  see,  my  dear  fellow,  you  are  not  precisely  poetic, 
and  I  like  things  to  harmonize;  but  Paris  was  scarcely  itself  without  you.  I 
thought  of  you  every  time  I  had  your  favorite  ortolans  a  la,  Princesse  Mathilde 
at  the  Maison  Doree." 

"  Ah,  the  little  angels  !  "  said  Trevenna,  lusciously  recalling  their  spiced 
and  succulent  beauties.  "  Dubosc,  even,  never  gets  them  quite  right.  I'd  a 
long  talk  with  him  about  it.  I  told  him  I  thought  they  wanted  a  shade  more 
lemon,  and  just  to  be  stewed  in  the  Chambertin  long  enough  to  get  the  aroma; 
but,  like  every  artist,  he's  as  obstinate  as  a  pig,  and  won't  take  a  hint. 

"You  might  be  a  club-cook,  Trevenna,"  laughed  Chandos.  "You  would 
soon  make  a  fortune.  Any  one  here  yet  ? " 

"Only  a  few  men, — Greville,  Bantry,  Le  Vere;  just  a  few  to  amuse  you. 
I  have  taken  infinite  care  in  sending  the  invitations.  There  are  good  talkers 
and  good  listeners;  there  are  two  or  three  who  hate  one  another, — that  always 
makes  'em  sparkle  out  of  spite;  and  there  is  not  a  single  one  who  talks  poli- 
tics. You  won't  be  bored  for  five  minutes.  They  are  all  your  favorite  set. 
Prince  Paul  Corona,  the  Due  de  Neuilly,  and  most  of  the  ladies,  come,  I  be- 
lieve, to-morrow." 

"  Ah  ?  Madame  de  la  Vivarol  comes  also.  She  invited  herself,  and  her 
fourgons  are  already  crossing  the  Channel."  He  said  it  with  a  little  sigh.  He 
would  rather  she  had  not  been  coming;  chains,  however  silken  and  sweet,  were 
unendurable  to  Chandos. 

"  And  you  could  not  say  No,  of  course,  to  la  belle.  Did  you  ever  say  No, 
Chandos  ? " 

"I  think  not:  why  should  I?  Yes  is  so  much  easier,  and  so  much  more 
gracious.  No  floats  you  into  endless  trouble,  but  Yes  pleases  everybody." 

"Yes  is  a  deuced  compromising  little  word,  though,"  said  Trevenna. 

"  It  is  better  to  be  compromised  than  to  be  ungracious,"  said  Chandos,  with 
a  lift  of  his  eyebrows.  "  I  will  go  and  have  a  bath,  and  tell  them  to  bring  me 
some  coffee  up,  will  you,  please?  I  shall  not  show  to-night;  they  will 
serve  my  dinner  in  the  little  Greuze  room.  I  have  a  charming  novel  of  Eugene 


,.,,1  OUIDAS     WORKS. 

de  Meisedore's  I  promised  him   to  read;   and   if  you   can   leave   the   other 
men  and  come  and  tell  me  the  news  of  the  town,  I  shall  be  pleased  to  see 

you." 

"  All  right,"  said  Trevenna,  as  his  host  passed  up  one  of  the  great  staircases 
to  his  private' rooms,  a  suite  looking  over  the  rose-gardens,  and  consisting  of 
his  bedroom,  dressing-room,  study,  atelier,  and  a  beautiful  little  oval  cabinet 
chamber,  called  the  Greuze  room  from  its  being  chiefly  hung  with  female  por- 
traits, and  such  bewitching  pictures  as  "  La  Cruche  Cassee,"  by  that  artist, 
where  Chandos  dined  by  himself  or  with  two  or  three  of  his  choicest  guests, 
when  he  was  not  in  the  mood  for  the  society  of  the  fifty  or  sixty  people  who 
generally  filled  Clarencieux  in  the  recesses  and  the  shooting  seasons.  All  these 
rooms  opened  one  within  another;  and  a  dainty  dinner  from  Dubosc's  genius 
in  the  soft,  deep  hues  of  the  Greuze  chamber,  with  the  violet  curtains  drawn, 
and  the  white  wax-light  shining  on  the  fair  female  heads,  was  as  pleasant  an 
evening  as  could  be  needed. 

"  I  must  see  poor  Lulli;  there  is  no  welcome  after  all,  so  true  as  his  and  as 
Beau  Sire's,"  thought  Chandos,  after  his  coffee  and  his  bath.  "  I  suppose  he 
is  here;  of  course  he  is.  I  wish  I  could  take  him  news  of  that  lost  Valeria." 
And,  acting  on  the  thought,  he  went  to  the  musician's  apartment.  He  never 
sent  for  Lulli.  The  crippled  infirmity  of  the  artist  made  the  traversing  of  the 
long  corridors  and  galleries  of  Clarenciux  very  painful  and  tedious  to  him;  and 
Chandos,  who  never  put  himself  out  of  the  way  for  a  prince,  invariably  remem- 
bered the  calamity  of  the  Provencal.  The  chamber  given  to  Lulli  was  much 
like  that  provided  by  him  in  Park  Lane,  containing  everything  that  could  as- 
sist or  entertain  him  in  his  art,  and,  at  the  farther  end,  a  single  statute  in  Car- 
rara marble, — a  Cecilia,  by  Canova, — which  gleamed  white  out  of  the  unlighted 
gloom  as  Chandos  entered  noiselessly,  unpreceded  by  any  servant. 

"  Lulli,  where  are  you  ? "  At  the  first  sound  of  the  only  voice  he  loved,  or 
had  ever  cause  to  love,  the  musician,  where  he  sat  bent  in  the  twilight,  lifted  his 
head  with  a  low,  joyous  cry,  and  came  forward  as  quickly  as  his  weak,  bent 
limbs  would  let  him, —  a  man  who  looked  as  though  he  had  wandered,  by  some 
strange  transplanting,  out  of  the  dim  cells  of  a  paraclete,  or  the  hushed  antiqu- 
ity of  some  mediaeval  city  of  Italy,  from  all  his  brethren  who  found  their  pale, 
sad  lives  only  solaced  by  some  great  art-gift,  and  dreamt  of  things  that  they 
had  never  known  in  the  monastic  silence  of  a  living  grave. 

His  brown,  wistful  eyes,  so  deep,  so  wise,  so  dreamy,  so  spaniel-like  in  their 
faithful  loyalty,  grew  brilliant;  the  tranformation  changed  the  weary  listlessness 
of  his  face,  that  never  failed  to  come  there  at  sight  of  the  man  who  had  rescued 
him  and  to  whom  he  owed  all.  He  welcomed  him,  in  his  own  liquid  Southern 
French,  with  Chandos  had  rightly  adjudged  the  truest  welcome  of  any  in  his 
world.  To  no  one,  not  even  to  the  women  who  loved  him,  did  his  presence 


CHANDOS.  127 

ever  bring  a  pleasure  and  a  gratitude  so  deep  and  so  sincere  as  it  brought  to 
this  poor  cripple. 

"  Ah,  Lulli,"  said  Chandos,  with  that  caressing  gentleness  with  which  he 
always  addressed  the  man  so  utterly  dependent  on  him,  so  hopelessly  deprived 
of  health  and  strength  and  all  the  joys  of  living,  yet  so  compensated  by  nature 
with  one  grand  gift  alone,  "  I  wish  you  had  been  with  me  in  the  East.  I  have 
heard  no  music  from  all  the  singers  of  Europe  that  has  power  to  charm  me 
like  yours.  Do  you  think  the  voyage  would  have  harmed  you  ? " 

"  I  must  have  seen  strangers,  monseigneur,"  answered  Lulli,  with  that 
shrinking  dread  of  new  faces  and  new  voices,  the  result  chiefly  of  his  infirm 
health,  partly  of  the  languid  contemptuous  curiosity  and  aristocratic  imperti- 
nence of  those  who  noticed  him,  at  such  rare  times  as  they  thought  of  him,  as 
"  the  mad  musician  Chandos  keeps  to  lead  his  concerts." 

"  Well,  no  strangers  should  have  treated  you  otherwise  than  with  courtesy 
in  my  presence."  said  Chandos,  kindly.  "  I  wish  you  could  shake  off  this 
timidity,  this  great  sensitiveness;  they  do  your  marvellous  talent  injustice  with 
the  world." 

Lulli  shook  his  head:  he  knew  that  even  the  shield  of  his  friend's  power 
could  not  ward  off  him  the  shafts  that  struck  him  home,  the  barbed  arrows  of 
contemptuous  wonder,  contemptuous  loathing,  or,  worst  of  all,  contemptuous 
pity. 

"  I  would  do  all  in  the  world  to  please  you,  monseigneur,"  he  answered, 
sadly;  "  but  I  cannot  change  rny  nature.  The  little  aziola  loves  the  shade, 
and  shrinks  from  noise  and  glare  and  all  the  ways  of  men;  I  am  like  it. 
You  cannot  make  the  aziola  a  bird  for  sunlight;  you  cannot  make  me  as  others 
are." 

Chandos  looked  down  on  him  with  an  almost  tender  compassion.  To  him, 
whose  years  were  so  rich  in  every  pleasure  and  every  delight  that  men  can 
enjoy,  the  loneliness  and  pain  of  Lulli's  life,  divorced  from  all  the  living  world, 
made  it  a  marvel  profoundly  melancholy,  profoundly  formed  to  claim  the 
utmost  gentleness  and  sympathy. 

"  I  would  not  have  you  as  others  are,  Lulli,"  he  said,  softly.  "  If  in  all  the 
selfishness  and  pleasures  of  our  world  there  were  not  some  here  and  there  to 
give  their  lives  to  high  thoughts  and  unselfish  things,  as  you  give  yours,  we 
should  soon,  I  fear,  forget  that  such  existed.  But  for  such  recluse  devotion  to 
an  art  as  yours,  the  classics  would  have  perished;  without  the  cloister-penmen, 
the  laws  of  science  would  never  have  broken  the  bondage  of  tradition." 

Lulli  looked  up  eagerly,  then  his  head  drooped  again  with  the  inexpressible 
weariness  of  that  vain  longing  which  "  toils  to  reach  the  stars." 

"  Ah,  what  is  the  best  that  I  reach  ? — the  breath  of  the  wind  which  passes, 
and  sighs,  and  is  heard  no  more." 


gg  OU IDA'S     WORKS. 

The  words  were  so  utterly  mournful  that  the  shadow  of  their  own  sadness 
fell  on  Chandos  as  he  listened.  He  sighed  half  restlessly. 

"  Is  there  any  fame  that  becomes  more  than  that  with  a  few  brief  years  ?  I 
do  not  know  it."  ,„'  , 

Lulli's  eyes  turned  unconsciously  to  the  music-scroll  that  lay  on  the  desk 
beside  him,  the  score  of  passages  grand  and  tempestuous  as  Beethoven's.  "  I 
do  not  want  fame,  if  they  might  live,"  he  murmured  low  to  himself,  too  low  to 
reach  the  ear  of  Chandos  as  he  stood  above  him,  who  stooped  nearer  and  laid 
his  hand  kindly  on  the  musician's  shoulder. 

"  Dear  Lulli,"  he  said,  hesitatingly,  "  I  tried  to  gain  news  for  you  of  your 
Valeria  whilst  I  was  in  Paris.  I  had  inquiries  made  in  Aries;  but  all  was 
ineffectual." 

Lulli  lifted  his  eyes  with  that  deep,  dog-like  gratitude  which  always  touched 
Chandos  wellnigh  with  pain. 

"  You  never  forget  me,  monseigneur.  Take  no  more  heed  of  her;  she  is 
dead  to  me." 

"  Hush  !  that  is  too  harsh  for  your  gentle  creed,  Lulli,"  said  Chandos, 
whilst  his  hand  still  lay  carressingly  on  the  Proven9al's  shoulder.  "  I  abhor 
those  bitter,  brutal  Hebrew  codes.  Wait  till  at  least  you  know  her  story." 

"  There  is  no  need  to  wait;  it  is  dishonor." 

Out  of  the  dreaming  softness  of  his  Southern  eyes  new  fire  flashed,  and  on 
the  frail  delicacy  of  his  face  a  sternness  set.  Never  yet  was  there  a  recluse 
who  had  tolerance;  and  the  honor  of  his  genius-dowered  name  was  as  dear  to 
the  beggared  artist  as  to  the  haughtiest  royal  line. 

"  As  the  world's  prejudices  hold,"  said  Chandos.  "  There  is  more  real  dis- 
honor in  the  woman  who  gives  herself  to  a  base  marriage  for  its  gold,  than  in 
the  one  who  gives  herself  to  calumniation  for  a  generous  love.  And  it  may  be 
that  Valeria " 

"  Monseigneur,  1  pray  you,  speak  of  her  no  more.  I  have  said  she  is  dead 
to  me." 

There  was  so  intense  a  suffering  in  the  words  that  Chandos  forbore  to  press 
the  wound  still  so  keenly  nerved,  still  so  fresh  to  every  touch,  although  two 
years  had  passed  by  since  the  loss  of  the  young  Provencal  girl  from  Aries. 

"  Then  think  of  her  no  more,  Guido,"  he  said,  kindly.  "  I  cannot  bear  that 
you  should  have  anything  to  grieve  you.  Life  is  too  short  to  spend  its  hours 
in  sorrow.  And  now,  how  is  it  with  the  Ariadne  in  Naxos  ?  It  must  have  pro- 
gressed far,  while  I  have  been  away  ?  " 

He  had  recalled  Lulli  to  a  theme  even  dearer  than  Valeria  had  ever  been. 
The  Ariadne  was  an  opera  on  whose  composition  he  was  lavishing  all  his  love, 
his  time,  his  luxuriant  fancy,  and  his  singular  talents.  Chandos  himself  had 
written  for  it  the  Italian  libretto,  and  had  lent  all  his  knowledge  of  music  towards 


CHANDOS.  129 

its  perfecting;  it  was  yet  scarcely  finished,  but  it  was  to  be  produced  under  his 
own  auspices  and  at  his  own  expense.  It  would  be  the  touch-stone  of  Lulli's 
powers  and  success,  the  fiat  lux  which  would  either  consign  him  amidst  that 
circle  of  the  lost,  those  dwellers  in  the  Antenora  of  dead  hopes,  who  had  it  in 
them  to  begreatand  failed,  or  would  place  him  amidst  the  names  of  his  idolatry, 
Gluck,  Handel,  Mendelssohn,  Rossini,  Mozart. 

They  lingered  over  it.  Chandos  heard  some  portions  new  to  him,  and  read 
the  score  of  others,  giving  it  thought  and  care  and  interest  for  a  twofold  reason, 
— for  its  own  beauty  as  an  opera,  and  for  the  hopes  which  Lulli  centered  in  it; 
then,  leaving  the  musician  to  the  solitude  he  prized,  he  went  back  to  his  Greuze 
cabinet  for  dinner. 

After  that  little  chef-d'ceuvre  of  the  genius  of  Dubosc,  who,  to  do  him  the 
justice  he  deserved,  never  exerted  himself  more  when  half  a  dozen  European 
princes  had  the  menu  than  when  he  prepared  a  succession  of  delicate  trifles  for 
the  solitary  enjoyment  of  his  master,  Chandos  stood  leaning  against  the  mantle- 
piece,  glancing  through  his  Paris  friend's  novel.  The  warmth  of  the  logs  on 
the  silver  andirons  was  behind  him,  the  violet  velvet  and  the  glow  of  the  painted 
chamber  around,  and  the  light  fell  full  on  the  amused  smile  on  his  lips,  the 
beauty  of  his  face,  and  the  easy,  indolent  grace  of  his  resting  attitude,  as  Tre- 
venna  drew  back  the  portiere  and  entered.  He  looked  at  his  host  with  that 
acrid  envy  which  never  was  stilled  in  him,  the  petty,  evil  envy  of  a  woman,  for 
every  elegance  of  form,  for  every  magnificence  of  manhood,  unpossessed  by 
himself  and  inherited  by  the  man  he  watched.  Yet  he  consoled  himself,  looking 
on  that  pleasant  repose  in  the  picture-cabinet,  that  unconscious  half-smile  over 
the  witticisms  of  the  French  pages. 

"Very  well  !  very  well,  my  grand  seigneur  !"  thought  Trevenna:  "  smile 
away  Clarencieux;  you  won't  smile  long." 

And  Trevenna,  after  playing  the  part  of  host  in  the  banqueting-hall  at  dinner 
to  the  eight  or  ten  men  already  staying  in  the  house  for  the  Easter  recess,  went 
forward  into  the  ruddy  wood-fire  light  to  taste  a  little  Lafitte  and  eat  another 
olive  or  two.  with  his  host,  and  amuse  him  with  all  the  mirth  and  mischief  of  the 
town  gathered  in  his  absence,  told  as  John  Trevenna  could  only  tell  it,  till  its 
wit  was  as  bright  as  Meisedore's  novel,  and  its  relish  as  piquant  as  the  golden 
liqueurs. 

"What  a  good  fellow  he  is!"  thought  Chandos.  "I  am  half  afraid  he 
would  be  too  clever  for  the  Commons;  a  decorous  dulness  is  what  passes  best 
there,  and  a  fellow  is  almost  sooner  pardoned  for  being  a  bore  than  for  being 
brilliant.  They  think  there  is  something  so  intensely  respectable  about 
mediocrity.  But  still  he  has  so  many  qualities  that  might  get  his  cleverness 
forgiven  him,  even  there.  He  is  a  marvellously  good  man  of  business,  a  finan- 
cier, I  will  warrant,  such  as  has  not  sat  on  the  Treasury  Board,  and  he  has  an 

-  VOL.  III.— 5 


130  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

acumen  that  cannot  be  overrated.     I  will  certainly  get  him  into  St.  Stephens  ; 
once  in,  he  will  make  his  own  name." 


"Chandos,"  said  the  Duke  of  Crowndiamonds,  in  the  stable-yard,  two  morn- 
ings later,  when  his  Grace,  with  the  rest  of  Chandos'  London  set,  had  come 
down  to  Clarencieux,  "  did  you  hear  what  that  fellow  of  yours— your  factor, 
your  protege,  what  is  it  ?— has  been  doing  while  you  were  away  ?  " 

"I  have  no  proteges,  my  dear  Crown,"  said  Chandos,  wilfully  failing  to  ap- 
prehend him.  "  I  abhor  the  word." 

"  Well  you  have  the  thing,  at  any  rate.  You  know  whom  I  mean, — that 
witty  rascal  Trevenna.  Do  you  know  what  he's  been  about  ? " 

"  No.  Spending  his  time  to  some  purpose,  I  dare  say,  which  may  be  more 
than  can  be  said  of  us." 

The  young  duke  laughed. 

"  Doing  an  abominably  impudent  thing,  to  my  mind.  Been  down  somewhere 
by  Darshampton  (democratic  place,  you  know),  talking  something  or  other  out- 
and-out  radical.  Why,  it  was  all  in  the  papers  !  " 

"  Never  read  the  papers,"  said  Chandos,  with  a  little  shrug  of  his  shoulders. 

"Addressing  the  masses,  you  know,  as  they  call  it;  coming  out  no  end  at 
an  Institute,  or  a  what  d'ye  call  "em.  Tell  him,  Jimmy,"  said  Crowndiamonds, 
wearily,  appealing  to  a  certain  fashionable  hanger-on  of  his,  who  played  the  part 
in  society  of  the  duke's  mnemonique. 

"  Working  men's  place  at  Darshampton, — all  working  men  there,"  supple- 
mented Jimmy,  obediently.  "  Fellows  that  look  awfully  smutty,  you  know,  and 
throw  things  they  call  clogs  at  you,  if  they  cut  up  rough;  though  why  they  use 
women's  clogs,  / don't  know.  Trevenna  been  down  there;  asked  to  lecture; 
did  lecture  !  Talked  out-and-out  liberalism, — ail-but  Socialism,  by  Jove  ! 
Town  wondered;  thought  it  deuced  odd;  knew  you  couldn't  like  it;  couldn't 
think  what  was  his  game."  With  which  Jimmy,  having  performed  his  office  of 
encyclopaedia,  turned  to  the  more  congenial  one  of  examining  a  beautiful  little 
mare  of  the  Godolphin  strain,  which  had  won  the  Oaks  the  year  before.  Chandos 
listened,  surprised. 

Trevenna  at  Darshampton  !  "  he  repeated,  musingly. 

"  Ah,  I  knew  you  couldn't  be  aware  of  it,"  resumed  Crowndiamonds.  "  Told 
them  all  so;  knew  you'd  have  interfered,  if  you  had." 

"  Interfered  !     How  so-?  " 
Why,  forbidden  it,  you  know,  and  all  that,  of  course." 

"  Why  ?  I  have  no  more  right  to  forbid  Trevenna's  actions  than  I  have  to 
forbid  yours." 


CHANDOS.  131 

"  Oh,  hang  it,  Ernest,  you  don't  mean  that.  The  fellow  belongs  to  you,— 
one  of  your  people,  quite;  can't  have  any  title  to  go  dead  against  your  political 
opinions." 

"Never  had  a  political  opinion,"  said  Chandos,  with  a  shade  of  weariness  at 
the  mere  idea;  "wouldn't  keep  such  a  thing  for  worlds.  There  is  nothing 
more  annoying  to  your  acquaintance,  or  more  destructive  to  your  own  nervous 
system." 

"  Then,  the  deuce,  Chandos  !  you  don't  mean  that  you'd  let  that  fellow  go 
on  talking  radicalism  all  over  the  country  without  checking  him,  or  calling  him 
to  order  ? "  chorused  the  duke,  M.  de  Neuilly,  Prince  Paul,  and  the  others  in 
the  stables,  all  of  them  strict  monarchists,  conservatives,  and  aristocrats. 

Chandos  laughed,  but  with  a  touch  of  impatience.  "  You  talk  as  if  Tre- 
venna  were  my  slave,  instead  of  my  friend  !  Call  him  to  order  !  What  do  you 
mean  ?  I  may  think  what  I  like  of  his  actions;  but  I  have  no  shadow  of  right 
to  interfere  with  them." 

"  What  !  not  if  you  saw  him  joining  a  party  that  threatened  the  very  preser- 
vation of  your  own  property,  the  very  existence  of  your  own  class  ? " 

"Still  less  then.  Self-interest  is  the  last  motive  that  could  excuse  an  aggres- 
sion on  personal  liberty." 

"  Good  gracious  !  "  ejaculated  the  duke,  as  though  foreseeing  the  Deluge. 
"  Then,  if  you  put  him  into  the  Commons,  as  you  intend,  you  will  let  him  choose 
his  own  party,  go  his  own  ways,  run  as  dead  against  all  your  interests  and  all 
your  opinions,  just  as  he  pleases  ?  " 

"  Certainly.  Do  you  suppose  I  only  sell  my  friendship  to  secure  partisan- 
ship?" 

"  God  knows  what  you  do  do  !  "  cried  Crowndiamonds,  hopelessly.  "  All  I 
do  know  is,  that  I  should  as  soon  have  thought  of  seeing  Clarencieux  turned 
into  a  hospital  as  of  hearing  you  defend  radicalism  ! " 

"  My  dear  Crown,"  laughed  Chandos,  "I  am  not  defending  radicalism;  I 
am  defending  the  right  of  personal  liberty.  I  may  deeply  regret  the  way 
Trevenna  takes  the  House;  but  I  shall  certainly  have  no  business  to  control 
him  there  because  superiorities  of  property  might  enable  me  to  do  so.  You 
say,  '  You  have  bought  him,  therefore  you  have  a  right  to  coerce  him; '  I  say, 
'  I  have  aided  him,  therefore  I  am  bound  never  to  make  that  accident  a  shackle 
to  him.'  The  man  who  puts  chains  on  another's  limbs  is  only  one  shade  worse 
than  he  who  puts  fetters  on  another's  free  thoughts  and  on  another's  free  con- 
science. But,  for  mercy's  sake,  drop  the  subject:  we  are  talking  like  moral 
essayists,  and  growing  polemical  and  dull  accordingly  !  " 

And  Chandos  turned  to  give  some  Paris  bonbons  to  his  favorite  Circassian 
stallion,  who  was  rubbing  his  sleek  steel-gray  head  caressingly  against  his  hand 
for  the  sweetmeats,  leaving  Crowndiamonds  in  the  conviction  that  the  constitu- 


132  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

tion  was  coming  to  an  end,  and  the  Legitimist  due  and  the  Tuscan  prince 
strongly  of  Lady  Chesterton's  persuasion,  that  when  a  man  was  also  a  poet 
Clarencieux  might  be  his  inheritance,  but  Colney  Hatch  would  be  his  destination. 

Clarencieux  was  filled  with  guests  on  the  carefully-chosen  invitations  of 
which  Trevenna  had  spoken.  He  had  the  very  social  tactics  that  enabled  him 
unerringly  to  mark  out  harmonizing  tints  and  effective  contrasts  so  as  to  make 
a  charming  whole.  His  plan  was  bold  and  daring,  but  it  never  failed:  he 
always  asked  special  enemies  together,  that  they  might  sparkle  the  more  for 
being  ground  against  each  other's  faces,  like  two  diamonds  on  a  lapidary's 
revolving  wheel ;  and  under  his  directions  the  visitors  that  met  at  Chandos' 
house  never  were  wearied,  or  wearied  their  host,  for  a  single  hour.  Few  houses 
can  boast  so  much.  According  to  the  seasons,  they  rode,  drove,  smoked, 
played  baccarat  or  billiards,  had  drives  of  deer  in  the  forest,  and  curees  by 
torchlight,  French  vaudevilles  and  Italian  operettas  in  the  private  theatre,  spent 
the  day  each  after  his  own  fashion,  free  as  air,  met  at  dinner  to  hear  some  novel 
amusement  every  evening,  and  were  the  envy  and  marvel  of  the  county,  the 
county  being  little  wanted  in,  and  generally  shutout  from,  the  exclusive  gather- 
ings of  Clarencieux. 

Yet,  well  amused  as  his  guests  kept  him  in  the  Easter  recess,  which  fell 
very  late  in  spring  that  year,  Chandos  had  a  certain  restlessness  he  could  not 
conquer,  a  certain  dissatisfaction  utterly  unlike  his  nature:  he  could  not  forget 
the  Queen  of  Lilies.  Never  before  had  a  love  touched  him  that  was  unwelcome 
to  him,  never  one  that  he  had  attempted  to  resist;  love  had  been  the  most 
facile  of  all  his  pleasures,  the  most  poetic  but  also  the  most  changeful  amuse- 
ment of  his  life.  For  the  first  time  he  had  to  resist  its  passion,  and  the  very 
effort  riveted  its  influence.  He  had  always  forgotten  easily  and  at  will;  now 
he  could  not  so  well  command  forgetfulness. 

Now  and  then  all  the  variety  of  entertainments  that  chased  one  on  another 
failed  to  interest  him,  all  the  brilliance  of  his  companions  to  suffice  for  him: 
the  wit  and  beauty  of  the  great  ladies  who  adorned  the  drawing-rooms  of 
Cheveley  almost  tired  him;  he  was  conscious  of  wanting  what  was  absent.  It 
was  a  phase  of  feeling  very  new  to  him,  nor  with  the  nonchalance  and  content- 
ment of  his  temperament  and  the  gayety  of  his  life  could  it  have  the  rule  over 
him  always.  But  it  was  there,  a  dissatisfied  passion,  from  which  there  was  no 
chance  of  wholly  escaping. 

Moreover,  recalling  the  soft  glance  of  the  Lily  Queen,  he  wondered,  with  a 
touch  of  self-reproach,  if  she  had  really  loved  him.  He  knew  many  who  had; 
nor  was  his  conscience  wholly  free  frem  self-accusation  on  their  score  or  on 
hers. 

The  Countess  de  la  Vivarol,  radiant  at  Clarencieux,  playing  in  Figaro  to  his 
Almaviva,  riding  a  little  Spanish  mare  that  would  have  thrown  any  other 


CHANDOS.  133 

woman,  always  enchanting,  whether  she  talked  of  Faience- ware  or  European 
imbroglio,  lapdogs  or  protocols,  fashions  or  mesmerisms,  flattered  herself  that 
her  rival  the  English  Lily  was  wholly  forgotten  and  deserted;  but  the  keen  little 
politician  flattered  herself  in  vain. 

Trevenna,  with  his  habitual  sagacity,  made  no  such  mistake,  but  pronounced 
unerringly,  in  his  own  reflections,  on  the  cause  of  his  host's  needing  so  much 
more  care  to  rivet  his  attention  and  so  much  more  novelty  to  amuse  him  than 
usual.  He  guessed  why  the  Princesse  Vallera,  the  Marchesa  de  Lavoltra,  the 
Contesse  Lucille  de  Meran,  and  other  fair  queens  of  society,  reigning  through 
this  recess  at  Clarencieux,  failed  in  charming  or  winning  their  entertainer. 
"  If  he  meet  her  again,  shall  I  let  it  go  on  ? "  thought  that  astute  comptroller. 
"Yes;  may  as  well.  It  will  be  another  complication,  as  the  diplomatists  say. 
Nothing  like  fine  scenic  arrangements  for  a  tragedy  !  " 

So  the  Queen  of  Lilies  would  apparently  have  no  foe  in  John  Trevenna, 
although  he  had  put  the  pin  through  the  butterflies  under  the  cedars. 

"  Reading  some  unintelligible  score  of  your  ancestors,  Lulli  ?  "  asked  Chan- 
dos,  as,  having  wandered  out  alone  one  morning,  taking  the  freedom  himself 
that  he  left  his  guests,  he  came  upon  the  musician  lying  in  the  sun  beside  the 
river  that  wound  through  the  deer-park.  The  woodlands  were  in  their  first 
fresh  leaf;  the  primroses,  violets,  anemones,  and  hyacinths  made  the  moss  a 
world  of  blossom;  nothing  was  stirring  except  when  a  hare  darted  through  the 
grasses,  or  a  wild  pigeon  stooped  down  from  a  bough  to  drink  or  to  bathe  its 
pretty  rosy  feet  among  the  dew.  It  was  peaceful  and  lovely  here  in  the  heart 
of  the  deer-forest,  with  a  gleam  of  the  sea  in  the  dim  distance  at  the  end  of  a 
long  avenue  of  chestnut-trees.  "  How  crabbed  a  scroll  !  "  he  went  on,  throwing 
himself  down  a  moment  on  the  thyme  and  grass.  "  The  characters  must 
baffle  even  you;  the  years  that  have  yellowed  the  vellum  have  altered  the 
fashion.  Whose  is  it  ?  " 

"  An  old  Elizabethan  musician's,"  answered  Lulli,  as  he  looked  up.  "Yes; 
the  years  take  all, — our  youth,  our  work,  our  life,  even  our  graves." 

Something  in  his  Provencal  cadence  gave  a  rythm  to  his  simplest  speech ; 
the  words  fell  sadly  on  his  listener's  ear,  though  on  the  sensuous  luxuriance  of 
his  own  existence  no  shadow  ever  rested,  no  skeleton  ever  crouched. 

"  Yes;  the  years  take  all,"  he  said,  with  a  certain  sadness  on  him.  "  How 
many  unperfected  resolves,  unachieved  careers,  unaccomplished  ambitions, 
immatured  discoveries,  perish  under  the  rapidty  of  time,  as  unripe  fruits  fall 
before  their  season  !  Bichat  died  at  thirty-one — if  he  had  lived,  his  name 
would  now  have  outshone  Aristotle's." 

"  We  live  too  little  time  to  do  anything  even  for  the  art  we  give  our  life  to," 
murmured  Lulli,  with  his  deep-brown  Southern  eyes  dreamily  wandering  down 
the  green-and-golden  vista  of  the  sun-lighted  avenue.  "  When  we  die,  our 


134  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

work  dies  with  us:  our  better  self  must  perish  with  our  bodies;  the  first  change 
of  fashion  will  sweep  it  into  oblivion." 

« Yet  something  may  last  of  it,"  suggested  Chandos,  while  his  hands 
wandered  among  the  blue  bells  of  the  curling  hyacinths.  "  Because  few  save 
scholars  read  the  '  Defensio  Populi '  now,  the  work  it  did  for  free  thought  can- 
not die.  None  the  less  does  the  cathedral  enrich  Cologne  because  the  name 
of  the  man  who  begot  its  beauty  has  passed  unrecorded.  None  the  less  is  the 
world  aided  by  the  effort  of  every  true  and  daring  mind  because  the  thinker 
himself  has  been  crushed  down  in  the  rush  of  unthinking  crowds." 

"  No,  if  /'/  could  live  ! "  murmured  Lulli,  softly,  with  a  musing  pain  in  the 
broken  words.  "  But  look  !  the  scroll  was  as  dear  to  its  writer  as  his  score  to 
Beethoven, — the  child  of  his  love,  cradled  in  his  thoughts  night  and  day,  cher- 
ished as  never  mother  cherished  her  first-born,  beloved  as  wife  or  mistress,  son 
or  daughter,  never  were.  Perhaps  he  denied  himself  much  to  give  his  time 
more  to  his  labor;  and  when  he  died,  lonely  and  in  want,  because  he  had 
pursued  that  for  which  men  called  him  a  dreamer,  his  latest  thought  was  of  the 
work  which  never  could  speak  to  others  as  it  spoke  to  him,  which  he  must  die 
and  leave,  in  anguish  that  none  ever  felt  to  sever  from  a  human  thing.  Yet 
what  remains  of  his  love  and  his  toil  ?  It  is  gone,  as  a  laugh  or  a  sob  dies  off 
the  ear,  leaving  no  echo  behind.  His  name  signed  here  tells  nothing  to  the 
men  for  whom  he  labored,  adds  nothing  to  the  art  for  which  he  lived.  As  it  is 
with  him,  so  will  it  be  with  me." 

His  voice,  that  had  risen  in  sudden  and  untutored  eloquence,  sank  suddenly 
into  the  sadness  and  the  weariness  of  the  man  whose  highest  joy  is  but  relief 
from  pain;  and  it  was  a  keener  pang  still, — the  grief  of  one  who  strives  for 
what  incessantly  escapes  him. 

"  Wait,"  said  Chandos,  gently.  "  Are  we  sure  that  nothing  lives  of  the 
music  you  mourn  ?  It  may  live  on  the  lips  of  the  people,  in  those  Old-World 
songs  whose  cause  we  cannot  trace,  yet  which  comes  sweet  and  fresh  trans- 
mitted to  every  generation.  How  often  we  hear  some  nameless  melody  echo 
down  a  country-side  !  the  singers  cannot  tell  you  whence  it  came;  they  only- 
know  their  mothers  sang  it  by  their  cradles,  and  they  will  sing  it  by  their 
children's.  But  in  the  past  the  song  had  its  birth  and  genius." 

Guido  Lulli  bent  his  head. 

"  True:  such  an  immortality  were  all-sufficient:  we  could  well  afford  to  have 
our  names  forgotten " 

"Our  names  will  be  infallibly  forgotten  unless  we  attach  them  to  a  great 

:e  or  to  a  great  battle;  nothing  the  world  defies  so  much  as  the  men  who 

the  men  who  kill  it.     Paradox  in  appearance,  but  fact  in  reality  !  " 

:d  a  sharp,  clear,  metallic  voice —the  voice  to  ring  over  a  noisy  assembly, 

i  no  way  the  voice  to  suit  a  forest  solitude— as  Trevenna  dashed  through 


CHANDOS.  135 

the  brushwood  with  a  couple  of  terriers  barking  right  and  left  at  hares  and 
pigeons.  The  musician  shrank  back  instantly  and  irrepressibly,  as  a  sensitive 
plant  or  a  dianthus  shrinks  at  a  touch.  "  Halloo,  mon  prince  !  "  pursued 
Trevenna,  cheerily.  "  You  are  a  disciple  of  the  dolce,  and  no  mistake  ! 
Easiest  lounging-chair  in-doors  and  wild  thyme  out;  luxurious  idleness  really 
is  a  science  in  your  hands.  If  ever  you  do  die, — which  I  think  highly  doubt- 
ful, you  are  such  a  pet  of  Fortune  ! — the  order  of  your  decrees  will  surely 
be  to  '  die  of  a  rose  in  aromatic  pain.'  Northing  harsher  could  possibly  suit 
you." 

"  You  antithesis  of  repose  ! "  cried  Chandos.  "  You  will  scare  all  my 
breeding-game,  frighten  all  my  song-birds,  and  drive  me  to  a  new  retreat." 

Trevenna  laughed  as  he  dashed  himself  down  on  a  bed  of  hyacinths  fit  for 
Titania's  wedding-couch,  that  sent  out  their  delicious  fragrance,  bowing  their 
delicate  belles  under  his  weight:  Trevenna  weighed  a  good  deal,  though  a 
small  man.  Chandos  glanced  at  them. 

"  Wanton  waste,  Trevenna  !     You  are  the  genius  of  destruction." 

"  Well,  destruction's  very  pleasant, — of  anybody  else's  property.  Every- 
body thinks  so,  though  nobody  says  so." 

The  man  had  a  natural  candor  in  him,  with  all  his  artifice  of  action.'  He 
hated  hypocrisy  with  an  oddly  genuine  hatred,  seeing  that  he  was  as  cool  a  liar 
as  ever  was  born.  It  seemed  as  if,  like  Madame  du  Deffand,  he  wished  to 
render  virtue  by  his  words  the  honor  he  robbed  her  of  by  his  actions;  for  he 
talked  truths  sharply,  and  as  often  hit  himself  with  them  as  other  people. 

But  why  can  you  want  to  kill  all  those  poor  flowers  for  nothing  ?  "  asked 
Chandos,  tossing  him  his  cigar-case. 

"  For  nothing  !  Sac  a  papier  ! — is  it  for  nothing  when  I  lie  at  my  ease  ? 
To  be  comfortable  is  your  first  requisite  of  life.  Caesar  killed  men  by  millions 
to  lie  at  his  ease  on  purples;  why  mayn't  I  kill  flowers  by  millions  to  lie  at  mine 
on  hyacinths  ?  Flowers,  too  !  A  lot  of  weeds." 

"  Oh,  Peter  Bell  the  Second  !  "  cried  Chandos,  shrugging  his  shoulders. 

"  A  primrose  on  the  river's  brim 
A  yellow  primrose  was  to  him, 
And  it  was  nothing  more," 

quoted  Trevenna.  "  Now,  what  the  deuce  more  should  it  be  ?  How  that  un- 
happy fellow  has  been  abused  for  not  being  able  to  see  a  thing  as  it  wasn't, — 
always  the  thing  for  which  poets  howl  at  sane  men  !  Why  are  he  and  I  re- 
quired to  rhapsodize  our  hyacinths  and  primroses  ? — nice  little  flowers,  one 
blue,  t'other  yellow,  with  a  pleasant  smell,  but  certaintly  nothing  remarkable. 
What  is  this  miraculous  tongue  that  talks  to  you  artists  in  a  scubby  little  bit  of 
moss  or  a  beggarly  bunch  of  violets  ? " 


13e  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

"  Grimm  asked  Diderot  the  same  question.  You  would  have  wondered, 
like  Grimm,  what  there  could  be  to  listen  to  from  an  ear  of  wheat  and  a  little 
corn-flower." 

"  Certainly:  Grimm  was  very  like  me,  a  regular  gossip,"  responded  Tre- 
venna,  pulling  a  handful  of  hyacinths  and  tossing  them  up  in  the  air.  "  My 
dear  weeds,  you  must  die  if  I  choose.  Ah  ! — it's  fun  to  have  power  over  any- 
thing, great  or  small.  Fouquier-Minville  enjoyed  cutting  off  necks  by  a  nod 
of  his  own;  I  understand  that;  you  don't  understand  it,  monseigneur.  If  we'd 
been  in  the  Terror,  you'd  have  gone  to  the  guillotine  with  the  point  ruffles  over 
your  hands,  and  a  mot  on  your  lips,  and  a  superb  smile  of  disdainful  pity  for 
the  mob;  and  I  should  have  tossed  up  my  red  cap  and  spun  round  in  the  '  Ca 
ira,'  and  cheered  the  the  Sansons,  and  gone  safe  through  it  all.  But  good-bye; 
I'm  going  to  your  outlying  farms.  Did  you  know  I  was  a  first-rate  agricultur- 
ist? Of  course  you  don't;  what  do  you  know  about  any  Bucolic,  except  the 
Virgilian  ? "  With  which  Trevenna,  much  too  mercurial  to  sit  still  five 
minutes,  went  on  his  way,  switching  the  grasses  right  and  left,  and  with  his  two 
little  terriers  barking  in  furious  chorus. 

Lulli  looked  after  him;  Chandos  himself  even,  was  glad  he  was  gone.  He 
enjoyed  the  merry  society  of  his  fidus  Achates  in  a  club  or  over  a  claret;  but 
there  were  times  when,  cordial  as  was  his  good  will  to  him,  Trevenna  irritated 
rather  his  tastes  than  his  temper,  and  his  incessant  banter  grew  wearisome. 

"  You  trust  that  gentleman  ? "  asked  Lulli,  suddenly. 

"  Entirely,"  answered  Chandos,  surprised. 

"  J  would  not,"  said  the  Provencal,  softly,  under  his  breath. 

"  Indeed  !     And  why  ?  " 

Over  Lulli's  face  came  the  troubled,  bewildered  look  which  made  those  who 
noticed  him  cursorily  think  his  brain  was  unsettled.  He  felt,  but  he  could  not 
define.  To  a  mind  only  used  to  desultory  dreamy  thoughts,  it  was  impossible 
to  trace  out  its  workings  by  logic. 

"  I  cannot  tell,"  he  said  wearily:  "but  I  would  not  trust  him.  The  eyes 
are  bright  and  clear,  the  face  looks  honest;  yet  there  is  craft  somewhere.  The 
dogs  all  slink  from  him;  and  the  birds,  that  come  to  us,  fly  from  him.  He  is 
your  friend;  but  I  do  not  think  he  bears  you  any  love " 

He  ceased,  looking  down,  still  with  that  bewildered  pain,  upon  the  clear 
rown  river  rushing,  swollen  and  melodious,  at  his  feet.     Like  a  woman,  he  had 

ition,  but  no  power  of  argument.     Chandos  looked  at  him,  astonished  more 

the  words  than  he  had  been  at  the  secluded  dreamer's  distaste  towards  the 
busy  aud  trenchant  man  of  the  world. 

I  hope  you  are  wrong,  Lulli,"  he  said,  gently.     "7  do" not  doubt  you  are. 
and  that  gentleman  can  have  little  in  common;  but  you  are  both  valued 
friends  to  me What  is  the  matter  ?  " 


CHANDOS.  13? 

Lulli,  as  he  gazed  down  into  the  water,  had  started,  turned,  and  looked 
behind  him  into  the  great  depths  of  shadow,  where  the  trees  grew  so  densely 
that  even  at  noon  it  was  twilight  beneath  their  branches,  which  curled,  and 
twined,  and  grew  in  ponderous  growth,  almost  rather  like  a  Mexican  than  an 
English  forest.  Lulli's  face  suddenly  flushed,  his  large  eyes  opened  wider,  his 
lips  trembled;  he  strove  to  rise  rapidly,  and  fell  back. 

"I  heard  Valeria's  voice!"  he  said,  hushed  and  breathlessly,  while  his 
glance  wandered  in  restless  longing  hither  and  thither,  like  a  listening  deer's. 

"  Valeria's  !  "  echoed  Chandos,  in  amazement,  as  he  rose  to  his  feet.  "  You 
must  be  dreaming,  Lulli." 

The  Provengal  shook  his  head,  and  pointed  eagerly  towards  the  recesses  of 
the  woods. 

"  I  heard  it !     Look;  pray  look." 

Willing  to  humor  him,  yet  satisfied  that  it  could  be  but  a  delusion  of  the 
ear,  common  enough  with  such  minds  as  Lulli's  when  one  dearly  loved  has  been 
lost,  he  went  some  little  way  into  the  deer-coverts,  glanced  right  and  left, 
heard  nothing  except  the  cooing  of  wood-pigeons,  the  note  of  a  missel-trush, 
and  the  cry  of  a  land-rail,  and  returned. 

"  It  must  have  been  imagination,  Guido,"  he  said,  soothingly.  "  Some  bird's 
song,  perhaps,  sounded  like  a  human  voice.  There  is  no  creature  near." 

"  I  heard  it,"  said  Lulli,  very  low  to  himself,  while  his  head  drooped,  and 
his  gaze  fell  again  with  the  old  weariness  upon  the  ebb  and  flow  of  the  river. 
He  would  never  have  contradicted  a  thing  that  Chandos  had  said,  if  he  had 
died  through  it;  but  the  superstitious  and  ignorant  beliefs  which  the  early  train- 
ing of  a  childhood  spent  in  ultramontanist  countries,  joined  to  the  deeply 
imaginative  mind  of  a  visionary  whom  no  intercourse  with  a  broader  world  than 
his  own  thoughts  enlightened  or  controlled  had  imbued  him  with,  made  him  in 
his  own  heart  turn  rather  to  the  wild  and  baseless  fancy  that  the  voice  he 
believed  he  had  heard  was  the  supernatural  sign  of  Valeria's  death, — the  fare- 
well of  her  spirit  released  from  earth.  Lulli  had  been  born  amidst  all  the 
legendary  mysticism  and  mediaeval  traditions  of  an  almost  Spanish  Catholicism. 
The  hues  of  it  had  colored  his  mind  too  deeply  ever  to  be  wholly  altered.  It 
made  his  grandeur  as  a  musician,  but  equally  it  made  his  utter  weakness  as 
a  man. 

"  Poor  fellow  !  he  cannot  forget  this  Valeria,"  thought  Chandos,  who  was 
for  the  first  time  feeling  himself  the  doubt  whether  forgetfulness  could  be 
commanded,  as  he  went  to  where  he  had  thrown  his  horse's  bridle  across  a 
bough  (he  had  brought  no  groom  with  him)  for  a  canter  through  his  own 
forests,  and  rode  down  the  length  of  the  avenue  at  a  dashing  half-speed  which 
soon  broke  into  an  almost  racing  gallop.  An  hour  afterwards,  sweeping  round 
again  by  nearly  the  same  portion  of  the  woods,  only  through  so  dense  a  covert 


13s  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

that  he  had  to  go  at  much  slower  rate  through  the  low  boughs,  all  green  with 
their  young  leaves,  and  all  melodious  with  the  spring  songs  of  innumerable 
nest-birds,  he  overtook  a  solitary  pedestrian,  considerably  to  his  wonder  and 
annoyance. 

Clarencieux  was  strictly  preserved.  It  would  have  been  made  a  show-place 
during  their  master's  absence  only  at  risk  of  instant  dismissal  of  any  servant 
concerned  in  showing  it;  and  no  stranger's  feet  ever  trod  the  mosses  and  the 
ferns  of  the  mighty  deer-forest  sloping  to  the  sea.  Chandos  checked  his 
stallion  as  he  passed  this  interloper,  and,  to  his  surprise,  recognized  his  near 
neighbor,  the  Earl  of  Clydesmore,  a  man  with  whom  he  had  but  the  most 
distant  acquaintance,  having  invariably  declined  the  efforts  the  earl  had  made 
towards  any  sort  of  intimacy.  Chandos  never  knew  bores,  not  if  they  were 
princes,  and  considered  his  neighbor  a  bore  of  the  very  worst  description :  Lord 
Clydesmore  was  one  of  those  happily-designated  class,  the  "  worldly-holies." 

The  earl,  a  tall,  fair  man  of  a  rather  handsome  presence,  not  more  than 
five-and-thirty  years  of  age,  apologized  for  his  intrusion  with  considerable 
grace  and  a  little  too  much  effusion.  He  had  lines  and  a  salmon-rod  in  his 
hand,  and  explained  himself  as  passionately  fond  of  all  river-science.  A  grilse 
he  had  hooked  had  dragged  him  after  it  down  the  length  of  the  waterfall  two 
miles,  till  he  had  wandered  off  his  own  lands  into  the  outer  borders  of  Claren- 
cieux. He  had  now  fairly  lost  his  road,  without  being  consoled  by  the  grilse, 
which  had  broken  away  with  the  hook  in  its  jaws;  and  he  was  looking  out  for 
a  keeper  to  direct  him.  He  detailed  his  adventures  with  much  too  great  a 
length  for  Chandos,  who,  infinitely  wearied,  was  still  obliged  to  invite  him  to 
the  house  for  luncheon,  although  he  had  long  abstained  from  all  intercourse 
with  this  peer  of  the  new  creation.  Chandos  was  inexorably  exclusive  where 
intellect  did  not  exist  to  induce  him  to  break  his  law.  The  temper  of  his  house 
had  always  been  so,  with  that  pride  of  the  great  noble,  "  Je  ne  suis  ny  roy,  ny 
prince;  je  suis  le  Sire  de  Coucy;"  though,  where  intellect  was,  he  would 
willingly  be  as  democratic  as  even  Darshampton  could  have  asked. 

There  was  another  cause,  moreover,  for  little  cordiality  between  them. 
Before  the  departure  of  Chandos  for  Constantinople,  Lord  Clydesmore  had,  as 
it  was  well  known,  offered  his  hand  to  the  fair  Queen  of  Lilies  and  been  re- 
fused; and  he  had  attributed  very  justly  the  discarding  of  his  own  suit  to  the 
presence  of  his  brilliant  and  careless  rival,  who  would  not  even  accept  the 
glorious  gift  notoriously  willing  to  be  given  him. 

The  earl  bore  him,  indeed,  more  grudges  than  this.     Though  he  owned 

Lilhesford,  so  near  on  the  same  sea-board,  he  had  never  obtained  entrance  to 

ie  doors  of  Clarencieux;  all  his  extreme  wealth  and  all  his  new-gained  honors 

d  not  avail  to  get  him  recognition  from  the  master  or  from  the  guests 

But  he  had  long  vainly  pined  to  dash  his  holy  water  with  the  essence  of 


CHANDOS.  139 

fashion's  perfume;  and  he  suppressed  his  grudges  and  his  conscientious 
scruples  against  what  he  had  been  want  to  term  "  a  house  of  sin,"  to  accept 
with  satisfaction  the  distantly  made  offer  of  luncheon  from  his  rival,  congratu- 
lating himself  that  those  fair  titled  beauties  whom  he  had  often  called  "  coro- 
neted  courtesans  "  and  "  Modern  Messalinas  "  would  now  most  likely  send  him 
"  At  home  "  cards,  and  that  those  who  he  decreed  would  be  damned  in  eternity 
could  not  well  damn  him  now  while  in  mortal  Mayfair.  "  That  miserable 
roturier  !  "  thought  his  Grace  of  Castlemaine,  then  on  a  visit  to  his  grandson, 
drinking  his  wine  angrily  at  the  table,  across  which  he  saw  Clydesmore  bowing 
and  addressing  him  blandly.  The  earl  was  thinking  that  after  this  meeting  the 
haughty  old  man  must  give  him  "  Good-day  "  in  the  drawing-room  at  White's. 
In  a  few  years  at  farthest,  he  knew,  the  duke  must  be  roasting  in  the  fires  of 
Tophet;  but  meantime  it  was  just  as  well  to  get  rank  from  him  by  a  nod  before 
the  fire  in  Boodle's. 

Some  dozen  people  besides  the  duke  had  dropped  in  together  for  luncheon 
as  Chandos  took  his  titled  trespasser  into  the  dining-hall,  among  them  Tre- 
venna,  who  came  in  with  a  keen  appetite  after  his  morning  among  the  outlying 
farms,  where  he  had  astonished  the  agricultural  mind  with  his  science  in  top- 
dressing,  irrigation,  cross-breeds,  and  mangel.  But  he  stopped  a  moment 
over  his  fricassee  to  fire  an  unpleasant  query  straight  at  the  earl.  He  liked 
fricassees,  but  he  liked  still  better  setting  anyone  at  a  discomfiture. 

"  Ah,  my  lord  !  that  little  box  of  Foster  Hill  is  close  to  you,  is'nt  it  ?  Is  it 
true  that  the  Chestertons  are  just  down  again  there  with  that  invulnerable 
beauty,  the  Queen  of  Lilies  ? " 

Clydesmore  colored  irritably,  and  darted  a  quick  glance  at  his  host,  as  he 
answered,  not  very  lucidly,  in  the  affirmative.  He  was  aware  that  everyone 
there  knew  that  he  had  been  rejected,  and  rejected  for  this  thankless  rival. 

"Thought  so,"  went  on  Trevenna,  remorselessly.  "Clever  little  fellow, 
Chess,  to  take  that  box.  Capital  coverts;  first-rate  game.  More  my  lady's 
doing,  though:  she's  lord  and  lady  both." 

As  there  was  nothing  to  be  shot  now,  except  rabbits,  the  double  meaning  of 
his  words  was  obvious.  Chandos,  at  whom  not  only  Clydesmore  but  his  grand- 
father and  La  Vivarol  as  well  had  both  glanced,  gently  glided  in  and  changed 
the  subject.  Not  even  his  rival  could  tell  that  it  had  interested  him. 

But  that  night,  when  he  went  to  his  own  chambers  from  the  smoking-room, 
the  laughter  of  some  of  the  men  echoing  pleasantly  from  the  distant  corriders 
as  they  bade  each  other  good-night,  he  opened  first  the  door  of  his  atelier  and 
went  up  to  a  Spanish  picture  hanging  near  his  easel.  It  was  a  picture  without 
any  master's  name,  that  he  had  picked  up  in  one  of  the  dark,  winding  streets 
of  Granada,  pleased  with  its  Murillo  coloring,  and  yet  more  with  its  subject, — 
a  young  Granadine  leaning  from  a  moonlit  balcony  in  the  coquettish  duty 


14o  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

"pdar  lapava."  There  was  more  of  proud,  melancholy  grace  than  of  coquetry 
in  the  noble,  moonlit  face;  and  it  was  strangely  like  the  Queen  of  Lilies,— so 
like,  that  one  of  her  first  charms  for  him  had  been  her  resemblance  to  his  favor- 
ite Spanish  portrait.  He  stood  and  looked  at  it  some  moments. 

"  I  must  see  her  to-morrow  again,  come  what  will  of  it,"  he  thought. 

As  he  moved  away,  with  all  the  unrest  of  an  eager  and  repressed  passion 
come  tenfold  on  him  with  the  knowledge  of  her  presence  near,  his  lamp  shed 
its  light  full  on  a  scarcely-finished  painting  of  his  own  upon  a  rest;  it  was  a 
soft  and  deep-hued  oil-picture  of  the  Amphitheatre  of  Aries,  with  a  cloudless 
sky  above,  and  the  lustre  of  a  Provence  sunset  pouring  from  the  west.  It  had 
been  sketched  in  Aries  itself  two  years  before.  As  he  glanced  at  it,  a  sudden 
recollection  crossed  him,  a  sudden  thought  sent  a  flush  over  his  forehead,  a 
pang  of  anxiety  to  his  heart;  he  paused  before  the  painting.  "  She  cannot  be 
Lulli's  Valeria  ?"  he  said,  half  aloud.  "She  never  spoke  of  him;  she  never 
seemed  to  have  had  a  living  thing  to  care  for  except  her  own  vain  beauty. 
And  yet  she  was  an  Arlesienne;  she  was  of  the  age  Valeria  would  be;  she  was 
very  poor." 

His  memory  travelled  back  to  the  past,  far  away  as  it  seemed,  even  by  two 
year's  space,  and  covered  with  a  thousand  other  memories  in  his  swift  and 
brightly-colored'life, — travelled  back  to  a  time  when  he  had  loitered,  in  the 
vintage-month,  in  the  old  Roman  city,  passing  on  his  way  with  the  swallows  to 
spend  an  Italian  winter. 

"  I  hope  to  heaven  not  !  "  he  thought,  with  a  keener  pang  than  he  had  ever 
before  known.  "  Even  a  thing  as  worthless  as  she  should  have  been  sacred  to 
me  if  that  great  heart  of  Lulli's  centred  in  her.  They  have  never  met;  but  it 
would  be  cruel  work,  for  him  and  for  me,  to  ask  him.  She  was  shameless  before 
I  saw  her.  It  would  be  but  worse  anguish  for  him  to  find  his  lost  Valeria  in 
such  as  Flora  de  1'Onne." 

And  he  went  slowly  out,  leaving  the  darkness  to  fall  over  the  Spanish  por- 
trait and  the  glow  of  the  Provence  sun. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE   POEM    AMONG    THE    VIOLETS. 


THE  portrait-gallery  at  Clarencieux  was  one  of  the  noblest  features  of  the 
castle.     With  its  ceiling  of  cedar,  its  gold  panels,  its  lofty  arched  win- 
lows,  twenty  in  number,  and  its  landscape  beyond  them  of  the  home-park  and 
hanging  woods  that  stretched  away  to  the  sea,  it  would  have  been  remarkable 


CHAN  DOS.  141 

without  its  Vandykes,  Holbeins,  Lelys,  Mignards,  and  Lawrences;  with  them,  it 
was  the  idolatry  of  the  virtuosi.  Up  and  down  it  Trevenna,  who  certainly  was 
no  virtuoso,  and  could  barely  have  told  a  Gainsborough  from  a  Spagnaletto, 
sauntered  the  next  morning,  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  humming  a  Chau- 
miere  dance-tune,  and  reading  his  letters.  He  was  a  very  prudent  fellow,  and 
did  not  trust  the  post  with  much  of  his  business;  what  was  important  he  gen- 
erally did  vivd  voce,  and  the  man  would  have  been  astute  indeed  who  could 
ever  have  trapped  him  into  anything  that  compromised  him  by  the  amount  of 
a  fourpenny-bit.  He  had  a  very  wholesome  reluctance  for  signing  his  name, 
and  any  letters  he  ever  wrote  were  of  Spartan  brevity.  Yet  this  morning  he 
had  had  a  good  many,  and  they  all  pleased  him.  Some  were  from  the  firm  of 
Tindall  &  Co.,  written  by  Ignatius  Mathias  in  Hebrew.  Trevenna  was  a  clever 
linguist,  and  had  some  half  dozen  languages  at  his  tongue's  end,  though  he 
never  confessed  to  knowing  more  than  a  very  Anglicized,  Palais-Royal,  cafe- 
learnt  French,  which  he  would  jabber  villanously. 

"  Makes  you  look  un-English  to  speak  Parisian  well,"  reflected  this  aspirant 
to  be  a  representative  of  a  British  nation;  and  he  would  only  let  men  find  out  by 
degrees  even  that  he  had  a  most  scholarly  culture  in  classics,  making  the  con- 
cession for  the  sake  of  college-men's  prejudices,  though  at  Darshampton  he 
would  not  have  had  the  truth  whispered  for  worlds  that  he  could  pen  quite 
perfect  Ciceronian  Latin. 

From  Darshampton,  too,  a  mighty  manufacturing  town,  where  faces  might 
be  grimy  but  heads  were  very  clear,  letters  came  that  gratified  him.  He  was 
beginning  to  be  known  there  in  their  Unions  and  their  Institutes, — talked  of 
there  as  a  rising  man  and  as  a  rarely  quick-witted  one.  He  had  felt  his  way 
there  very  cautiously;  for  he  could  not  serve  two  masters,  and  be  the  Chicot 
of  fashion  and  the  Demosthenes  of  labor,  very  well,  in  a  breath.  Both  his 
masters  would  have  given  him  his  conge.  But  he  was  equal  to  greater  difficul- 
ties, even,  than  those  of  playing  the  part  of  amuse  to  his  aristocratic  patrons 
and  that  of  pupil  to  his  democratic  inviters  at  the  same  time.  He  could  make 
a  club-lounger  smile,  and  he  could  make  a  north-country  operative  grin;  and 
he  had  not  much  fear  of  ultimately  turning  both  to  his  purpose.  For  Napo- 
leon himself  had  never  more  intense  volition,  Robert  Bruce  himself  never  more 
patient  perseverance,  than  this  mercurial  flaneur  of  Pall  Mall. 

He  had  come  here  to  read  his  letters,  because  no  one  ever  wandered  into 
the  portrait-gallery  save  at  such  times  as  it  was  turned  into  a  second  ball-room, 
and,  having  finished  them,  he  sauntered  up  and  down,  revolving  their  contents 
in  his  mind, — a  mind  into  which  nothing  ever  entered  but  to  be  fertilized  to  its 
widest  extent.  Just  above  him,  as  he  reached  the  end,  was  an  alcove  in  which 
hung  alone  one  Kneller  picture,  answering  at  the  other  end  a  Vandyke  Charles 
the  First,  as  grand  a  picture  as  the  Petworth,  given  to  Evelyn  Chandos  by  his 


142  GUI  DA'S     WORKS. 

king  himself.  The  Kneller  was  the  portrait  of  the  last  marquis,  who  had  joined 
the  standard  at  Preston,  and  fought  with  Perth  in  the  fatal  left  wing  at  Cullo- 
den,  breaking  his  sword  at  the  prince's  feet  when  the  staff  dissuaded  him  from 
a  final  charge  for  victory  or  death.  The  marquis  had  been  offered  life  and 
honors  if  he  would  have  divulged  certain  Stuart  secrets  known  to  be  in  his 
hands,  and,  rejecting  the  offer  with  a  calm  disdain,  had  died  on  Tower  Hill 
with  his  grand,  mournful,  moqueur  smile  on  his  lips  to  the  last,  and  bowed  his 
graceful  head  upon  the  block  with  the  motto  of  his  race,  "  Tout  est  perdu, 
fors  1'honneur." 

Trait  by  trait,  look  for  look,  the  Kneller  portrait  was  reproduced  in  the 
features  of  his  last  descendant.  The  picture  of  the  last  marquis  might  have 
been  the  likeness  of  the  present  Chandos.  Trevenna  looked  up  at  it. 

"Well,  my  lord,"  he  murmured,  aloud,  in  that  innate  loquacity  which  talked 
to  inanimate  things  rather  than  not  talk  at  all,"  there  you  are,  with  your  d — d 
proud  smile,  that  he  has  got  just  like  you  to-day.  So  you  began  life  the  most 
magnificent  man  of  your  time,  and  ended  on  Tower  Hill  ?  That  sort  of  differ- 
ence between  the  opening  and  the  finale  is  rather  characteristic  of  your  race. 
Perhaps  you'll  see  something  like  it  again." 

The  calm  eyes  of  the  portrait  seemed  to  glance  downward  with  a  serene  dis- 
dain. Trevenna  turned  on  his  heel,  singing  a  chanson  of  the  Closerie,  and  only 
wheeling  round  when  he  came  opposite  a  portrait  of  a  man  in  the  gold  robes  of 
Exchequer;  it  was  that  of  the  famous  minister  Philip  Chandos,  who  had  died 
like  Chatham.  "Ah,  mon  ministre  ! "  apostrophized  Trevenna,  "  your  son  is  a 
very  brilliant  personage;  and  yet 
* 

Lord  Timon  shall  be  left  a  naked  gull, 
Who  flashes  now  a  phoenix. 

You  were  a  great  man;  but  you  and  I  shall  be  quits  for  all  that." 

At  that  moment  the  door  opened.  Chandos  entered  the  gallery.  "  What 
on  earth  are  you  doing  here,  Trevenna  ?  I  have  looked  for  you  everywhere. 
Are  you  turned  connoisseur  ? " 

Where  he  stood— under  the  Vandyke  Stuart  picture— in  a  velvet  riding- 
dress,  he  looked  so  like  the  Kneller  portrait  of  the  last  marquis  that  even  Tre- 
venna almost  started,  though  he  was  ready  with  his  answer. 

I  was  reading  my  letters.     This  house  is  so  full  of  people  that  the  library 

is  as  bad  as  a  club-room.     The  betting's  quite  steady  in  town  on  the  colt " 

"  Certain  to  be.     I  came  to  speak  to  you  of -a  note  I  have  had  this  morning, 

among  others,  from  Sir  Jasper  Lyle.     He  tells  me  the  state  of  his  health  will 

ampel  his  retirement  from  the  borough.     He  acquaints  me  with  it  first;  but  he 

will  resign  immediately;  his  disease  is  confirmed,— poor  fellow  !     Now,  as  you 


CHANDOS.  143 

know,  the  borough  is  almost  wholly  at  my  disposal;  to  my  nominee  there  will 
be  no  sort  of  opposition, — not  because  the  people  are  not  free  to  act,  but  because 
they  are  a  quiet,  thin  population,  who  for  generations  have  been  used  to  receive 
their  representative  from  my  family — 

"  Free  and  enlightened  electors,"  put  in  Trevenna,  with  a  certain  grim 
humor  in  the  parenthesis;  and  yet  his  heart  was  beating  quicker  than  it  ever 
beat.  He  divined  what  was  coming. 

"  They  have  at  least  been  better  represented  than  metropolitan  boroughs," 
said  Chandos,  with  a  touch  of  annoyance.  "  We  have  never  supported  a  mere 
puppet  or  a  mere  partisan.  We  have  given  the  little  town  to  the  cleverest  man 
we  could  find;  and  my  father  represented  it  himself,  if  I  remember,  for  ten 
years  or  more.  What  I  came  to  ask  you  was,  will  you  like  to  be  returned  for  it  ? " 

Looking  at  him,  he  saw  the  eager  and  exultant  light  flash  into  Trevenna's 
eyes,  the  sudden  lightning-like  upleaping  of  a  long-smouldering  ambition.  The 
daring,  aspiring  indomitable  nature  of  the  man  seemed  instantaneously  revealed 
before  him,  from  under  the  surface  of  social  gayeties  and  jaunty  bonhomie. 

"Like  it!"  In  that  moment  Trevenna  felt  too -genuinely  to  have  words 
ready  to  his  facile  lips.  Political  life  had  been  the  goal  for  which  through  years, 
when  men  would  have  called  him  a  madman  for  such  audacious  follies,  he  had 
"  scorned  delight,  and  loved  laborious  days,"  with  its  set  purpose  before  him, 
none  the  less  steadily  stormed  because  the  golden  gates  seemed  hopeless  ada- 
mant to  force.  Of  late  he  had  said  to  himself  that  come  it  would,  come  it 
should.  But  now  that  it  did  come, — the  thin  edge  of  the  wedge  which,  once 
inserted,  would  open  for  him  all  the  gates  of  position  and  power, — the  jester  had 
no  banter,  the  liar  no  lie. 

"  I  thought  you  would,"  said  Chandos,  where  they  stood  under  the  Stuart 
picture,  with  the  proud  eyes  of  the  last  marquis  gazing  down  on  them  from  the 
far  distance.  "  You  are  the  very  man  for  the  Commons,  and  I  should  not  be 
surprised  if  some  day  I  come  down  to  hear  you  unfold  a  Budget !  Very  well, 
then;  we  will  put  you  into  nomination  immediately  Sir  Jasper's  resignation  is 
made  known,  and  there  is  not  a  doubt  of  the  result." 

"  But — would  not  you —  For  once  in  his  life,  Trevenna  was  almost 

silent,  almost  agitated.  The  great  prize  of  his  life  had  seemed  to  have  fallen  into 
his  hands  like  a  ripe  fruit. 

"//"  said  Chandos,  horrified.  "  Have  you  known  me  all  this  time  only  to 
ask  such  a  question  ?  They  have  begged  me  over  and  over  again  to  stand  for 
the  town  or  the  county,  but  I  have  always  told  them  that  if  I  must  suffer  for 
my  sins  I  would  prefer  purgatory  itself  at  once:  I  would  rather  be  burnt  than 
be  bored  !  As  for  you,  I  really  do  believe  you  will  enjoy  serving  on  com- 
mittees, going  in  for  supply,  darting  in  to  save  a  count-out,  and  all  the  rest  of  it. 
So — it  is  a  settled  matter  ?  " 


144  O  UIDAS     WORKS. 

"Really— on  my  life,  Chandos,  I  cannot  thank  you  enough."  Even  on 
Trevenna's  face  there  came  something  of  a  flush  of  shame,  and  into  his  voice 
something  of  the  husky  hesitation  of  conscience-moved  restlessness:  for  one 
moment  the  contrast  of  this  man's  actions  and  his  own  struck  him  with  a  force 
that  left  him  without  his  usual  weapons.  Chandos  saw  in  this  nothing  beyond 
the  re-action  of  a  sudden  and  pleasurable  surprise;  he  laid  his  hand  kindly  on 
the  other's  shoulder. 

"  Thank  me  by  showing  them  in  the  House  what  my  friend  can  prove  him- 
self !  And,  Trevenna,  look  here:  do  not  think  that  because  you  are  returned 
through  my  influence  you  are  for  a  moment  expected  to  represent  my  opinions. 
The  borough  is  a  quiet,  colorless  little  place,  that  will  ask  you  no  questions 
provided  you  adequately  attend  to  its  sea-coast  interests;  you  may  do  anything 
else  that  you  like.  I  hear  that  you  have  lately  been  lecturing,  or  something, 
in  the  North, — that  you  have  been  expressing  views  totally  different  from  those 
you  hear  in  my  set.  Now  understand,  once  for  all,  I  wish  you  to  enter  public 
life  entirely  unshackled.  Choose  your  party,  or  remain  an  independent  mem- 
ber: act  precisely  as  you  deem  most  true  and  most  wise.  After  living  among 
us,  I  am  not  afraid  you  will  join  the  Ultras  in  pulling  our  houses  down  over  our 
heads  and  in  parcelling  our  estates  into  building  allotments;  but,  whatever  you 
genuinely  believe,  let  that  be  what  you  advocate  in  the  House,  as  though  neither 
I  nor  Clarencieux  existed." 

With  these  words  he  went  out,  to  spare  his  presence  to  the  man  whom  he 
had  just  assisted  to  the  fruitage  of  his  most  hopeless  ambition. 

Trevenna  stood  still  and  silent,  struck  mute  for  the  instant  with  the  blaze  of 
his  rising  fortunes,  and  moved  for  one  fleeting  second  with  a  heavy  sense  of 
treacherous  shame.  "Damnation!"  he  said,  in  his  teeth:  "  for  five  minutes 
I  almost  forget  to  hate  him  !  " 


Half  in  shadow,  half  in  sunlight,  in  the  noontide  of  the  day,  sat  the  Queen 
of  Lilies. 

A  cluster  of  tall  copper  beeches  stood  out  before  a  deep  dark  serene  of  crag, 
and  waved  and  tossed  together  in  grand  confusion,  and  wild  as  they  had  been 
in  the  days  of  the  Druids,  only  broken  here  and  there  by  the  rush  of  some 
tumbling  torrent.  Under  the  beeches  was  a  broken  wishing-well,  its  stones 
covered  with  ivy,  its  brink  overgrown  with  heaths  and  maidenhair  and  count- 

3  violets.     Here,  some  ten  miles  beyond  Clarencieux,  in  this  lonely  forest- 

1  of  her  brother-in-law's  shooting-place,  Lady  Valencia  sat  in  solitude,  with 
falling  of  the  waters  only  mingled  with  the  thrill  of  a  nightingale's  evening 

:e  poured  out  on  the  hush  of  the  noon.  In  her  most  sovereign  moments  she 
never  looked  so  lovely  as  now,  in  the  complete  negligence,  abandonment, 


In  her  most  sovereign  moments  she  had  never  looked  so  lovely  as  now. 

—Page  144,  Vol.  III. 


CHAN  DOS.  145 

almost  dejection,  of  her  attitude.  She  leaned  against  the  stone  coping  of  the 
well,  one  arm  resting  on  it,  so  that  her  hand,  half  unconsciously,  played  now 
and  then  with  the  green  coils  of  leaves  and  grasses  falling  in  the  water;  her 
head  drooped  slightly;  there  was  sadness,  almost  melancholy,  in  the  musing 
shadow  of  her  liquid  eyes.  A  volume  of  "  Lucrece  "  lay  at  her  feet;  a  water- 
spaniel  waited  near,  wistfully  watching  for  her  notice.  The  melody  of  bird  or 
river  had  no  music  on  her  ear:  she  was  thinking  very  wearily. 

Thus — she  all  insensible  of  his  gaze — Chandos  saw  her. 

He  paused,  checked  his  horse  as  he  rode  through  a  bridle-path  hidden  in 
foliage,  wavered  an  instant,  then  flung  the  rein  to  his  servant,  bade  him  ride  on, 
and  went  backward,  through  the  entangled  meshes  of  the  leaves,  towards  the 
ruined  wishing-well. 

His  step  made  no  echo  on  the  moss;  unseen  he  noted  the  weariness  of 
languor  in  the  dreaming  repose,  the  musing  pain,  that  darkened  the  eyes  that 
gazed  down  absently  on  the  purple  wealth  of  the  violet  buds.  "  Does  she  regret 
me  ?  "  he  thought;  and  at  sight  of  that  living  beauty  which  had  haunted  him 
through  Eastern  cities  and  Italian  air,  the  old  soft,  wayward,  unresisted  passion 
which  had  so  often  ruled  him,  yet  never  reigned  more  utterly  than  it  was  near 
reigning  now,  woke  in  all  its  force.  He  thought  neither  of  penalty  nor  of  con- 
sequence, of  wisdom  nor  of  future;  he  thought  alone  of  her. 

The  movement  of  his  hand  as  he  put  aside  the  red  gold  of  the  copper-beech 
leaves  and  the  light  spring  buds  of  the  young  ivy-coils  caught  her  ear;  she 
lifted  her  eyes,  and  met  the  eloquence  of  his.  She  rose,  with  something  almost 
hurried  and  tremulous  in  the  dignity  of  her  serene  grace;  her  face  flushed, 
her  glance  had  a  light  in  it  he  had  never  seen  there;  sudden  surprise  changed 
the  calm  of  her  grand  and  delicate  beauty  to  a  new  warmth  and  hesitation  that 
lent  a  still  fairer  life.  In  that  instant,  as  he  saw  her  under  the  burnished  gold 
of  the  arching  sunlit  leaves,  he  could  not  doubt  but  that  she  loved  him 

"  You  have  returned  ? "  The  words  were  low  and  unstudied,  as  though  in 
the  surprise  of  his  presence  there  her  proud  tranquillity  broke  down. 

"  Ah  !  forgive  me  that  I  ever  wandered  away.  Forgetfulness  did  not  go 
with  me." 

He  scarcely  thought,  he  never  measured,  what  he  said;  he  thought  only  of 
her  loveliness,  there  in  the  shadows  of  the  spring-time  leafage;  and  the  loveli- 
ness of  women  had  always  done  with  him  what  it  would.  He  bent  nearer  to 
her,  looking  down  into  her  eyes  with  a  gaze  that  made  them  droop,  and  made 
her  heart  beat  with  a  swift,  uncertain  throb,  a  vague  gleam  of  hope.  "  My  love  ! 
my  love  ! "  he  murmured,  thinking  no  more  of  the  cost  and  issue  of  his  words 
than  he  had  thought  when  he  had  murmured  such  against  the  warm  cheek  of 
some  young  Eastern  odalisque,  or  gazing  into  the  lustre  of  Southern  eyes  under 
the  Spanish  stars  or  by  the  shores  of  Procida,  "  we  must  not  part  again  !  " 


146  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

The  music  of  his  voice  stole  upon  her  ear,  charming  and  lulling  her  into  its 
own  trance  of  passion;  the  deep  warmth  of  a  hot  flush  stole  overall  her  beauty, 
intensifying  every  delicate  hue,  like  the  warmth  from  the  noon  through  the 
crimson  leaves;  and  as  he  drew  her  into  his  embrace,  with  his  kiss  he  bartered 
his  peace,  his  honor,  and  his  future;  for  it,  in  that  hour  of  her  power,  he 
would  have  thought  the  world  well  lost.  The  violets  blossoming,  dew-laden, 
at  their  feet — flower  of  the  poets,  and  crown  of  child-Protus'  golden  hair- 
were  not  more  sweet  than  that  first  birth  and  utterance  of  love. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE   POEM   AS  WOMEN   READ   IT. 

BEFORE  a  fire  (for  she  fancied  or  liked  to  say  she  was  chilly,  in  those  late 
April  days  that  were  wellnigh  as  warm  as  summer)  Lady  Chesterton  lay  sulkily 
reclining  in  her  little  boudoir,  a  little  green-panelled  chamber,  chiefly  noticeable 
for  its  collection  of  one  of  her  passions, — curious  china, — Rose  Berri,  Henry 
Deux,  and  every  sort  of  faience  that  time  had  ennobled  and  rarity  endeared. 
She  was  very  sullen,  very  grave,  very  moody.  She  was  bitter  as  gall  in  her 
own  soul.  The  distant  cousin  she  hated,  because  he  had  inherited  her  father's 
title,  had  been  left  a  fortune  that  would  enable  him  to  raise  the  Ivors  peerage 
to  its  old  glories,  whilst  her  husband  was  so  heavily  in  debt  that  the  narrowest 
continental  economy  would  not  better  him.  This  house  that  they  had  taken 
on  their  hands  so  vainly,  with  its  shootings  that  had  entailed  so  much  expense, 
had  served  them  no  purpose.  Lord  Clydesmore  was  hopeless  to  attract  again 
after  his  first  repulse;  other  men  were  coy  of  her  beautiful  sister, — a  marquis's 
daughter,  and  portionless.  She  herself  loved  show,  wealth,  magnificence,  all 
the  exclusivism  of  greatness  in  its  greatest;  and  she  was  literally  poorer  than 
one  of  the  gamekeepers'  wives  out  in  the  park  yonder, — poorer,  for  the  keeper's 
wife  could  accept  her  poverty,  and  the  peeress  had  to  go  to  court  as  a  lady-in- 
waiting,  and  to  rack  her  brains  afterwards  to  stave  off  the  milliner  who  sent  her 
court -dresses. 

"  I  wish  I  were  one  of  those  wretched  women  in  the  cottages  in  the  woods  !" 
she  thought.  "  They  have  to  bake,  and  to  scrub,  and  to  slap  their  dirty  chil- 
dren, and  to  pinch  and  screw,  and  live  on  pork  and  potatoes;  but  they  are 
better  off  than  I:  they  have  nothing  to  keep  up  !  " 

It  was  a  bitter  truth,  and  she  felt  its  bitterness  to  the  utmost,  where  she  sat, 
curled  in  the  velvets  and  silks  and  luxury,  that  those  she  envied  would  have 
so  envied  "  my  lady  "  could  they  have  looked  on  her  in  her  solitude.  She 


CHANDOS.  147 

turned  her  head  slowly  as  the  door  opened,  glanced  up  with  half-closed  eyes, 
then  returned  to  the  moody  contemplation  of  the  fire.  She  had  been  a  very 
miserable  companion,  a  very  gloomy  tyrant,  to  her  sister  during  this  winter, 
when  they  had  been  mewed  in  leafless  woods  for  nothing,  with  no  dinner-party 
nearer  than  fifteen  miles,  hearing  of  that  "  odious  man  Trevenna's  "  men- 
parties  at  the  Clarencieux,  and  hopeless  of  ever  seeing  its  lost  lord  return.  Nor 
had  the  month  or  so  of  the  town-season  much  improved  her  temper,  now  that 
she  was  back  again  for  the  recess. 

Lady  Valencia  came  up  in  silence  till  she  stood  before  the  fire;  her  black 
lace  swept  round  her  over  a  white  morning  dress  (she  wore  that  floating  dead 
white  as  no  other  could),  and  there  had  caught  across  it,  in  unnoticed 
ornament,  one  of  the  long  ivy-coils  with  leaves  of  darkest,  buds  of  lightest 
green. 

"  What  a  draught  you  bring  in  with  you  !  "  shivered  Lady  Chesterton, 
peevishly.  "  Good  gracious  !  you  are  dressed  as  if  it  were  summer.  Take 
care,  pray;  you  brush  Dragee's  hair  the  wrong  way  !  " 

Moving  her  skirts  from  the  little  lion-dog,  Lady  Valencia  stood  silent  still. 
Her  sister  looked  up  at  her  and  wondered.  The  brilliance  of  a  spring-tide 
seemed  to  have  lingered  on  the  Queen  of  Lilies;  there  was  a  new  look  upon 
her  face. 

"  What  has  happened  ?  "  asked  the  peeress,  sharply. 

She  looked  down  on  the  baroness  with  a  certain  haughty  contempt.  She 
owed  her  sister  many  a  goading  irritation,  many  a  sneering  taunt. 

"  Your  sacrifice  at   Forest  Hill  has  not  been  in  vain,"  she  said,  calmly 
detaching  the  green  ivy  spray  from  her  dress. 

Lady  Chesterton  started  up  in  her  chair,  her  black  eyes  all  vivid  ani- 
mation. 

"  Valencia  !  you  do  not  mean  that  Chandos " 

"Yes,"  said  the  Lily  Queen,  serenely  still;  but  she  turned  her  head  with 
the  lofty  supremacy  of  a  victorious  queen;  a  proud  triumph  flashed  in  the  vel- 
vet depths  of  her  eyes;  every  line  of  her  form,  every  curve  of  her  lips, 
expressed  conquest;  "  yes,  we  have  won.  I  shall  be  mistress  of  Claren- 
cieux !  " 

Had  Chandos  been  there  in  that  moment,  he  would  have  seen  it  were  better 
for  him  that  he  should  lie  in  his  grave  than  that  she  should  be  so. 


148  QUID  AS     WORKS. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

IN   THE   ROSE-GARDENS. 

CHANDOS,  as  it  was,  could  scarcely  have  said  that  the  same  triumph 
remained  with  him. 

Waking  to  calmer  reflection  and  recollection  as  he  rode  homeward,  the 
price  he  must  pay  for  the  words  he  had  uttered,  for  the  caress  he  had  given, 
on  an  impulse  of  passion  stronger  than  himself,  stole  to  his  thoughts  with  a 
chill.  For  marriage  he  had  an  utter  distaste, — of  his  liberty  a  surpassing  love; 
the  slightest  bondage  was  unendurable  to  him.  He  had  never  anything  to 
consult  except  his  own  free  will;  and  inconstancy  in  taste,  in  pursuit,  in  amuse- 
ment, and  in  residence  had  become  his  habit,  if  it  were  not  his  nature.  To 
endure  control,  to  have  to  tell  his  plans  ere  he  followed  them,  not  to  go  where 
caprice  took  him,  unasked  and  unshackled,  to  have  any  companion  with  him 
through  custom  instead  of  inclination,  or  to  have  the  same  with  him  long 
together,  all  that  some  men  take  naturally,  to  him  would  have  been  intolerable 
slavery.  It  may  be  hence  imagined  that  nothing  could  be  more  repugnant  or 
less  suited  to  him  than  marriage;  and  the  thought  of  what  he  had  done  on  the 
spur  of  an  irresistible  beauty  and  a  vainly-resisted  love  weighed  on  him  curi- 
ously as  he  rode  through  the  aisles  of  pines  and  over  the  vast  undulating  sward 
of  the  outlying  lands,  with  the  sound  of  the  sea  from  the  distance,  and  in  the 
sunny  air  the  winged  dwellers  of  the  beach,  the  delicate  tern,  the  rare  hen-har- 
rier, the  ring-plover,  and  the  mallard,  flying  above  the  wild  thyme  and  the  still 
moor-pools.  His  life  had  not  a  shadow:  why  had  he  not  left  it  as  it  was  ?  He 
loved  her, — he  loved  her  with  a  great  passion  that,  through  her  beauty,  swayed 
him  like  a  reed;  and  yet  a  strange  weariness,  a  strange  depression,  came  upon 
him  as  he  swept  over  the  wild  wolds.  He  felt  as  though  he  had  surrendered 
up  his  future  into  bondage. 

As  he  turned  his  horse  into  the  home-woods,  leaving  the  purple  moorlands 
that  were  the  sea-shore  appanage  of  Clarencieux  at  a  cross-road,  one  of  his  own 
hunters  was  spurred  after  him.  Trevenna  came  up  with  him. 

"  How  you  do  ride  ! "  cried  Trevenna,  himself  a  good  but  cautious  horse- 
man, not  caring  much  for  the  saddle.  "  You  will  break  your  neck,  surely,  some 
day.  How  you  took  that  gate  !  By  the  way,  if  you  were  to  do  such  a  thing, 
who  is  your  heir  ?  There  is  no  other  Chandos." 

"The  estates  would  go  to  the  Castlemaine  family;  I  have  no  nearer 
relatives,"  answered  Chandos,  a  little  wearily.  Now,  of  all  other  times,  he 
could  have  wished  the  incessant  chatter  of  his  Chicot  far  away. 

"  Ah,  but  you'll  marry  some  time  or  other,  of  course." 


CHANDOS.  149 

Chandos  gave  a  gesture  of  impatience:  the  word  grated  terribly  on  his  ear. 
Trevenna  glanced  at  him,  and  knew  what  he  wanted.  Through  his  reconnoi- 
trer-glass  he  had  seen  the  wishing-well,  and  the  two  who  had  stood  beneath  the 
copper  beeches,  and  he  wished  to  learn  how  far  the  affair  had  gone.  The  im- 
patient gesture  told  him.  He  had  studied  every  impulse  and  minutest  trait  of 
Chandos'  character,  till  he  could  gauge  his  feeling  and  his  meaning  to  the 
slightest  shade. 

"  The  ladies  were  upbraiding  you  loudly  for  your  desertion,  when  I  left  the 
house.  They  had  sauntered  down  out  of  their  rooms  to  ride  and  drive,  and 
were  indignant  not  to  have  their  host  en  proie"  he  went  on,  carelessly;  "  As 
for  me,  I  have  been  meditating  on  my  coming  greatness.  Really,  have  you 
thought  well  of  it,  Chandos  ?  Your  friends  will  say  you  have  put  an  adventurer 
in  the  House." 

"  They  will  not  say  so  to  me;  and  if  they  do  to  you,  you  can  give  them 
more  than  they  send.  Besides,  you  will  have  good  company;  did  not  they  say 
so  of  Canning  ?  " 

"  Then  you  are  really  resolved  on  lifting  me  to  St.  Stephens  ?  " 

"  Assuredly." 

"  Upon  my  word,  monseigneur,  you  make  one  think  of  Timon's 

I  could  deal  kingdoms  to  my  friends, 
And  ne'er  be  weary  ! " 

"  Timon  !  You  choose  me  an  ominous  parallel.  Would  you  all  be  '  feast- 
won,  fast-lost '  ? " 

"  The  deuce  !     I  daresay  we  should." 

The  answer  was  rough,  but  it  was  true  as  far  as  it  went.  There  were  times 
when  Trevenna  could  not  quite  help  being  truthful.  Lying  invariably  will  be- 
come as  weary  work,  sometimes,  as  telling  truth  becomes  to  most  people;  and 
there  was  a  cynical  candor  in  the  fellow  not  always  to  be  broken  into  training. 

"  I  would  trust  you  sooner  not  to  be,  Trevenna,  for  the  frankness  of  that 
admission,"  said  Chandos,  right  in  his  deduction,  even  if  he  should  be  wrong 
in  this  present  instance.  "  Look  at  that  glimpse  of  sea  through  the  pines;  how 
wonderful  in  color  !  " 

The  deep  blue  of  the  sea-line  glistened  to  violet  beyond  the  dark-green 
boughs  and  the  russet  shafts  of  the  pine-stems.  The  woods  of  the  deer-forest 
stretched  in  rolling  masses  upward  and  inland;  and  beyond,  tinged  with  the 
brightest  light,  stood  the  magnificent  pile  of  the  castle.  Trevenna  looked. 

"  Yes,  very  pretty." 

"  Good  Heavens  !  you  speak  as  if  it  were  the  transformation  scene  of  a 
ballet !  " 


15Q  OU IDA'S     WORKS. 

"  I  like  a  ballet  a  good  deal  better.  Clouds  of  transparent  skirts  are  better 
than  clouds  of  transparent  mists.  You  are  very  fond  of  this  place,  Ernest  ! 

"  It  were  odd  if  I  were  not.  I  can  fancy  how  it  was  deadlier  to  the  last 
marquis  than  to  sever  from  friend  or  mistress,  when  he  had  to  look  his  last  on 
Clarencieux." 

Trevenna  smiled,  and  flicked  his  horse  thoughtfully  between  the  ears,  as 
they  rode  on  in  silence. 

"  Thou  givest  so  long,  Timon,  I  fear  me 
Thou  wilt  give  thyself  away  in  paper,  shortly," 

ran  the  thread  of  his  musings. 

Trevenna's  momentary  pang  of  conscience  in  the  morning  had  been  partic- 
ularly short-lived.  It  had  died  with  the  next  look  upward  to  the  face  of  the  last 
marquis. 

At  that  moment,  entering  on  the  clearer  spaces  of  the  Home  Park,  where 
four  avenues  of  gigantic  limes  crossed  and  met  each  other,  one  of  the  most  sing- 
ular beauties  of  Clarencieux,  they  encountered  another  riding-party  escorting  a 
little  pony-carriage  drawn  by  four  perfect  piebalds,  and  containing  Madame  de 
la  Vivarol  and  a  Russian  princess.  Among  the  escort  were  the  Royal  Due  de 
Neuilly,  and  another  due,  not  royal,  but  a  European  notoriety  all  the  same, — 
Philippe  Francois,  Due  d'Orvale.  Philippe  d'Orvale  was  a  character, — Europe 
was  given  to  saying,  too,  a  very  bad  character.  Chief  of  one  of  the  great  feudal 
races  of  France,  now  growing  fewer  and  fewer  with  every  generation,  he  was,  so 
to  speak,  born  in  the  purges'  and  had  lived  in  them  up  to  the  time  when  he 
was  now  some  fifty  years  of  age.  Exceedingly  handsome,  he  still  preserved  his 
d^bonnaire  graces.  Excessively  talented,  he  could  on  occasion  outwit  a  Met- 
ternich,  a  Talleyrand,  or  a  Palmerston.  Extremely  popular,  he  was  the  prince 
of  bon  vivants.  With  all  this,  Phillipe  d'Orvale  had  achieved  a  reputation  too 
closely  allied  to  that  of  his  namesake  of  D'Orleans  not  to  be  considered  a 
thorough-going  reprobate,  and  to  care  infinitely  less  for  succeeding  in  the  field 
of  state  affairs  and  political  triumphs  than  for  succeeding  in  dancing  a  new 
Spanish  cachucha,  in  brewing  a  new  liqueur-punch  at  his  soupers  a  huts  clos,  in 
dazzling  Paris  with  some  made  freak  of  exuberant  nonsense,  and  in  leading 
the  Demi-Monde  in  all  its  wildest  extravagances.  He  had  a  good  deal  in  him 
of  the  madcap  mixture  that  was  in  the  character  of  the  Emperor  Maximilian, 
and,  like  him,  scouted  courts,  titles,  states,  and  dignities  for  some  reckless 
piece  of  devil-may-care.  He  might  have  been  anything  he  chose;  but  he, 
duke  and  peer  of  France,  decorated  with  half  the  orders  of  Europe,  descendant 
)f  nobles  who  had  been  cousins  of  Valois  and  nephews  of  Bourbon  and  Medici, 

i  not  choose  to  be  anything  except  the  chief  of  the  Free  Lances  and  the 
sovereign  patron  of  singers  and  ballet-dancers. 


CHANDOS.  151 

Certes,  he  enjoyed  himself,  and  looked  on  at  his  gay  world  unsated  out  of 
his  careless  eyes;  but  his  family  thought  him  mad,  and  had,  indeed,  tried  to  re- 
strain him  from  the  control  of  his  vast  properties,  till  Due  Philippe,  suddenly 
taking  it  into  his  head  to  show  them  he  was  sane,  went  to  Vienna,  and  conducted 
a  delicate  imbroglio  so  matchlessly  for  France  that  it  was  impossible  to  support 
the  charge  any  longer,  though,  having  so  vindicated  his  sanity,  he  returned  di- 
rectly to  his  own  courses,  and  was  found  at  breakfast  next  day  with  three 
actresses  from  the  Varietes,  an  inimitable  buffo-singer  from  the  Cafe  Alcazar, 
a  posture-dancer  off  the  pavement  of  the  Palais  Royal,  in  whom  he  declared 
he  had  discovered  a  relative,  and  a  Pifferaro's  monkey  seated  solemnly  in  state 
in  one  of  the  velvet  chairs,  munching  truffles  and  praslins,  amidst  the  chorus  of 
Rossini's  Papatacci,  sung  by  the  whole  party  and  led  by  D'Orvale  himself. 

A  man  who  will  set  down  a  Barbary  ape  at  his  table,  Europe,  of  course, 
will  pronounce  out  of  his  senses:  yet  a  more  finished  gentleman  than  Due 
Philippe  never  bowed  before  a  throne;  and  while  Europe  in  a  mass  pronounced 
him  the  most  hideous  amalgamation  of  vices,  two  or  three  who  knew  him  well, 
among  whom  was  Chandos,  steadily  upheld  that  there  was  not  an  ounce  of  real 
evil  in  this  bearded  bon  enfant. 

John  Trevenna,  as  far  as  dissipation  went,  was  a  perfect  irreproachable 
character,  and  had  not  really  a  vice  that  could  be  put  down  at  his  score; 
Philippe  d'Orvale  was  a  very  reproachable  one,  and  had,  beyond  doubt,  a  good 
many:  yet  perhaps  both  Guido  Lulli  and  Beau  Sire  were  in  the  right  when  they 
shrank  from  the  keen  blue  eyes  of  the  one,  arid  came  up  without  fear,  sure  of  a 
kindly  word,  under  the  sunny  gaze  of  the  other. 

The  next  night  there  were,  as  commonly  when  the  house  was  filled,  theatri- 
cals at  Clarencieux.  The  same  Paris  troupe  which  had  gone  to  Constantinople 
Were  down  here  for  the  recess,  reinforced  by  a  new  actress  of  the  most  enchant- 
ing talents,  and  by  John  Trevenna,  who  had  the  most  inimitable  powers  of 
mimicry  ever  seen  on  a  stage,  and  who  now  played  in  the  first  vaudeville,  as  an 
Englishman  on  his  initiatory  trip  to  Paris,  in  a  manner  that  Arnal  himself  never 
eclipsed,  and  in  the  second  most  audaciously  mimicked  Lord  Clydesmore  in  an 
interlude  written  by  himself,  till  even  the  fastidious  and  sated  audience  he 
played  for  were  in  uncontrollable  laughter,  and  even  the  ladies,  his  very  worst 
foes,  were  of  opinion  that  a  person  who  could  amuse  them  so  well  certainly  de- 
served to  go  into  Parliament,  though  he  did  come  nobody  knew  whence,  and  had 
lodgings  in  town  nobody  knew  where. 

Trevenna  showed  his  wisdom  in  playing  the  part  of  a  Charles  Mathews  to 
this  little  bijou  theatre,  since  by  it  he  won  over  the  toleration  of  his  most 
inveterate  and  most  inexorable  foes. 

The  only  guests,  besides  the  thirty-five  or  forty  people  staying  in  the  castle, 
were  the  Chestertons  and  Lady  Valencia.  Nothing  had  escaped,  during  the 


153  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

two  days,  of  the  victory  the  Queen  of  Lilies  had  achieved.  Trevenna,  the  only 
one  who  guessed  it,  held  his  own  counsel ;  and  Chandos,  apart  from  the  aversion 
he  had  to  giving  the  vulgarity  of  publicity  to  his  love,  felt  that  he  had  a  slightly 
troublesome  and  embroiled  task  before  him  in  breaking  the  intelligence  to  his 
fair  tyrant,  La  Vivarol.  There  was  sufficient  mortification  and  irritation  in  the 
hearts  of  his  female  guests  when  they  saw  the  rival  they  had  believed  hopelessly 
defeated  enter  the  drawing-rooms  of  Clarencieux  in  all  the  perfection  of  her 
loveliness  and  in  all  the  evident  restoration  of  her  supremacy,  without  their 
knowing  the  bitter  extent  of  her  triumph.  A  prouder  moment  even  the  Lily 
Queen  had  never  wished  for  or  dreamt  of  than  when  she  first  passed  the  thres- 
hold of  Clarencieux  into  the  mighty  hall  where  Evelyn  Chandos  had  marshalled 
his  cavaliers,  and  knew  that  she  was  the  future  mistress  of  that  royal  place; 
than  when  she  was  met  upon  the  great  staircase  as  the  Chandos  only  met  their 
sovereigns,  and  knew  that  she  was  the  bethrothed  wife  of  this  brilliant  darling 
of  courts,  this  magnificent  leader  of  fashion,  whom  the  world  had  said  no  woman 
would  ever  so  woo  and  so  win. 

Perhaps,  indeed,  as  they  passed  from  the  reception-rooms  to  the  dining-hall, 
and  from  the  drawing-rooms  again  to  the  theatre,  through  the  lofty  corridors 
ceiled  with  cedar  and  hung  with  Renaissance  decorations  on  which  the  first 
artists  of  Italy  had  of  late  years  been  employed,  her  glance  too  often  wandered 
to  the  mere  art-skill  and  costliness  with  which  every  yard  of  Clarencieux  was 
filled, — to  the  priceless  pictures,  to  the  delicate  statues,  to  the  gold  and  the 
ivory,  the  malachite  and  the  jasper,  the  porphyry  and  the  marble,  the  collections 
of  a  princely  wealth  and  of  a  race  eight  centuries  old.  Perhaps  she  looked  too 
much  at  these,  the  mere  possession  of  accident,  the  mere  symbols  of  power; 
perhaps  the  higher,  deeper,  softer,  treasures  of  the  future  she  had  won  escaped 
her,  and  were  less  dear  to  her  than  these  insignia  of  her  lover's  rank,  her  lover's 
splendor:  perhaps.  She  had  been  in  the  bitter  school  of  titled  poverty;  from 
her  birth  upward  she  had  been  so  proud,  and  yet  so  penniless. 

As  they  sat  at  dinner  in  the  banqueting-hall,  hung  with  scarlet  and  gold, 
with  its  ceiling  arched  above  the  sixteen  Corinthian  pillars  of  porphyry  given  by 
La  Grande  Catherine  to  a  Chandos  who  had  been  an  ambassador  at  her  court, 
the  Queen  of  Lilies,  haughty  as  an  empress,  delicate  as  a  young  deer,  pure  and 
stately  as  the  flower  of  her  emblem  though  she  was,  appraised  the  grandeur  of 
Clarencieux  wellnigh  with  as  critical  a  surety  as  Ignatius  Mathias  could  have 
done,  and  looked  less  upward  to  where  her  lover  sat,  than  opposite  to  where, 
above  the  sculptured  marble  of  the  mighty  hearth,  above  the  crossed  standards 
of  Evelyn  Chandos  and  the  last  marquis,  of  Edgehill  and  of  Preston,  there 
rested  in  a  niche,  all  wrought  in  ivory  and  silver  in  a  curious  Florentine  carving, 
the  last  coronet  that  had  ever  been  worn  by  a  Chandos, — the  attaindered  coronet 
of  Clarencieux. 


CHANDOS.  153 

"  Amazingly  like  the  last  marquis  he  looks  to-night,  by  Jove  !  "  thought  Tre- 
venna,  standing  behind  the  curtain  of  the  pretty  stage  before  it  drew  up  for  the 
vaudeville,  and  surveying  through  a  chink  the  slope  of  the  theatre  filled  with 
arm-chairs,  without  any  partition  into  boxes,  and  all  glittering  with  arabesques 
and  gilding  and  chandeliers,  where  in  the  centre  Chandos  stood  leaning  above 
Lady  Valencia's  chair.  "  Well,  there  is  a  Tower  Hill  waiting  for  him  too  ! 
Only  my  lord,  with  his  d — d  proud  smile,  said,  '  All's  lost, — except  honor  ! '  I 
guess  his  descendant  will  say,  '  All's  lost, — even  honor  ! '  We  must  not  strike 
till  this  election  matter's  over.  That  put  me  out  of  my  calculations;  and  it's 
too  good  to  lose.  Only  a  little  while  longer,  though,  shall  1  play  the  fool  to 
please  his  patricians,  and  monseigneur  stand  there  owner  of  Clarencieux. 
Aprh " 

The  bell  rang  a  little  chime;  the  curtain,  exquisitely  painted  with  a  view  of 
Psestum,  drew  up.  Trevenna  sauntered  forward  to  greet  the  Parisienne  actress, 
in  his  character  of  Milford  Brown-Smith,  with  a  flow  of  inimitable  nonsense,  and 
an  effervescence  of  animal  spirits  so  mirthful  and  contagious  that  the  most 
blase  of  his  audience  were  laughed  into  an  irresistible  good  humor;  and  had 
his  election  depended  on  their  votes,  he  would  have  been  safe  into  his  borough 
that  instant.  There  were  only  two  who,  while  they  laughed,  would  have  with- 
held their  suffrage;  they  were  the  Duke  of  Castlemaine  and  Philippe  Due 
d'Orvale, — the  two  who,  despite  the  presence  of  women  whose  fair  eyes  had 
vowed  him  such  soft  fidelity,  were  the  two  in  Clarencieux  that  night  who  loved 
Chandos  the  best. 

Some  faint  perception  that  the  tenderness  borne  him  by  the  one  he  last 
wooed  was  not  that  with  which  he,  with  the  fervor  of  an  impassioned  nature 
beneath  his  carelessness,  had  loved  and  been  loved  under  Southern  and  Asiatic 
suns,  stirred  in  him  even  that  night.  He  had  been  hurried  by  her  beauty  into 
the  abandon  of  a  long-resisted  passion;  but  of  her  heart,  of  her  nature,  of  her 
thoughts,  he  knew  nothing.  He  loved  her  as  poets  love,  seeing  her  through 
the  glories  of  his  own  imaginings;  but  he  knew  no  more  whether  in  truth  she 
answered  them  than  he  knew  what  he  had  done  for  his  own  future  when  he  had 
drawn  her  into  its  life  with  that  caress  which  left  him  bound  to  her. 

He  had  been  spoiled  by  a  world  that  had  so  long  adored  him;  he  had  been 
used  to  the  utmost  gratification  of  every  fancy,  of  every  wish;  he  had  been  in- 
tensely loved  by  women,  used  to  burning  words,  to  Southern  passions,  to  lavished 
tenderness.  In  her  there  was  some  want  that  he  vaguely  missed,  some  coldness 
scarcely  felt,  yet  ever  there,  which  now  in  the  first  moment  of  his  surrender  to 
her  passed  over  him  with  a  chill.  He  knew  that  he  had  done  a  fatal  thing;  and 
the  thought  haunted  him  even  in  the  gayeties  of  Clarencieux, — even  when  for 
an  instant  he  was  alone  with  her,  as  he  drew  her  from  the  ball-room  into  the 
conservatories,  aisles  of  tropical  blossom  and  vegetation  glowing  with  the  deep 


154  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

bronze  of  South  American  leaves  and  the  scarlet  of  Orient  fruits  and  flowers, 
the  foliage  of  Mexico  and  the  flora  of  Persia. 

"  Ah,  my  Queen  of  Lilies  !  "  he  murmured,  passionately,  "  you  are  fair  as 
the  flowers  they  call  you  after;  but  are  you  as  cold  ?  You  have  not  yet  learnt 
what  love  really  is:  look  into  my  eyes  and  read  it  there  !  " 

His  eloquent  eyes  burned  down  into  hers,  their  deep  and  brilliant  blue  dark 
with  the  fire  of  passion,  as  he  wound  her  in  his  arms  and  covered  her  lips  with 
kisses. 

She  drew  herself  softly  from  his  embrace,  startled  and  flushed  by  the  warmth 
of  his  words,  by  the  ardor  of  a  temperament  beside  which  her  own  was  as  ice  to 
the  sirocco,  as  the  moon  to  the  sun. 

"Where  is  it  that  I  fail  ?"  she  whispered;  "how  would  you  have  me  love 
you  ? " 

There  was  a  pang  at  his  heart  as  he  pressed  her  to  his  breast  with  a  caress  in 
which  he  strove  to  kill  the  chill  doubt  waking  in  him. 

"How?  My  fairest,  words  are  but  cold  interpreters;  if  you  knew,  you 
would  not  ask  the  question.  How  ?  Speech  cannot  teach  that  lore.  I  would 
be  loved  as  I  love, — so  only  !  " 


"  Ernest,  pardon  me,"  said  the  Duke  of  Castlemaine,  as  late  in  that  dawn 
he  met  his  grandson,  both  on  their  way  to  the  smoking-room;  "  but  your  atten- 
tions were  extraordinarily  marked  to  Lady  Valencia  St.  Albans  to-night, — 
almost  too  much  so,  since  there  are  princesses  of  the  French  and  Russian  blood 
in  your  house.  If  I  were  not  sure " 

"  Dear  duke,  be  sure  of  nothing."  He  spoke  with  a  smile,  but  the  smile 
had  in  it  something  that  was  almost  mournful. 

His  Grace  paused,  wheeled  round,  and  stared  at  him. 

"  Chandos  !  you  cannot  mean "  He  stopped,  unwilling  to  put  his  doubt 

into  plain  words. 

"  Yes;  I  mean  what  you  are  thinking  of.  I  have  said  more  than  I  can  unsay. 
Let  us  drop  the  subject." 

An  oath  of  the  hot  Regency  days  of  his  early  manhood  broke  from  under 
the  white  cavalry  moustaches  of  the  old  nobleman,  as  he  stood  and  gazed  at  his 
favorite  descendant  in  the  silvery  light  from  the  candelabra  above  their  heads 
in  the  corridor.  He  had  no  need  to  ask  more  questions;  he  understood  well 
enough,  and  the  comprehension  cut  him  to  the  heart. 

"  Good  God,  Ernest  !  "  and  there  was  an  accent  of  genuine  grief,  as  well  as 
of  amaze.  "  And  you  might  have  wedded  royal  women,— Louise  d'Albe,  Marie 
of  August,  the  Princess  d'Orvieto  !  you  might  have  claimed  the  hand  of  any 
one  of  them  !  but  you  declared  that  you  hated  marriage." 


CHAN  DOS.  ]55 

"  I  declared  only  the  truth.     Marriage  I  abhor;  but  her — I  love." 

The  duke  ground  his  still  strong,  handsome  teeth  with  a  fierce  impatience; 
he  knew  that  the  Chandos  of  Clarencieux — libertines  perhaps,  epicureans  al- 
ways— had  never  let  any  earthly  wisdom  or  law  or  plea  stand  between  them  and 
the  follies  of  their  hearts  or  passions. 

"  I  knew  she  would  do  it,  if  she  had  the  chance,"  he  muttered.  "  To  run 
after  you  here,  to  come  into  the  country  the  instant  you  returned  from  Paris, — 
indelicate,  indecent  !  " 

Chandos  stretched  out  his  hand. 

"  Hush,  sir;  /cannot  hear  such  accusations.  It  was  not  her  doing  that  she 
came;  she  has  always  told  me  that  she  was  strongly  averse  to  it,  the  more 
averse  because,  as  I  may  now  confess  for  her,  she  loved  me." 

The  duke  swept  his  hand  over  his  snowy  moustaches  with  a  scornful,  wrath- 
ful gesture. 

"  Need  she  have  come,  then  ?  The  daughter  of  Ivors  can  scarce  be  so 
utterly  destitute  of  friends.  She  intrigues  for  you  as  markedly  as  any  Flora 
de  1'Orme,  though  in  a  different  fashion." 

Chandos  turned  to  him,  grave  almost  to  weariness  for  the  moment,  but 
gentle  as  of  old. 

"  My  dear  duke,  you  know  that  I  would  not  have  a  difference  with  you  for 
the  worth  of  Clarencieux;  but  you  must  not  use  such  words  in  my  presence  of 
one  whom  you  will  hereafter  receive  as — my  wife." 

He  paused  before  the  last  two  syllables;  he  could  not  utter  them  without 
some  pain,  without  some  distrust.  His  Grace  suppressed  a  deadlier  oath;  he 
loved  Chandos  with  more  fondness  than  he  would  have  cared  to  confess,  and  he 
had,  besides,  the  most  suberb  instincts  of  thorough-bred  courtesy. 

"  I  beg  your  pardon,"  he  said,  with  a  bend  of  his  stately  head.  "  I  have, 
of  course,  no  right  to  comment  on  your  choice  or  on  your  actions;  but  all  I 
would  ask  you  is,  what  will  she  recompense  you  for  all  you  must  forfeit 
for  her  ? " 

Chandos  gave  a  half-impatient  sigh,  not  so  low  but  that  it  caught  his  grand- 
father's ear. 

"  It  is  useless  speaking.  It  is  not  that  I  doubt  your  wisdom,  or  dispute 
your  right  of  counsel;  but  what  is  done  is  done:  let  us  leave  a  fruitless  subject." 

He  moved  on,  and  threw  open  the  door  of  the  smoking-room.  The  duke 
loved  him  too  well  to  say  more,  but  he  turned  back  abruptly,  bade  him  good- 
night, and  went  to  his  own  apartment.  Well  as  the  gallant  old  man  enjoyed 
the  society  of  a  younger  generation,  and  welcome  as  he  was  to  it  by  right  of  his 
grand  intellect,  his  unquenched  spirits,  and  his  high  renown,  he  had  not  the 
heart  for  it  now;  he  felt,  vaguely  and  bitterly,  that  the  cloudless  sunshine  of 
fortune  would  soon  or  late  desert  the  last  Chandos  left  to  Clarencieux. 


15o  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

Chandos  himself  that  night  smoked  his  favorite  rose-water  narghile  in  the 
smoking-room,  then  sat  down  with  Philippe  d'Orvale  to  ecarte",  closely  contested, 
costly,  and  washed,  now  and  then,  with  iced  sherbet.  They  played  while 
everybody  else  slept;  then,  as  d'Orvale  went  to  bed,  Chandos  instead  let  him- 
self out  by  a  side  door  that  opened  into  the  rose-gardens,  and  walked  alone 
into  the  sunny,  silent  morning,  with  no  other  companion  than  Beau  Sire. 

With  the  temper  of  a  voluptuary  and  the  habits  of  a  man  of  the*  world, 
there  was  blent  in  him  as  strong  a  love  of  nature  and  of  all  the  beauty  of  forest 
and  moorland,  of  the  change  of  the  seasons,  and  of  the  floating  glories  of  the 
clouds,  as  the  purest  of  the  Lakists  ever  felt.  In  truth,  he  was  many  men  in 
one:  and  to  the  apparent  inconsistency  it  produced  in  his  character  were  due 
both  the  versatility  of  his  talents  and  the  scope  of  his  sympathies.  His  pene- 
tration was  often  at  fault;  he  thought  too  well  of  men,  and  judged  them  too 
carelessly;  but  his  sympathies  were  invariably  catholic  and  true;  he  understood 
what  others  felt  with  an  unerring  surety  of  perception, — a  quality  that  invariably 
begets  attachment,  a  quality  that,  in  its  highest  development  produces  genius. 

He  walked  far,  spending  two  hours  in  the  forest  and  on  the  shore.  The 
flight  of  a  flock  of  sea-swallows,  the  toss  of  the  surf  on  the  yellow  sands,  the 
rolling-in  of  the  great  curled  waves,  the  morning  life  of  the  woodlands,  the 
nest-song  of  the  thrushes,  the  poise  of  a  blue-warbler  above  a  river-plant,  the 
circling  sweep  of  an  osprey  in  the  air,  all  had  their  charm  to  him;  not  one  of 
the  sights  and  sounds  of  the  spring-day  was  indifferent  to  him  or  unnoted  by 
him.  He  loved  to  lay  high  prices  on  the  cards  in  the  excitement  of  a  gaming- 
room,  and  he  loved  to  lead  the  wit  and  wildness  of  a  sparkling,  reckless  Paris 
night;  but  none  the  less  did  he  love  to  stand  and  look  over  the  gray,  calm  ex- 
panse of  a  limitless  sea,  none  the  less  did  he  love  to  listen  to  the  laugh  of  a 
west  wind  through  the  endless  aisles  of  a  forest. 

He  strolled  till  past  noon  through  his  lands  with  the  retriever  alone  beside 
him,  then  he  re-entered  the  gardens  by  the  same  gate  by  which  he  had  left 
them.  In  them  he  met,  alone  also,  La  Vivarol.  He  would  very  willingly  have 
avoided  the  meeting.  He  knew  how  inexorable  a  tyrant  the  fair  countess  had 
been:  it  was  with  difficulty  that  he  had  loosened  her  fetters  at  all,  and  the 
escape  he  had  made  had,  as  he  was  well  aware,  never  been  pardoned  him.  Of 
a  scene,  of  anything  approaching  reproaches,  recrimination,  or  a  quarrel,  Chan- 
dos had  more  than  the  common  horror;  it  was  one  of  the  frailties  of  his  nature 
to  do  anything  on  the  face  of  the  earth  to  avoid  a  «  mauvais  quart  a'heurcf 
and  now  his  conscience  told  him  that  he  could  scarcely  complain  if  he  had  to 
endure  one,  even  if  madame  were  unaware  of  the  lengths  to  which  her  rival's 
triumph  extended.  He  advanced,  therefore,  with  a  misgiving. 

"  Ah,  madame  !  good  morning.  It  is  very  rarely  you  honor  the  outer 
world  so  early." 


CHANDOS.  157 

The  countess  laughed  as  silvery  a  peal  as  that  rung  by  her  toy-dog's  little 
bells. 

"  No,  indeed.  The  dawn,  and  the  dew,  and  all  the  rest  of  it  are  charming 
in  eclogues  and  pastorals,  but  in  real  life  they  are — a  little  damp  !  but  to-day  I 
did  not  sleep  very  well;  my  novel  was  dull,  and  the  gardens  looked  tempting." 

"  Those  who  are  so  much  the  gainers  by  it  will  not  quarrel  with  any  caprice 
that  brings  them  to  you  earlier." 

La  Vivarol  laughed  again, — a  little  contemptuously,  letting  an  echo  of  sad- 
ness steal  into  it.  This  brightest  Venus  Victrix  was  very  charry  of  her  sighs, 
but  on  very  rare  occasions  she  could  be  mournful  with  an  effect  no  other  ever 
approached. 

"  My  favorite  rose-gardens,"  she  said,  glancing  around  them.  "  Their 
summer  beauty  is  not  yet  come,  though  it  is  very  near.  /  shall  never  see  it." 

"  Madame  !  what  can  make  you  utter  so  cruel  a  prediction  for  Clarencieux  ? " 

She  let  her  long  eyes,  dazzling  as  a  falcon's,  rest  on  him,  humid  with  a  mist 
that  he  could  almost  have  sworn  was  of  tears. 

"  Chut,  man  ami !  A  new  queen  will  soon  reign  at  Clarencieux,  they  say ; 
can  you  pretend  that  I  should  be  welcome  then  ? " 

There  was  a  repressed  melancholy  in  the  tone  more  touching  than  spoken 
reproach.  Like  Trevenna,  she  had  long  studied  and  traced  his  most  facile  and 
most  accessible  weakness.  She  knew  he  could  never  be  moved  by  recrimina- 
tion; she  knew  he  could  be  wounded  in  an  instant  by  tenderness.  He  was 
silent  a  moment,  startled  and  pained;  he  scarce  could  tell  how  to  soothe  away 
this  bitterness  to  her. 

"  Believe  me,"  he  said,  a  little  hurriedly,  "  whatever  changes  Clarencieux 
sees,  you  will  ever  be  welcomed  to  it  by  me." 

"  And  do  you  think  that  with  these  '  changes  '  I  would  come  to  it  ?  "  She 
spoke  with  a  proud  rebuke,  a  melancholy  challenge,  turning  her  eyes  full  on 
his.  Not  a  woman  living  knew  so  well  how  to  place  a  man  in  a  wrong  position 
and  close  all  gates  of  escape  upon  him,  as  Heloi'se  de  la  Vivarol.  Chandos 
felt  inconstant  and  cruel, — felt  as  she  chose  that  he  should  feel. 

"  However  that  be,"  she  murmured,  dreamily  placing  him  yet  further  and 
further  at  his  disadvantage,  as  only  a  woman's  tact  can  do.  "/wish  you  every 
joy,  Ernest,  that  earth  can  bring.  Ernest  !  I  may  call  you  that  still  once  more; 
the  name  will  be  for  new  lips  in  the  future." 

The  tears  shone,  -dimming  her  brilliant  eyes;  a  touching  and  resigned 
reproach  was  in  her  tone;  sadness  was  tenfold  more  intense,  coming  for  once 
in  its  rarity  upon  the  dazzling,  victorious  face  of  the  sovereign  conqueror 
Chandos  felt  guilty,  felt  repentant,  felt  everything  that  she  meant  he  should 
feel.  His  wiser  judgment  might  have  known  that  this  was  but  the  perfection 
of  acting;  but  she  did  not  let  his  judgment  come  a  second  into  play;  she  moved 


15g  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

him  at  once  by  his  heart  and  by  his  sympathies.     He   took    her   hand,    and 
stooped  towards  her. 

"Heloise,   forgive  me.     I   deeply   regret— I    did    not    know— at   least,    if 


ever- 


He  was  about,  despite  all  his  consummate  tact  and  his  knowledge  of  the 
world  and  of  its  women,  to  do  so  rash  a  thing  as  to  apologize  to  her  for  having 
deserted  his  allegiance  !  She  stopped  him  softly. 

"Say  no  more;  the  past  is  past.  No  one  you  have  ever  known  will  wish 
you  happiness  as  I  shall  wish  it.  We  are  friends  now,  and  ever  will  be. 
Another  love  usurps  you;  so  be  it.  To  me,  at  least  is  left  your  friendship  still. 
It  is  not  too  much  to  ask,  Ernest  ?  " 

"  Too  much  !     It  is  yours  forever." 

He  spoke  warmly,  contrite,  and  surprised  that  she  had  loved  him  so  well. 
She  had  never  looked  more  lovely  than  in  this  sudden  descent  from  her 
haughty  and  contemptuous  gayety  of  sovereign  triumph  to  this  mournful  and 
wistful  resignation.  The  pledge  he  gave  her  was  one  that  he  would  never  break, 
for  it  had  been  won  from  him  in  a  moment  of  acute  self-reproach,  when  he 
rebuked  himself  with  having  trifled  too  lightly  with  the  peace  of  one  who  truly 
loved  him,  though  he  had  wronged  her  by  too  long  deeming  that  no  real  love 
could  linger  under  the  mocking  worldly  brilliance  of  her  careless  victories.  "  I 
never  thought  that  she  had  loved  me  so"  he  mused,  surprised  and  moved,  when 
he  had  left  her.  She  had  led  him  by  his  feelings,  and  he  had  neither  the  keen- 
ness nor  the  suspicion  in  him  to  doubt  that  she  betrayed  him.  To  Chandos  it 
was  far  easier  to  think  that  he  had  done  a  woman  of  the  world  wrong  by  think- 
ing her  too  heartless,  than  to  credit  that  she  wronged  him  by  masking  a  bitter 
passion  that  she  felt  and  assuming  a  gentle  passion  she  did  not  feel.  It  was 
true,  she  loved  him, — in  her  reading  of  the  word;  but  it  was  in  such  a  reading 
that  the  night  before,  seeing  her  English  rival's  power,  she  had  set  her  delicate 
teeth  together,  and  sworn,  in  her  heart, — 

"  I  will  have  my  vengeance  !  If  it  be  twenty  years  hence,  I  will  have  my 
vengeance  ! " 

And  before  twenty  years  she  had  it. 


CHANDOS.  159 

CHAPTER  IX. 

THE   WATCHER    FOR   THE    FALL   OF    ILION. 

"  They  tell  me  the  Premier  has  pressed  on  you  again  the  restoration  of 
your  title  ?" 

The  Queen  of  Lilies  spoke,  standing  under  those  very  palms,  in  her  sister's 
town  residence  under  which  she  had  stood  when  she  had  first  spoken  the  name 
of  Chandos. 

"  Yes,  my  dearest,  he  has  done  so." 

"  And  you  accept  ?  " 

"  No;  I  decline." 

"Decline!"  A  dark  shadow  swept  over  her  fair,  serene  brow.  "Decline 
the  peerage  !  And  why  ? " 

"  Why  ?  For  many  matters.  One,  that  what  was  robbed  from  us  by  the 
crown  I  will  not  take  from  the  crown  as  a  re-creation.  The  last  marquis  laid 
his  life  down  to  preserve  his  honor.  Athens  would  have  given  him  a  statue  in  her 
Altis;  England,  characteristically,  gave  him  a  block  on  Tower  Hill.  We  have 
never  condoned  his  judicial  murder." 

"  Refuse  the  marquisate  to  gratify  the  manes  of  a  beheaded  ancestor  ! 
What  quixotism  ! " 

Chandos  looked  as  he  felt, — annoyed;  he  was  used  to  be  deferred  to,  and 
the  women  he  had  loved  had  been  playfully  gentle  even  in  their  most  imperious 
tyrannies.  Besides,  a  deeper  vexation  smote  him;  this  anxiety  for  his  rank 
showed  that  his  rank  usurped  her  thoughts. 

"  Quixotism  it  may  be;  such  as  it  is,  it  will  always  govern  me;  and  I  should 
have  hoped  one  who  loved  me  would  strive  to  understand  my  feelings,  as  I 
would  strive  to  understand  hers." 

He  spoke  gravely  and  gently;  but  she  saw  that  she  had  made  a  wrong  move, 
— that  he  was  both  pained  and  offended. 

"  But  why  ?  tell  me  why,"  she  urged,  more  softly.  "  Attaindered  titles  have 
been  restored  before  now.  Others  have  thought  it  very  right." 

"  What  others  may  do  has  never  been  my  guide." 

"  I  know  ! "  The  world  followed  him;  she  would  not  have  contradicted 
him.  "  But — forgive  me — I  cannot  see  your  motive." 

"  '  Forgive  '  is  no  word  between  us,  my  worshipped  one.  But  to  tell  you  my 
motives  I  should  have  to  tell  you  a  long  story.  Suffice  it,  nothing — not  even 
your  prayer — would  eve-r  induce  me  to  be  made  Lord  Clarencieux." 

"  A  story  ?     Oh,  you  must  tell  it  me  !  " 


ICO 


OUIDAS     WORKS. 


"  Why,  my  dearest  ?    We  have  a  story  of  our  own  far  sweeter  than  any 

chronicle." 

"  No,  no.     You  have  excited  me  now;  you  must  gratify  my  curiosity." 

She  spoke  caressingly,  but  in  her  heart  were  a  keen  irritation  and  mortifica- 
tion. She  had  set  all  the  longing  of  her  ambitious  life  upon  his  marquisate. 
The  word  of  a  woman  is  command  to  the  man  who  loves  her;  he  smiled,  looking 
down  on  her,  and  drawing  her  nearer  in  his  embrace. 

"  You  know  the  life  and  the  death  of  the  last  lord  ! — it  is  a  matter  of  history. 
When  he  joined  Charles  Edward  at  Preston,  he  was  the  most  brilliant  man  of 
his  time,  a  wit,  a  soldier,  a  poet,  a  bel  esprit,  the  friend  of  Philippe  d'Orleans 
and  Richelieu,  the  courtliest  noble  of  his  age.  He  had  loved  many;  but  he 
loved  latest,  and  above  all,  a  duke's  daughter,  his  betrothed  wife.  When  he 
was  flung  into  the  Tower,  as  you  know,  they  offered  him  not  only  life,  but 
highest  distinctions,  if  he  would  betray  a  state  secret  known  to  be  in  his  pos- 
session. You  are  aware  that  he  refused,  in  words  which  sent  the  Whig  nobles 
who  came  to  tempt  him  out  of  his  presence  like  lashed  hounds.  Yet  existence 
was  unutterably  dear  to  him.  What  think  you  the  woman  who  loved  him  did  ? 
— she,  a  court-beauty,  whom  hundreds  urged  to  forgetfulness  and  infidelity. 
All  she  craved  from  the  throne  was  permission  to  go  to  him  in  his  captivity, 
being  '  prouder,'  as  her  letters  phrase  it,  '  to  share  his  doom  than  to  be  one  with 
the  pomp  and  pride  of  emperors.'  It  was  granted,  and  she  was  wedded  to  him 
one  evening  in  the  Beauchamp  Tower.  She  lived  with  him  there  four  months, 
while  his  trial  languished  on.  They  feared  to  murder  him,  for  the  Chandos 
were  very  powerful  then;  yet  they  thirsted  like  wolves  for  the  great  chief's 
blood.  His  name  was  like  a  clarion  to  all  the  gentlemen  of  the  South.  Through 
all  these  months  she  never  left  him  for  one  hour,  nor  .did  one  word  ever  escape 
her  lips  to  urge  him  to  purchase  life  at  loss  of  honor.  They  took  him  from  her 
side  to  the  scaffold,  one  fair  spring  morning,  to  die,  with  a  smile  upon  his  lips, 
and  those  brief  words, '  Tout  est perdu,  for s  Vhonneur .' '  They  say  that  from  the 
radiance  of  scarcely  twenty  years  she  changed  to  the  blanched  and  worn 
decrepitude  of  extreme  age  in  that  hour  of  agony  when  the  axe  fell  upon  the 
neck  her  arms  had  wreathed  in  his  last  sleep.  The  son,  to  whom  she  gave 
birth  afterwards,  grew  up  to  manhood,  the  estates  saved  for  him  by  others' 
intercession, — never  by  her  own.  She  made  him  swear  never  to  accept  the 
restoration  of  his  father's  title,  since  it  would  have  been  to  give  condonation  to 
his  father's  murderers.  He  kept  his  oath  inviolate;  and  it  has  been  passed  on 
from  generation  to  generation.  Now  you  understand  why  I  will  not  accept  the 
gift  of  my  attaindered  peerage." 

The  story  had  always  had  a  strong  and  touching  charm  for  women.     Even 

[eloise  de  la  Vivarol,  most  careless,  most  heartless  of  young  coquettes,  had 

listened  to  it,  looking  at  the  Kneller  portrait,  with  tears  that  started  genuine 


CHANDOS.  161 

and  true  into  her  falcon  eyes;  and  even  her  mother,  the  Princess  Lucille,  that 
weary,  hardened,  war-worn,  continental  Bohemian  of  the  Blood,  had  heard  it 
in  a  grave,  awed  silence,  and  had  turned  slowly  away:  "  C'est  bien  beau  ! — cet 
amour  qui  est  plus  fort  que  la  mort.  Je  ne  le  comprends  pas;  mais  c'est  beau  ! " 

Now  the  chastely-trained  English  beauty,  in  the  purity  and  freshness  of  her 
youth,  was  less  moved  by  it,  understood  it  less,  than  the  calumny-proof  and 
evilly-accused  Frenchwoman. 

She  listened,  she  smiled,  she  thanked  him;  but  the  history  did  not  reach  her 
heart.  She  felt,  moreover,  that  after  what  he  had  now  said  it  would  be  as  useless 
to  urge  him  to  the  acceptance  of  the  Clarencieux  peerage  as  to  urge  on  him 
some  actual  dishonor;  and  all  the  longing  of  her  soul  had  been  set  upon  that 
proud  marquisate. 

He  saw  this,  yet  he  tried  not  to  see  it;  he  thrust  it  from  him  with  a  pang. 
From  a  woman  who  had  sought  him  for  the  sake  of  the  rank  and  dignities  he 
brought  her  he  would  have  fled  as  from  a  pestilence,  let  it  cost  him  what  it 
should;  yet  he  had  wakened  passion  for  him  in  her  eyes,  he  had  felt  her  lips 
meet  his  in  lingering  caresses,  he  had  seen  her  face  flush  and  her  heart  beat  at 
his  words  or  in  his  embrace.  He  believed  that  she  loved  him;  for  she  seemed 
to  have  no  law,  no  thought,  no  wish,  no  memory  on  earth,  save  him.  And  she 
was  very  beautiful:  heavier  sins  than  those  he  saw  in  her  would  have  been  for- 
given and  forgotten  by  any  man  for  the  sake  of  that  glory  of  youth  and  of 
loveliness  which  had  ripened  in  the  light  of  Roman  suns  and  seemed  to  have 
their  lustre  still  upon  it. 

Her  triumph,  too,  lent  her  a  fresh  splendor.  The  eyes  of  a  woman  are 
never  so  soft  and  so  luminous  as  when  they  smile  on  the  mortification  of  her 
own  sex.  A  more  bitter  blow  had  never  been  dealt  them  than  when  her  fair 
friends  and  foes  learned  that  she  had  subdued  one  whose  proverbial  inconsis- 
tency had  so  long  made  his  captivity  hopeless;  and  in  the  humiliated  jealousy, 
the  defeated  exasperation,  which  rankled  in  silence  and  wretchedness  beneath 
the  congratulations  of  the  dainty  ladies  of  rank  who  had  sought  him  for  them- 
selves or  for  their  daughters  and  had  failed,  the  Queen  of  Lilies  found  one  of 
the  dearest  of  her  triumphs.  All  his  feminine  world  was  in  a  terror  of  amaze, 
of  indignation,  and  of  despair  when  the  rumor  stole  among  them  that  the  idol 
of  their  coteries  had  been  won  by  the  portionless  daughter  of  Ivors.  They 
could  not  believe  it;  they  would  not  believe  it;  and  when  they  were  compelled 
to  believe  it  from  the  tongue  of  Lady  Chesterton,  who  floated  about  with  the 
coolest  ice  on  her  lips,  and  the  warmest  exultation  in  her  heart,  that  ever  ex- 
asperated a  score  of  vanquished  acquaintance,  they  declared  it,  behind  her 
back,  the  most  disgraceful  intriguing  for  him,  and  began  to  find  out  that 
"  Lucrece  "  was  not  so  very  splendid  a  work  after  all. 

Demi-Monde  were  more  openly  in  revolt  and  more  frankly  infuriated,  yet 

VOL.  III.-6 


162 


QUID  AS     WORKS. 


comforted  themselves  more  speedily.  "//  nous  reviendra  bientot"  laughed 
Flora  de  1'Orme.  But  the  priestesses  and  vestals  of  the  temples  of  the  aristo- 
cratic and  matrimonial  Elis  had  no  such  consolation.  The  burnt-offering  of 
Clarencieux  and  its  appanages  could  only  be  sacrificed  once  on  their  altars, 
and  they  beheld  it  borne  away  by  this  unhonored  spoiler  with  an  exceeding 
anguish,  the  greater  that  it  perforce  was  mute.  What  wreaths  of  aromatic 
incense,  what  oblations  of  sacrifice,  had  been  lavished  and  wasted  ! 

There  was  not  a  single  person  of  Chandos'  acquaintance  to  whom  the  pros- 
pect of  his  marriage  was  not  bitterly  unwelcome, — except,  Trevenna,  who 
seemed  thoroughly  content  with  it;  at  which  other  men  wondered,  knowing 
how  valuable  a  place  Clarencieux  was  to  him,  and  how  much  benefit  accrued 
to  him  from  the  careless  and  gay  extravagance  of  his  friend's  unwedded  life. 
"  But  then,"  they  remarked,  "  Trevenna's  always  such  a  good-natured  fellow  !  " 
He  had  thoroughly  earned  this  character.  Did  any  man  want  anything,  from 
a  cigar  to  a  hunting-mount,  from  a  seat  down  to  Epsom  to  an  invitation  for  the 
moors,  Trevenna  would  get  it  for  him  with  the  most  obliging  good  nature, — so 
obliging,  that  men  never  knew  or  noticed  that  the  cigars  were  Chandos',  that 
the  mounts  were  out  of  his  stud,  that  the  drag  came  out  of  his  stable-yard,  and 
that  the  Highland  shootings  were  over  his  heather  and  forest.  Good  nature 
Trevenna  held  a  very  safe  and  excellent  reputation.  His  talents  and  his 
shrewdness  secured  him  from  ever  incurring  that  contempt,  born  of  familiarity, 
which  good  nature  is  apt  to  beget;  and  it  was  a  reputation,  as  he  considered, 
that  kept  a  clever  man  "  dark  "  and  secured  him  from  every  imputation  of  be- 
ing "  dangerous "  or  ambitious,  better  than  anything.  No  one  ever  suspects 
an  embryo  Drusus  or  Catiline,  a  lurking  Gladstone  or  Bismarck,  in  the  man 
of  whom  everybody  says,  "Most  obliging  fellow  in  the  world;  always  do  you  a 
turn ;  uncommonly  good-natured  !  "  When  the  blue-eyed,  golden-haired  procon- 
sul cracked  his  jests  with  Roscius,  and  lent  his  thousands  of  sesterces  in  reck- 
less liberality,  and  offered  his  Cuman  villa  to  his  boon-comrades,  and  played 
the  witty  fool,  with  roses  on  his  bright  locks,  through  the  hot  nights  of  royster- 
ing,  devil-may-care,  dead-drunk  Rome,  who  feared  or  foresaw  in  the  boon-com- 
panion the  dread  conqueror  of  Aphrodite's  Temple,  the  great  dictator  of  the 
Optimates,  the  iron-handed  Retribution  of  the  Marians  ? 

"  What  ever  possessed  you  to  put  that  fellow  into  Parliament,  Ernest  ? " 
asked  the  Duke  of  Castlemaine,  in  the  window  of  White's,  a  fortnight  after  the 
recess,  flinging  down  the  paper,  in  which  a  quiet  paragraph  announced  the  re- 
tirement of  Sir  Jasper  Lyle  and  the  unopposed  nomination  and  election  in  his 
stead  of  the  nominee  of  Clarencieux,  John  Trevenna,  now  M.  P. 

Chandos  raised  his  eyebrows  a  little. 

"  I  put  him  in  because  he  was  fitted  for  it:  not  a  common  reason  for  elec- 
tions, I  admit." 


CHANDOS.  163 

The  duke  gave  a  low  growl  in  his  white  beard.  "  You  think  life  is  to  be 
dealt  with  by  bon  mots  and  epigrams.  I  can't  say  the  Lower  House  has  much 
to  thank  you  for  in  furnishing  it  with  an  adventurer  !  " 

"  It  has  much  to  thank  me  for  in  giving  it  a  talker  who  can  be  logical  with- 
out being  long-winded,  and  sparkling  without  being  shallow, — though  possibly 
it  won't  see  the  obligation.  It  reveres  the  prosy,  and  venerates  the  ponderous." 

"  And  if  you  had  a  little  of  its  tastes  you  would  gain  in  safety  what  you 
would  loose  in  brilliancy.  You  set  too  much  store  on  mere  talent,  Chandos." 

"I  err  in  an  opposite  extreme  to  most  of  my  countrymen,  then,  duke." 

"  Can  you  answer  one  without  a  repartee  ? "  muttered  his  Grace,  grandly 
wrathful  at  an  election  from  which  he  had  done  his  best  to  dissuade  his  favorite. 
Prevent  it  he  could  not;  he  had  no  local  influence  in  his  grandson's  county, 
and  the  little  sea-cost  borough  within  twenty  miles  of  Clarencieux  had  almost  as 
feudal  an  attachment  to  the  mere  name  of  Chandos  as  his  peasantry  and  tenantry 
on  the  estates.  The  days  of  the  last  marquis  were  not  so  far  back  but  the 
living  men  could  remember  their  grandsires  relating  the  southern  rallying  round 
his  standard;  and  the  great  fame  of  the  late  minister  was  a  thing  beloved  and 
honored  through  the  whole  of  that  sea-board  as  a  thing  of  personal  and  im- 
perishable renown. 

"  To  put  an  adventurer  like  that  fellow  in  the  House  !  "  muttered  the  duke, 
fiercely  recurring  to  a  pinch  of  his  fragrant  etrenne.  "  I  confess,  I  am  aston- 
ished at  you,  Ernest." 

"  I  would  never  have  believed  it,"  chorused  his  son,  the  Marquis  of  Deloraine. 

"  I  did  not  believe  it,"  echoed  the  Earl  of  Pontifex.  "  When  I  saw  the 
paragraph  in  the  paper,  I  set  it  down  at  once  as  a  canard." 

"  Preposterous  !  "  murmured  a  noble  lord,  who  held  the  Foreign  portfolio, 
from  behind  his  morning  paper. 

"  The  ruin  of  the  Constitution,"  sighed  a  colleague. 

Chandos  listened  a  little  impatiently  for  his  usual  temper,  and  shrugged  his 
shoulders  ever  so  slightly. 

"  I  am  very  sorry  if  the  matter  disturb  you,  but  really  I  fail  to  see  the  oc- 
casion. I  confess,  it  seems  to  me  less  damaging  to  put  a  man  into  the  Lower 
House  who  has  every  promise  for  the  vocation,  except  money,  than  to  admit  so 
many,  as  is  now  the  custom,  because  money  is  the  only  recommendation  they 
possess ! " 

With  which  concise  retort  on  his  and  Trevenna's  censors,  Chandos  absorbed 
himself  in  a  new  novel.  The  duke,  who  might  blame  one  whom  he  loved  more 
dearly  than  any  other  of  his  kith  and  kin  himself,  but  would  never  endure  to 
hear  him  blamed  elsewhere,  laughed,  and  turned  to  the  Foreign  Secretary. 

"  Tell  your  rising  men  to  look  to  their  laurels,  Pendragon:  this  fellow,  now 
he  is  in,  will  cut  some  work  out  for  them.  '  Eh,  sirrah,  and  ye're  na  quiet,  I'll 


164  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

send  ye  to  the  five  hundred  kings  in  the  Lower  House:  I'se  warrant  they'll 
tame  ye,'  said  James  the  First  to  his  restive  charger.  I  don't  think  there  will 
ever  have  been  one  of  the  '  five  hundred  kings  '  more  likely  to  reign  paramount, 
some  way  or  other,  than  this  very  outsider,  John  Trevenna." 

His  Grace  was  a  world-wise  Nestor  of  all  councils  and  battle-grounds,  and, 
despite  his  aristocratic  prejudices,  judged  the  audacious  outsider  correctly. 

The  election  had  been  conducted  very  quietly;  there  had  not  been  the 
slightest  attempt  at  even  a  threatened  opposition;  as  Trevenna  said  himself, 
he  "  took  a  walk  over."  Chandos  was  the  idol  of  the  whole  country-side, 
and,  for  the  sake  of  his  great  father's  memory,  no  wish  of  his  would  have  been 
opposed  in  his  county.  He  proposed  the  new  member  in  a  few  words,  which 
sent  a  thrill  through  all  his  elder  auditors;  for  the  voice  was  the  same  clear, 
rich,  irresistible  voice — essentially  the  voice  of  the  orator — which  they  had 
used  to  hear  as  Philip  Chandos '.  They  had  often  wished  and  besought  him  to 
represent  them  in  person;  but  he  knew  his  own  character  better  than  they  knew 
it,  and 'invariably  declined.  Without  any  murmur  they  took  the  candidate  he 
proposed  to  them.  The  only  persons  who  could  have  opposed  the  Clarencieux 
nominee,  on  the  score  of  the  Conservative  creed  so  long  held  by  the  Clarencieux 
house,  namely,  the  few  people  in  the  borough  who  loved  change  or  studied 
politics  enough  to  be  Whig  (and  they  were  very  few),  Trevenna  himself  had 
conciliated.  That  part  of  his  canvassing  he  had  done  alone,  unknown  indeed 
to  Chandos;  and  it  was  a  study  in  itself,  the  masterly  manner  in  which, 
abstaining  from  any  avowal  of  Darshampton  politics,  such  as  would  have 
startled  out  of  their  wits  the  old  Tory  Burghers,  whose  only  creed  was  the  creed 
professed  at  Clarencieux,  he  still  managed  to  dine  his  few  Whig  allies,  to  chat 
with  them  in  inn-bars,  to  smoke  with  them  cheerily  in  their  back  parlors  or 
their  sombre  "  best  rooms,"  to  win  them  all  over  to  a  man,  and  to  leave  them 
with  the  profound  conviction  that  he  only  coalesced  with  their  opponents  in 
order  that  he  might  ultimately  advance  and  support  their  own  opinions.  Tre- 
venna was  a  capital  posture-dancer  in  social  life,  and  here  he  achieved  the 
proverbially  dangerous  feat  of  sitting  on  two  stools,  with  triumphant  address 
and  security. 

Still,  not  here  by  his  own  tact,  but  by  Chandos'  assistance  and  friendship 
alone  did  he  accomplish  the  commencing  ambition  of  his  life,  to  pass  unchal- 
lenged the  door-keeper  of  St.  Stephen's  and  take  his  place  upon  the  benches 
with  the  "  five  hundred  kings." 

Trevenna  was  in  no  sense  an  impressible  man,  and  assuredly  not  an  imagin- 
ative one;  he  would  have  strolled  through  the  Birs  Nimrud  or  the  broken 
columns  of  Jupiter  Ammon,  with  the  sun  full  on  the  glories  of  the  ruined  tem- 
ple, and  would  have  cracked  a  ginger-beer  bottle  and  wished  for  a  Punch;  he 
would  have  stood  in  St.  Peter's  in  the  gloom  of  the  Crucifixion-day,  while  the 


CHANDOS.  165 

"  Miserere  "  wailed  through  the  hush  and  the  twilight,  and  would  have  amused 
himself  like  a  schoolboy  with  letting  off  a  bunch  of  crackers  undetected,  to 
bang  and  sputter  on  the  solemn  silence;  he  was  essentially  a  "  realist,"  to  use 
the  jargon  of  the  schools,  and  a  very  jovial  realist  too.  Yet  even  he,  little 
given  to  being  touched  or  impressed  as  he  was,  felt  a  certain  proud  thrill  run 
through  him,  a  certain  hushed  earnestness  fall  for  a  moment  on  him,  as  he  first 
walked  down  the  House  and  took  his  place  in  the  assembly  that  John  Elliott 
suffered  for,  and  every  tyranny  since  has  feared. 

As  he  seated  himself  in  the  Commons,  men  noted  that  he  was  unusually 
quite;  some  thought  that  this  town-gossip,  this  dinner-wit,  this  idler  of  the 
Park  and  clubs,  was  conscious  of  being  out  of  his  element,  and  felt  his  own 
superficial  cleverness  useless  and  frivolous  in  their  great  congress;  one  or  two 
thought,  noting  the  keenness  of  the  eye,  the  meaning  of  the  well-built  brow, 
and  the  bright  indomitable  firmness  of  the  lips,  that  he  might  be  rather,  on 
the  contrary,  measuring  and  maturing  his  strength  against  the  future;  and 
these  were  the  deeper,  surer-sighted  of  his  observers. 

Yet  even  these  could  not  guess  that,  as  he  entered  the  Lower  House,  Tre- 
venna's  first  glance  went  to  the  well-known  place  where  the  majestic  stature 
and  the  grand  bearing  of  the  famous  minister,  Philip  Chandos,  had  been  wont 
to  rise  in  all  dignity  to  quell  a  tumultuous  opposition,  or  to  lead  a  patriot's 
movement  for  the  honor  and  in  the  name  of  England;  and  his  first  thought 
was,  "  Monseigneur,  here  I  am  at  last  in  your  own  throne-room,  where  you 
reigned  and  ruled  so  long.  Ah  !  I  may  even  hold  your  sceptre  some  day, 
when  your  brilliant  son  has  died  in  shame  and  exile  and  the  very  place  of  his 
grave  been  forgotten." 

So,  quietly  and  unostentatiously,  with  good  taste,  as  even  those  who  be- 
grudged him  the  elevation  were  constrained  to  admit,  not  altering  his  manner 
nor  his  mood  because  he  had  gained  this  social  status,  giving  men  no  touch, 
as  yet,  of  his  quality  and  his  power,  training  himself  wisely,  sedulously,  and 
well,  and  caring  little  to  be  noted  at  present  for  anything  beyond  his  punc- 
tual and  steady  attendance  at  the  House,  Trevenna  entered  on  his  parliamen- 
tary career. 

At  the  same  time  with  his  own,  a  very  different  ambition  and  aspiration  were 
forwarded  and  fructified  by  Chandos. 

The  opera  Ariadne  in  Naxos  was  completed,  and  after  Easter,  through  his 
influence,  and  chiefly,  indeed,  at  his  expense,  was  to  be  produced  with  every 
magnificence  in  the  presentation,  and  every  assistance  in  the  artists,  that  could 
be  procured  at  any  cost.  On  it  hung  the  very  life  and  soul  of  the  musician 
Lulli.  The  idealic  ambition  of  the  French  cripple  was  as  intense  in  its  absorp- 
tion of  him  as  Trevenna's  realistic  ambitions  were  of  him;  each  was  literally 
and  equally  governed  by  ambition:  the  difference  was  that  one  worshipped  Art, 


166  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

the  other  only  coveted  Success.  Lulli  would  have  expired  in  rapture  if,  perish- 
ing in  want  and  misery,  he  could  have  known  that  the  world  would  treasure  his 
works-  Trevenna  would  not  have  given  a  rush  for  a  fame  that  should  have 
excelled  Osar's,  Aristides',  or  St.  Paul's,  if  he  had  not  dined  well  and  drunk 
well  while  he  lived.  Dreaming  in  his  solitary  room,  the  visonary,  whose  infirm- 
ities shut  him  out  from  every  joy  and  hope  that  filled  the  lives  of  his  fellow- 
men,  had  created  things  as  glorious  as  ever  issued  from  the  thoughts  of  Mozart 
or  of  Meyerbeer.  In  self-reliance  most  helpless,  among  men  weak  as  an  ailing 
child,  so  ignorant  of  all  worldly  ways  and  wisdom  that  an  infant  of  six  years 
might  have  laughed  him  to  scorn,  Lulli  in  his  own  domain  was  a  king,  and  from 
the  twilight  of  the  aching  brain,  which  looked  with  so  touching  a  pathos,  with  so 
bewildered  a  pain,  out  of  the  dreamy  depths  of  his  sad  eyes,  music  had  risen  in 
its  grandest  incarnations,  poems  of  eternal  meaning  had  been  garnered,  beauty 
that  would  haunt  a  listening  world  and  stir  it  from  its  sloth  into  a  pang  of 
some  sublimer  thought  than  daily  toil  for  greed  and  gain,  had  been  born  in 
supreme  perfection. 

When  will  men  learn  to  know  that  the  power  of  genius,  and  the  human  shell 
in  which  it  chances  to  be  harbored,  are  as  distinct  as  is  the  diamond  from  the 
quartz-bed  in  which  they  find  it  ? 

The  Ariadne  was  the  crown  of  Lulli's  life;  it  was  the  first-born  of  his  brain, 
the  darling  of  his  thoughts,  the  fruit  of  many  a  long  summer  day  and  winter 
night,  given  in  untiring  love  to  the  work  of  its  creation.  By  it  the  world  was  to 
decide  whether  this  cripple's  dream  of  fame  was  vain  as  "  the  desire  of  the  moth 
for  the  star,"  or  whether,  when  his  existence  had  passed  away  from  the  patience 
and  the  pain  of  its  daily  being,  the  legacy  he  left  would  be  upon  the  lips  and  in 
the  hearts  of  thousands,  with  the  legacies  of  the  great  masters. 

The  day  approached  at  last  for  the  trial, — scarcely  three  weeks  since  Chan- 
dos  had  bartered  all  the  liberty  of  his  future  in  one  caress  among  the  spring- 
wealth  of  the  violets.  Was  it  well  lost  ?  He  thrust  the  question  from  him 
unanswered,  and  gave  himself  up  to  the  sway  of  his  new  passion  unresisting. 
He  had  never  known  sorrow;  how  could  he  well  know  fear  ?  He  lived  in  a 
ceaselessly  changing  succession  of  amusements,  in  which  there  was  no  pause 
for  doubt,  no  moment  for  foreboding;  he  only  felt  that  she  beguiled  him  more 
with  every  glance  her  eyes  gave  his;  he  was  only  conscious  of  the  impatience 
of  a  love  which  every  hour  that  kept  them  severed  heated  and  enhanced. 
Now  and  then,  in  truth,  he  felt  as  he  had  felt  at  Clarencieux, — that  he  was  not 
loved  as  he  loved;  now  and  then  the  serenity  of  her  nature  chilled  and  chafed 
the  fervor  and  the  passion  of  his  own:  but  the  time  was  brief.  They  met  in 
the  pauses  of  pleasures  which  banished  thought  from  him;  and  the  touch  of  his 
kiss,  the  eagerness  of  his  prayers,  the  impassioned  warmth  of  his  worship,  woke 
the  semblance,  if  not  the  reality,  of  response  in  her.  No  woman  could  have  had 


CHANDOS.  167 

his  eyes  look  into  hers  and  have  remained  cold  to  him.  The  only  thing  that 
ever  rankled  in  his  heart,  and  touched  him  at  times  with  a  pang  of  dread  and 
almost  of  aversion,  was  the  intensity  of  the  disappointment  she  could  not  dis- 
guise at  his  refusal  of  the  peerage  offered  him.  As  often  as  she  could  venture 
(for,  devoted  as  he  was  to  her,  and  infinitely  gentle  as  was  his  manner  to  all 
women,  and  above  all  to  her,  she  felt  that  this  was  a  point  on  which  he  would 
not  endure  pressure),  the  Lily  Queen  recurred  to  the  rejection  of  the  Claren- 
cieux  marquisate,  and  showed  herself  unreconciled  either  by  his  wish  or  by  his 
history  to  the  loss  of  that  splendid  coronet.  It  was  subtlely  done,  with  feminine 
grace  and  tact,  and  with  the  high-bred  delicacy  which  Lady  Valencia  could  no 
more  have  departed  from  than  the  antelope  could  lose  its  elegance;  but  the 
thought  was  ever  there  with  her,  how  to  surmount  the  invincible  objection  which 
alone,  through  motives  as  they  seemed  to  her  of  such  sheer  quixotism,  stood 
between  her  and  the  proffered  title;  and  he  felt,  better  than  he  could  have 
defined,  the  predominance  which  his  rank,  his  wealth,  and  his  fashion  held  with 
her,  far  over  his  love  and  her  own.  Now  and  then  he  feft  this  so  strongly  that 
a  passionate  regret  seized  him  for  the  fatal  opportunity  which  had  led  him  away 
to  resign  his  fate  and  future  to  her;  but — he  loved;  he  had  never  been  over- 
taken by  calamity;  he  was  of  a  nature  on  which  presentiment  could  assume  no 
hold;  he  flung  the  fear  off  him,  and  forgot  it,  stooping  to  take  the  soft  touch  of 
her  lips. 

"  I  suppose  before  long,  Trevenna,  you  will  renounce  my  exchequer-chan- 
cellorship and  begin  to  prepare  yourself  for  the  nation's  ? "  laughed  Chandos, 
the  evening  before  that  on  which  the  Ariadne  in  Naxos  was  to  be  presented. 
"  I  cannot  hope  to  keep  you  as  my  financier  now  that  you  have  parliamentary 
affairs  in  earnest  to  work  at:  still,  you  must  give  me  notice  when  you  mean  to 
resign.  The  vacancy  will  be  hard  to  fill." 

Trevenna  laughed  also. 

"I  confess,  I  pity  my  successor,  as  far  as  finances  go:  though  it  is  a  very 
good  office  for  perquisites,  it  is  something  tremendous  for  expenditure.  By  the 
way,  have  you  any  idea  what  you  do  spend,  Chandos  ? " 

Chandos  carelessly  shook  together  the  diamonds  on  a  fancy-dress  as  he 
made  his  toilette  for  a  fancy-ball  at  the  Princess  Anna  Miraflora's,  standing  in 
his  dressing-room,  while  Trevenna,  after  dining,  as  was  often  his  wont,  off 
Dubosc's  masterpieces  all  by  himself,  while  his  host  was  dining  at  the  Austrian 
Embassy,  chatted  with  him  now  before  the  one  went  to  his  bal  costume  at  the 
princess's  and  the  other  to  look  on  at  the  political  costuming  and  posturing  of 
a  debate. 

"  An  idea  of  what  I  spend  ?  No.  I  always  tell  you,  knowing  the  price  of 
things  spoils  them." 

"  But  not  knowing  the  price  of  them  may  chance  to  spoil  you" 


168  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

Chandos  laughed. 

"  Tres-cher,  I  am  spoilt, — have  been  ever  since  the  great  ladies  gave  me 
bonbons  when  I  was  two  years  old.  I  don't  deny  it;  but  then  it's  very  pleasant." 

"  Very,  no  doubt.  I  never  tried  it.  But  in  sober  seriousness,  Ernest,  do 
you  guess  what  your  expenses  are  ? " 

" '  Sober  seriousness  ! '  What  an  invocation  !  Decidedly  the  House  is  dis- 
agreeing with  you,  Trevenna,  and  you  are  imbibing  its  professional  dulness. 
Give  the  benches  your  estimates,  please;  don't  try  my  patience  with  them.  By 
the  way,  though,  you  are  my  finance-minister  still;  will  you  tell  my  lawyer 
to  draw  up  Lady  Valencia's  settlements  immediately,  and  see  to  the  matter 
altogether  yourself  for  me  ?" 

"  With  pleasure.     What  instructions " 

"  That  is  just  the  point  !  Save  my  having  to  give  any.  Meet  Chess  to- 
morrow, and  do  whatever  he  wishes.  I  only  give  you  one  injunction,"  added 
Chandos,  dropping  his  voice  so  that  his  attendants  could  not  hear;  "  arrange 
them  so  that  Lady  Valencia  can  never  feel  she  had  not  brought  me  a  fortune 
as  large  as  my  own,  and  draw  them  up  as  you  might  have  drawn  them  for  a 
princess  in  her  own  right." 

"As  I  should  have  done  if  you  had  followed  the  duke's  counsels.  But,  as 
for  these  settlements,  I  should  be  glad  of  a  little  graver  talk  with  you.  Can 
you  not  stop  half  an  hour  ? " 

"I !  I  am  fearfully  late  as  it  is;  and  I  have  promised  Princess  Anna  to  be 
in  time  for  the  Louis  Quinze  quadrille.  Besides,  I  know  what  your  graver  talk 
means.  My  dear  fellow,  go  in  for  supply,  and  attend  committees,  if  such  be 
your  taste;  but,  for  pity's  sake,  spare  me  legalities  and  finance.  Settle  what 
they  wish  upon  her;  I  cannot  give  you  a  wider  margin." 

"  Wide  enough  !  "  said  Trevenna,  grimly.  "  I  wonder  what  would  be  left 
you  if  my  Lady  Chess  filled  it  up  !  But  that  is  not  all,  Chandos.  Indeed—" 

"  Indeed,  the  '  all,'  then,  must  wait  for  a  better  season,"  laughed  Chandos, 
shaking  the  jewelled  hilt  of  his  rapier  into  its  place:  he  was  dressed  as  the  Due 
de  Richelieu;  while  the  Queen  of  Lilies  would  represent  the  Duchesse  de  Berry. 
The  princess  would  never  speak  to  me  again  if  I  were  to  ruin  her  quadrille  by 
my  absence.  Good-bye,  my  dear  fellow;  and  don't  learn  gravity  from  St. 
Stephen's:  I  am  sure  you  see  a  perpetual  comedy  there" 

revenna  looked  at  him  as  he  swept  out  of  the  dressing-chamber,  with  the 
Dlarencieux  diamonds  glittering  at  every  point  on  the  lace  and  embroidery,  the 
black  velvet  and  azure  silk,  the  gold  and  the  silver,  of  his  dress  of  the  Bourbon 
court. 

'  Go  to  your  last  night,  monseigneur,"  he  thought.     "  A  week,  and  those 

londs  will  be  for  sale.     You  want  settlements:  well,  you  shall  have  them. 

The  pear  is  ripe;  it  shall  fall.     Take  a  reprieve  for  to-night;  nothing  loses  by 


CHANDOS.  169 

anticipation.  Ten  years  ! — a  long  time.  On  my  life,  I  feel  rather  like  the 
watcher  who  looked  out  from  his  watch-tower  through  a  whole  decade  to  catch 
the  first  red  light  of  the  leaping  flames.  Ten  years  ! — a  long  time:  but  Troy  fell 
at  last." 

With  which  memory  of  the  days  of  his  school-desk  hexameters,  Trevenna 
sauntered  out  through  the  luxurious  sleeping-chambers,  past  the  waiting  valets, 
and  down  the  staircase  to  his  night-cab,  and  drove  on  to  the  House,  where  he 
had  already  been  in  attendance  from  four  to  eight,  and  where  there  was  a  pro- 
tracted though  not  important  after-dinner  debate. 

Before  he  went  to  the  body  of  the  House,  however,  he  turned  a  moment  in- 
to the  library,  and  wrote  a  little  note,  which  he  sent  out  to  his  groom  to  post. 

It  was  addressed  to  Ignatius,  and  was  condensed  in  one  word: — 

"Act." 


BOOK    THE    THIRD. 


II  avait  joui  de  son  reve  insens4; 
Du  trone  et  de  la  gloire  il  savait  le  mensonge, 
II  avait  vu  de  pr£s  ce  que  c'est  un  tel  songe, 
Et  quel  est  le  n6ant  d'un  avenir  pass6. 

VICTOR  HUGO. 
L'honneur  parle;  il  suffit. 


RACINE. 


CHAPTER  I. 

"SPES  ET   FORTUNA   VALETE." 

"  COME  early  to-morrow,"  murmured  the  Queen  of  Lilies,  as  her  lover  led 
her  to  her  carriage,  lifting  her  fair  eyes,  lustrous  as  those  of  the  daughter  of 
D'Orleans  she  personated. 

Chandos  stooped  his  head,  so  that  his  voice  in  its  soft  answer  only  reached 
her  ear. 

"  Would  that  to-morrow  were  here,  or,  rather,  that  now  we  did  not  part ! " 

If  he  had  ever  doubted  that  he  was  loved,  he  could  not  have  doubted  it 
now,  as  he  watched  the  warmth  that  flushed  her  face,  the  light  over  which  her 
lashes  drooped,  the  half  smile,  half  sigh,  which  with  that  divine  blush  replied  to 
him. 

The  costume-ball  had  been  magnificent  as  though  it  had  been  given  in  the 


170  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

Regency  age  it  celebrated,  and  the  Louis  Quinze  quadrille  had  been  the  most 
splendid  of  all  others  in  the  costly  glitter  of  its  grace;  the  Clarencieux  dia- 
monds outshown  all  others  there.  Royal  women  flattered  him  on  "  Lucrece," 
the  greatest  statesmen  of  the  day  pressed  on  him  the  restoration  of  his  marquis- 
ate;  the  world  adored  him  as  it  had  ever  done,  and  feminine  lips  breathed  him 
his 'most  delicate  and  most  dulcet  incense.  The  night  lived  long  in  his  mem- 
ory. It  was  the  last  of  his  reign,— 

It  was  late  when  the  guests  of  the  Italian  princess  left  her  imitation  of  the 
fetes  of  Sceaux  and  of  Versailles;  the  long  line  of  carriage-lamps  glittered  far 
down  to  the  right  and  left  in  the  uncertain  light  of  an  early  summer  morning. 
Among  the  crowd  of  horses,  of  lackeys,  of  chasseurs,  and  of  police,  a  few 
wandering  night-birds  crept  in  under  the  wheels  and  almost  under  the  hoofs, 
and  stared  blankly  at  the  glimpse  of  an  unknown  world  caught  through  the 
crevices  of  the  awning,  and  at  the  warmth  of  light  and  color  that  streamed  out 
on  them  from  the  opened  portals.  Among  them  a  boy,  of  such  beauty  as 
belongs  to  the  canvas  of  Spanish  painters  and  to  the  eyes  of  Spanish  gaditani, 
stole  noiselessly  near,  and,  looking  on,  crouched,  almost  kneeling,  in  the 
shadow  of  the  portico.  One  carriage  rolled-  away;  another,  with  the  well- 
known  white-and-silver  liveries  of  Clarencieux,  took  its  place;  the  name  ran 
along  the  line  of  servants;  the  lad  Agostino  leaned  eagerly  forward.  Down 
the  steps  of  the  entrance,  under  the  awning,  Chandos  came, — the  gaslight  shed 
full  on  the  rich  colors  and  the  gleaming  jewels  of  his  dress,  as  Richelieu  him- 
self might  have  come  leaving  the  gatherings  of  the  Palais  Royal.  So  near 
leaned  the  boy  that  the  gold  and  silk  of  the  sword-knot  touched  his  lifted  fore- 
head. The  attendants  ordered  him  sharply  off  the  pavement.  Chandos, 
struck  by  the  look  upon  his  face,  so  eager,  so  longing,  so  full  of  youth  and 
misery,  stopped  them,  and  paused  a  moment. 

"  My  poor  boy,"  he  said,  gently,  "  do  you  want  anything  with  me  ?  Surely 
I  have  seen  your  face  before  ? " 

Agostino  gazed  up  at  him,  pale  to  the  lips,  and  with  an  utter  abject  wretch- 
edness in  the  darkness  of  his  eyes.  He  trembled  violently.  He  would  have 
given  twenty  years  of  his  dawning  life  to  have  found  courage  for  speech:  yet, 
now  that  the  opportunity  so  yearned  and  sought  for  came  to  him,  the  cowardice 
of  his  feminine  nature  held  him  paralyzed. 

"  Speak.  Do  not  be  afraid,"  said  Chandos,  kindly.  "  If  you  want  anything 
from  me,  say  it  without  fear. 

The  boy's  lips  parted,  but  only  inarticulate  Spanish  words  halted  upon  them; 
the  dread  of  his  father's  forbiddance,  the  horror  of  his  English  taskmaster's 
vengeance,  held  him  powerless  and  speechless. 

"  That  lad  suffers;  have  him  looked  to,"  said  Chandos,  turning  to  the  foot- 
men nearest  him,  while  he  stooped  and  touched  Agostino's  hand  with  some 


CHANDOS.  171 

gold.  "Take  these;  and  if  you  need  more  help,  come  to  my  house  in  the 
morning.  I  will  give  orders  for  your  admittance.  What  is  your  name  ?  " 

"  Agostino  Mathias." 

The  voice  was  husky  and  scarcely  intelligible;  a  great  terror — the  terror  of 
his  tyrant — lay  upon  him;  yet  the  strange  sudden  loyalty  and  love  he  had  con- 
ceived for  the  English  stranger,  with  the  face  like  Guido  Reni's  golden-haired 
St.  Michael,  whom  he  had  seen  among  the  vine-fields  of  the  Vega,  looked  up- 
ward longingly  and  piteously  from  his  eyes. 

"  I  shall  remember,"  said  Chandos,  as  he  stooped  nearer  and  put  the  sov- 
ereign or  two  that  he  had  with  him  against  the  boy's  closed  hand.  So  much 
wretchedness  in  one  so  young  must  come,"  he  thought,  "  from  some  such  pangs 
of  want  and  poverty  as  sent  Chatterton  and  Hegesippe  Moreau  to  their  graves." 

But  Agostino  shuddered  from  the  touch  of  the  gold,  and  shrank  back 
against  the  stone  of  the  portico. 

"  Not  your  money  ! — not  your  money  !"  he  muttered,  incoherently,  in  his 
Spanish  tongue,  while  he  cowered  away  as  though  the  sovereigns  were  some 
leprous  thing. 

Chandos  saw  the  gesture;  he  did  not  hear  the  murmured  answer.  He  turned 
and  dropped  the  pieces  in  the  hand  of  the  servant  closest  to  him. 

"  That  poor  boy  can  be  scarcely,  I  fear,  in  his  right  mind.  See  to  him,  will 
you  ?  "  he  said,  as  he  went  down  the  few  remaining  steps  and  entered  his  car- 
riage, which  stopped  the  way  of  others.  Agostino  looked  after  him  with  pas- 
sionate wistfulness,  while  the  great  tears  gathered  and  brimmed  over  in  his  eyes. 
The  footman  touched  him  on  the  shoulder  and  addressed  him.  Like  one  roused 
out  of  fever  and  lethargy,  the  lad  started  and  looked  round,  then  wrenched 
himself  out  of  the  hold  the  man  had  laid  on  him,  and  fled  like  a  frightened  deer 
down  into  the  darkness  of  the  street.  The  servant  let  him  go,  and  slipped  the 
sovereigns  in  his  waistcoat-pocket. 

"  He's  that  uncommon  proud,  he  won't  know  new  'uns  like  the  Earl  of 
Clydesmore,"  mused  the  man,  wonderingly,  of  him  by  whom  they  had  been 
given;  "and  yet  he  is  always  willin'  to  speak  to  such  helpless  street-trash  as 
that  !  " 

Such  a  code  as  this,  which  could  show  an  hauteur  so  aristocratic  to  the 
plutocracy,  yet  show  a  sympathy  so  democratic  to  the  needs  of  youth,  and 
poverty,  was  a  social  anomaly  that  sorely  perplexed  the  powdered  functionary. 
In  any  one  less  fashionable,  less  famous,  and  less  proverbially  .exclusive  than 
Chandos,  he  would  have  set  it  down,  without  a  second's  hesitation,  as  evident 
insanity.  The  world  would  not  much  have  differed  with  him. 

"  If  a  boy  who  calls  himself  Agostino  Mathias  come  here  to-morrow,  receive 
him,  and  let  me  know,"  said  Chandos  to  his  maitre  d'hotel,  as  he  passed  up  the 
staircase  of  his  own  house. 


172  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

The  quick  ear  of  John  Trevenna,  where  he  sat  below,  waiting  in  the  library, 
with  the  door  a  little  open,  caught  the  name,  and  his  white  teeth  set  like  a 
bulldog's. 

«  Ah,  young  one,  curse  you  !  you  try  that  game  ?  "  he  thought.  "  You  will 
find  out  what  it  is  to  rebel  against  me,  with  a  convict's  chain  ready  for  your 
mischievous  baby-hands." 

The  man  bowed  as  he  heard  Chandos'  command. 

"  I  will  be  very  careful  he  is  admitted,  sir.  I  beg  your  pardon,  but  Mr. 
Trevenna  bade  me  tell  you  he  is  waiting." 

Chandos  paused  in  astonishment. 

"  Mr.  Trevenna  ?  Why,  it  is  past  four  o'clock.  Is  Clarencieux  burnt  down, 
that  he  comes  here  at  such  a  time  ?  " 

"  I  believe  he  said,  sir,  his  business  was  urgent:  he  entreated  to  see  you." 

"  Inconsiderate  fellow  !  I  am  half  asleep,"  thought  Chandos,  as  he  passed 
up  the  stairs.  "Well,  say  he  can  come  to  me  for  ten  minutes, — in  my  own 
room." 

"  A  very  good  fellow,  a  very  clever  fellow,  but  a  man  with  one  failing;  he 
never  knows  when  he  is  de  trop"  he  musea,  as  he  went  on  into  his  own  chamber, 
that  was  library,  atelier,  smoking-room,  and  art-gallery,  all  in  one.  It  was 
always  ready  lighted,  and,  without  waiting  to  take  off  his  Richelieu  dress,  he 
stood  against  the  mantel-piece,  striking  a  match  for  a  cigarette,  and  thinking, 
as  his  hand  caressed  the  eagerly-lifted  head  of  the  dog,  Beau  Sire,  less  of  what 
Trevenna  could  need  him  for,  than  of  how  lovely  the  Daphne  looked  in  the 
mellow  gleam  of  the  light. 

"  Who  would  care  for  life  without  Art  and  Pleasure  ? "  he  thought. 

The  handles  of  the  double  doors  turned  sharply;  the  massive  fall  of  the 
blue  velvet  contre-vent  was  thrust  hastily  aside;  Trevenna  entered.  The 
retriever  dropped  "down-charging"  with  a  fierce,  repressed  growl;  Chandos 
looked  up,  and  laughed. 

"  Adieu  to  peace !  You  can't  open  a  door,  Trevenna,  without  jarring  a 
room.  What  can  possibly  bring  you  here  at  this  time  in  the  morning  ?  Is 
Clarencieux  burnt,  a  racer  dead,  my  Titians  stolen  ?  or,  what  is  it  ?  " 

"  I  beg  your  pardon  for  disturbing  you,  my  dear  Chandos,"  returned  the 
other,  with  more  gravity  than  had  ever  been  seen  in  him  before;  "but  it  is 
very  imperative  that  I  should  talk  to  you." 

"  Talk  away,  then  !  "  rejoined  Chandos,  with  a  sigh  of  ennui  and  resigna- 
tion; "but,  for  Heaven's  sake,  shake  off  that  most  unusual  and  unbecoming 
solemnity.  Who  ever  would  have  thought  a  single  week  of  St.  Stephen's  would 
have  been  enough  to  make  a  man  so  prosy  ?  Or  perhaps  it's  only  training  for 
future  '  office,'  is  it  ?  " 

Trevenna  was  silent;  he  came  and  stood  on  the  hearth-rug,  with  so  rare  and 


CHANDOS.  173 

grave  a  seriousness  upon  him  that  he  gave  no  light  or  humorous  answer;  he 
looked  at  his  host  where  he  leaned  against  the  marble,  his  form,  in  the  Louis 
Quinze  dress,  thrown  out  against  the  background  of  the  blue  velvet  hangings 
of  this  favorite  chamber;  then  he  bent  his  eyes  downward  on  the  carpet:  he 
feared  they  might  betray  the  thirsty  exultation,  the  eager  sleuth-hound  longing, 
that  were  hidden  in  his  heart. 

"Come,  Trevenna,"  said  Chandos,  in  some  surprise  and  a  little  impatience; 
"  silence  is  never  your  forte.  Say  what  you  have  to  say." 

"  Well,  I'm  a  blunt  man,"  answered  his  friend,  as  with  some  effort.  "  Plainly 
and  briefly,  I'm  come  on  a  disagreeable  errand." 

Chandos  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"  I'd  a  presentiment  of  that.  People  don't  stay  up  for  one  on  pleasant 
ones.  Aprh?" 

"  Apres  ?  "  said  Trevenna,  with  something  of  his  old  malicious  humor  gleam- 
ing out  in  the  corners  of  his  mouth.  "  It  is  just  the  '  aprh '  that  I'm  come  to 
talk  about.  You've  had  a  comet-like  course,  mon  prince;  did  you  ever  specu- 
late how  comets  end  ?  " 

Chandos  looked  at  him  in  supreme  astonishment;  he  almost  thought,  for 
the  moment,  that  Trevenna's  habitual  sobriety  had  given  way,  and  that  some 
hot  wines  heated  his  fancies. 

"  My  dear  fellow,"  he  said,  with  a  touch  of  stronger  impatience,  "  you  must 
really  pardon  me,  but  if  you  only  keep  out  of  bed  to  propose  me  astronomical 
riddles,  I  must,  with  all  courtesy,  bid  you  good-night." 

"  Monseigneur,  have  a  little  patience.  I  come  on  grave  matters,  and  you 
must  hear  them,"  said  Trevenna,  quietly.  "  You  lock  annoyances  out  with 
double  doors  in  this  chamber;  but  I  fear,  do  what  you  will,  they  will  ferret 
through  and  follow  you  at  last.  I  asked  you  before  you  went  to  your  fancy- 
ball,  if  you  knew  at  what  rate  you  have  lived  and  are  living;  I  ask  you,  now 
you  have  come  back  from  it  the  same  thing." 

"  And  I  give  you  the  same  answer:  I  do  not  know." 

"  Shall  I  tell  you  ?  " 

"  If  you  please." 

"  I  will,  then;  but  wait  one  moment.     You  are  perfectly  happy,  Chandos  ?  " 

Chandos  looked  at  him  again,  in  an  astonishment  not  unmixed  with 
amusement. 

"  I  ?  Perfectly  !  I  don't  think  I  would  live  a  day  longer,  if  I  were 
not." 

Trevenna  watched  him  as  he  spoke,  leaning  against  the  marble,  with  the 
deep  glow  of  color,  the  strewn  treasures  of  art  and  wealth,  the  white  grace  of 
the  statues,  and  the  intense  hues  of  the  painted  ceiling  around  and  above.  In 
the  court  costume,  with  the  diamonds  flashing  through  the  lace  and  gold  em- 


174  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

broideries,  the  strong  resemblance  he  bore  to  the  last  marquis  was  as  great  as 
though  the  dead  man  lived  again.  Trevenna  watched  him,  recompensed  at  last 
for  a  long  decade  of  patient  tact,  for  a  lifetime  of  bitter  envy,  of  gnawing 
mortification,  of  impotent  hate,  of  festering  jealousy,— watched  him  as  the 
jungle-cheetah  watches  his  prey  before  the  final  spring.  He  went  leisurely 
about  his  work:  the  treasured  preparations  of  such  long  and  thirsty  toil  was 
not  to  be  devoured  in  an  instant,  but  tasted  slowly  in  its  wicked  sweetness, 
drop  by  drop.  He  changed  his  own  position  slightly  nearer;  his  features  wore 
a  gravity  such  as  became  the  matters  he  approached,  but  a  quicker  or  more 
suspicious  observer  than  the  man  who  trusted  him  so  freely  might  have  noticed 
that  in  the  glisten  of  his  clear  bold  eyes  there  was  a  look  of  eager  expectation, 
and  about  the  firm,  humorous  lines  of  his  lips  there  was  a  lurking  triumph,  a 
cynical,  malicious  relish. 

"  You  would  not  live  a  day,  if  your  fortunes  altered  ?  I  am  sorry  to  hear 
that:  for  the  world,  then,  may  loose  you  soon.  We  must  take  those  pretty 
ivory-handled  pistols  out  of  sight;  for,  though  you  are  so  happy  now,  I  fear 
you  will  not  be  so  happy  in  the  future." 

Chandos  rose  from  the  easy  indolence  of  his  resting  attitude,  and  looked  at 
him,  with  a  new  light  rising  in  his  eyes, — a  light  of  anger  and  of  impatience 
very  seldom  there. 

"  Jesters  are  privileged  proverbially,"  he  said,  coldly;  "  but  there  are  limits 
to  their  allowance  when  their  jests  have  no  wit  and  much  insolence.  If  you 
have  anything  to  say,  say  it  plainly,  and  make  an  end." 

Trevenna's  words  had  angered  and  astonished  him,  but  they  had  in  no  sense 
alarmed  him.  In  his  careless  peace  and  his  total  ignorance  of  calamity,  their 
meaning  could  not  possibly  suggest  itself  even  so  dimly. 

"  Tres-cher,"  replied  Trevenna,  with  an  irresistible  lapse  into  his  habitual 
manner, — for,  though  the  man  was  a  foul  traitor  and  an  unblushing  liar,  it  was 
against  the  cynical  candor  of  his  nature  to  be  a  hypocrite,  though  he  could  be 
one  with  great  effect  and  success  if  it  were  absolutely  needed, — "  that  con- 
founded hauteur  of  you  thorough-breds  is  deuced  provoking;  it  is,  indeed;  and 
people  won't  put  up  with  it,  perhaps,  quite  so  patiently  in  future.  As  for  say- 
ing plainly  what  I  have  to  say,  I  suppose  you  will  not  believe  me  if  I  tell  you 
that  your  expenditure  is,  and  has  been  for  many  years,  about  quadruple  what 
your  income  is  ? " 

Chandos  started,  some  faint  perception  of  the  destruction  that  must  follow 
such  a  course  arresting  even  his  careless  indifference  and  ignorance  on  all 
things  financial.     The  next  moment  he  smiled  contemptuously  at  the  thought. 
"  My  expenditure  ?— Impossible  '  " 

"  Only  too  possible,  unhappily.  Even  a  Chandos  of  Clarencieux  cannot  live 
like  an  emperor  with  impunity.  Royalties  come  expensive,  mon  prince;  and 


CHAN  DOS.  175 

who  wears  the  purples  must  pay  for  them.  Your  fortune  was  fine,  but  not  large 
enough  to  bear  such  a  strain  as  you  have  put  upon  it.  You  have  no  notion, 
you  say,  of  all  that  you  have  spent.  What  comes  of  a  man's  not  knowing  the 
rate  at  which  he  lives  ?  Why,  that,  sooner  or  later,  the  last  rope-strand  gives 
way,  and  he  is — ruined." 

The  word  fell  strangely  on  the  silence  of  that  tranquil  chamber,  bringing,  like 
the  stroke  of  death,  desolation  where  all  was  peace. 

Yet  still  the  word  passed  by  him  whom  it  should  have  warned;  his  confi- 
dence was  too  secure,  his  carelessness  too  entire,  his  possession  of  all  that  was 
highest  and  richest  and  brightest  of  too  long  custom,  for  the  first  presage  of  the 
storm  to  have  power  to  force  its  meaning  on  him. 

A  flush  of  amazed  anger  passed  over  his  face;  he  stood  erect  upon  his 
hearth  in  a  haughty  and  intolerant  annoyance. 

"  Have  you  drunk  too  much,  or  are  you  mad  ?  This  sort  of  fooling  passes 
all  license.  If  you  indeed  know  what  you  are  saying,  I  must  beg  you  to  leave 
my  presence." 

Trevenna,  in  answer,  stood  in  a  firmer,  sturdier  attitude,  with  his  feet  apart, 
and  his  arms  folded  like  the  Napoleonic  statuettes. 

"  I  am  neither  mad  nor  drunk,  and  I  am  not  fooling.  I  wish,  for  your  sake, 
I  could  discover  it  were  a  nightmare  after  two  dozen  oysters;  but  I  can't.  I 
digest  everything,  and  I  don't  dream  !  Briefly,  Chandos,  I  must  tell  you  what 
I  have  staved  off  perhaps  too  long;  but  I  shrank  from  the  task.  I  let  time  pass. 
I  thought  you  might  marry  some  rich  or  even  royal  bride,  whose  alliance  would 
change  the  whole  aspect;  but  your  bidding  me  arrange  the  settlements  for  Lady 
Valencia  compels  me  to  withhold  the  truth  no  longer  from  you.  There  is  noth- 
ing to  settle  on  her  !  " 

"  Nothing  to  settle  on  her  ?    What  can  you  mean  ? " 

Still,  no  doubt,  no  prescience  of  the  truth,  came  to  him.  He  looked  at 
Trevenna  with  a  wonder  in  which  some  disgust  and  more  pity  were  mingled; 
he  thought  that  the  strangeness  of  his  sudden  mania  rose  from  some  unusual 
indulgence  in  drink,  that  filled  his  brain  with  these  singular,  distorted  fantasies. 
"  1  mean  what  I  say,  monseigneur.  There  is  not  a  sou's  worth — not  even 
those  diamonds  that  glitter  so  bravely  on  your  dainty  dress — that  is  free  to  go 
to  her  dower.  Can  you  not  understand  me  when  I  tell  you  that  you  have  lived 
at  the  rate  of  four  times  the  amount  of  your  annual  income  ?  What  history 
does  that  simple  fact  suggest  ?  You  must  be  financier  enough  to  know  that  ? 
Hang  it,  Chandos  !  I  am  not  a  deep-feeling  man, — I  don't  go  in  for  all  that,  as 
you  know;  but  I  wish  from  my  soul  that  I  could  spare  you,  or  that  some  other 
could  better  break  to  you  the  news  you  must  hear  to-night." 

Chandos  listened;  a  gray,  deadly  pallor  came  on  his  face,  his  lips  grew  white, 
his  heart  almost  ceased  to  beat;  the  first  shadow  of  this  dim  horror  stole  on 


176  QUID  A' S     WORKS. 

him.    A  glimpse  of  its  meaning  was  forced  at  length  upon  him;  he  had  heard 
of  such  fates  for  other  men. 

He  drew  his  breath  with  a  gasping  effort.  "  If  you  speak  truth,  speak  out," 
he  said,  in  that  strange  and  deadly  calmness  which  falls  upon  the  mind  and  senses 
before  the  visitation  of  some  great  calamity.  A  faint,  vague  sense  of  this  evil 
approaching  him  was  all  he  felt;  it  was  not  possible  that  it  could  come  to  him 
yet  more  fixedly  or  fully. 

"  I  speak  the  sad  and  sober  truth,"  returned  Trevenna,  far  more  quietly 
than  he  had  ever  spoken,  his  eyes  still  resting  on  the  Daphne  opposite,  as  though 
to  guard  against  a  tell-tale  flash  from  them  of  that  lustful  exhultation  that  he 
knew  was  in  their  glance.  "  I  can't  speak  to  you  as  coyly  and  as  delicately  as 
your  patrician  friends  and  relatives  would  do.  I'm  a  plain,  frank  man,  Chandos, 
and  I've  the  very  devil's  own  mischief-making  to  tell  you  of  now;  but,  believe  me 
once  for  all,  it  costs  me  almost  as  much  to  tell  as  it  can  do  you  to  hear.  There  is 
no  good  in  beating  about  the  bush, — no  good  in  being  discursive  over  a  thing 
so  horrible  as  this;  you  must  know  the  worst  at  once,  and  it  is  better,  perhaps, 
told  without  varnish  or  veil ;  a  short  shrift  and  a  quick  death.  That  is  truer 
mercy,  after  all,  than  all  the  endless  preparation  your  fellow-aristocrats  might 

give  you.     Listen  ! " 

He  paused  a  moment,  as  though  that  which  he  had  to  bring  bore  even  him 
down  in  its  bitter  burden;  but  his  eyes  glanced  swiftly  and  longingly  at  the 
man  he  tortured;  he  loved  this  protracted  torment.  Like  a  cat,  he  played  with 
his  victim's  misery  before  he  killed  him;  and  if  without  suspicion  he  could 
have  prolonged  it  through  hours  of  ignorance  and  dread,  he  would  have  done 
so  with  all  the  endless  patience  of  hate. 

"  Listen,"  he  said,  more  softly;  "  as  I  have  said,  you  have  long  lived — in- 
deed, I  think  since  your  majority — at  the  rate  of  four  times  your  income.  You 
have  kept  two  households  in  England  nearly  such  as  princes  keep;  you  have 
had  your  Paris  hotel,  your  Turkish  palace;  you  have  lavished  money  on  art,  like 
another  Beckford;  you  have  spent  God  knows  what  on  women;  you  have  given 
entertainments  that  cost  you  (though  you  never  asked  the  cost)  a  couple  of 
thousand  a  night;  you  have  played  the  patron  to  every  starving  genius  you 
met:  in  a  word,  you  have  lived  like  a  king,  my  dear  Ernest,  and  not  being  a 
king,  but  only  an  English  gentleman,  your  royalty  has  broken  down,  and  will, 
I  fear,  end  in  a  very  unavoidable  abdication.  In  a  word,  you  are  in  debt  to  an 
extent  I  hardly  dare  to  compute  to  you.  To  sell  everything  you  possess  will 
hardly  satisfy  your  claimants;  bill-discounters  and  money-lenders  have  your 
signature  in  their  hands,  and  will  call  for  payment  without  mercy.  Briefly,  you 
have  sold  your  birthright  for  ten  years'  enjoyment,  and  you  now  are,  beyond 
all  hope  of  ransom,  irrevocably  and  most  utterly— ruined." 

The  word  cut  down  again  upon  the  stillness  with  a  shrill,  sharp,  pitiless  echo, 


CHAN  DOS.  177 

as  a  sword  cuts  down  through  the  air  before  it  falls  on  the  bowed  neck  of  the 
doomed. 

Its  utterance  repaid  its  speaker  for  all  he  had  foregone,  for  all  he  had  for- 
borne, for  every  slight  endured  in  silence  from  the  world  he  hated,  for  every 
benefit  taken  with  an  inward  curse  from  the  man  he  hunted  down.  He  loved 
that  word  so  well,  he  could  have  dinned  it  on  the  silence  in  incessant  repetition, 
hurling  down  with  it  the  brilliant  and  gracious  life  he  had  so  long  envied  from 
the  thrones  of  pleasure  and  of  power  into  the  nethermost  darkness  of  hopeless 
desolation. 

"Ruined!     /?" 

Chandos  echoed  the  words  hoarsely,  faintly,  scarcely  with  any  comprehen- 
sion of  it,  as  a  man  suddenly  wakened  from  a  deep,  sweet  sleep  to  learn  some 
unutterable  shame  or  misery  that  has  befallen  him  repeats  the  phrase  that  tells 
it,  mechanically  and  without  sense.  The  agony  of  horror  that  gathered,  white 
and  bewildered,  on  the  gallant  beauty  of  his  face  was  in  as  ghastly  a  contrast 
with  the  glittering  splendor  of  his  dress  as  though  the  face  of  a  corpse  gazed  out 
from  the  laces  and  jewels  of  a  gay  masquerade. 

"Yes;  even  you,  my  brilliant  Lord  of  Clarencieux  !"  answered  the  friend 
who  stood  upon  his  hearth;  and  with  the  words  went  an  irrepressible  snarl  and 
sneer  of  triumph  and  of  mockery  that  passed  him  unnoted  in  that  moment 
of  breathless,  burning,  inconceivable  anguish.  "  Even  you  !  Details  you  will 
learn  for  yourself  hereafter;  for  to-night  the  broad,  brief  fact's  enough.  I 
would  have  warned  you  long  ago,  if  you  would  only  have  listened;  but  you 
know  as  well  as  I  do  you  would  never  hear  of  business,  never  think  of  money. 
Besides,  in  truth,  I  scarcely  thought  it  was  so  very,  so  hopelessly  bad  as  it  seems 
now  to  be.  I  suppose  your  marriage  with  a  bride  who  has  no  dower  has  set  the 
fellows  on:  they  are  hounding  for  their  moneys  now  like  mad.  I  have  had 
hard  work  to  keep  them  even  from  arresting  you :  I  have,  upon  my  honor  ! 
To-night,  when  you  went  out  to  your  princess's  ball  with  all  those  thousands  of 
pounds'  worth  of  rose-diamonds  about  you,  it  was  a  wonder,  on  my  life,  that 
some  one  of  your  hungry  creditors  didn't  stop  those  dainty  jewels.  You  shall 
see  to-morrow  that  I  tell  you  but  the  plain,  unvarnished  truth.  You  are  so 
deeply  involved  now,  Chandos,  that  I  doubt  if  there  is  a  single  little  cabinet 
picture  on  these  walls,  or  a  single  rood  of  land  at  your  beloved  Clarencieux, 
that  in  a  month's  time  you  will  call  your  own; " 

"  Stop  ! — oh,  my  God  !  have  some  mercy  !  " 

The  words  broke  out  like  the  last  cry  wrung  from  one  driven  to  the  extrem- 
ity of  physical  endurance, — wrung  from  him  in  the  abandonment  of  human 
misery  against  all  strength  of  manhood  and  all  power  of  will.  He  could  bear 
no  more;  he  was  stunned  and  blinded  like  a  man  struck  from  behind  him  a 
murderous  blow  upon  the  brain  which  blasts  his  sight  to  darkness. 


178  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

Ruin  !— it  had  no  meaning  for  him;  it  came  to  him  like  some  dim,  shape- 
less, devil -begotten  thing  that  had  no  form  or  substance,  a  hideous  lemur  of  a 
night's  delirious  dream. 

Trevenna  stood  by  and  watched  him;  his  hour  had  come  at  last,  the  hour 
which  paid  him  back  the  cankerous  evil,  the  relentless  toil,  the  unremitting 
chase,  of  such  long,  wakeful,  hungry  years.  This  moment  had  been  hoarded 
up  my  him  as  a  miser  hoards  his  gold,  and  now,  in  its  full  seizure,  he  was  repaid 
for  all  his  studied  craft,  for  all  his  fondly-nursed  revenge,  for  all  his  unrelin- 
quished hatred, — repaid  to  the  uttermost  coin  by  every  gasped  breath  that  he 
counted,  by  every  shiver  of  the  voiceless  anguish  that  he  watched. 

He  did  not  heed  the  prayer  for  silence,  but  took  up  the  broken  thread  of 
his  discourse,  and  played  with  it  as  though  loving  it  in  every  shape  and  on 
every  side. 

"  Your  property,  you  see,  was  fine,  no  doubt;  but  fine  properties  are  not 
Monte-Christo  caverns  of  exhaustless  wealth.  Dipped  into,  they  will  waste. 
You  have  eclipsed  princes,  and  starred  through  all  Europe;  you  pay  now  for 
the  pre-eminence.  You  have  had  women's  love, — no  toy  so  costly  !  you 
have  had  the  great  world's  worship, — no  clientela  so  expensive  !  you  have  been 
a  dilettante,  a  lion,  a  leader  of  fashion,  a  man  of  endless  pleasure,— no  pursuits 
take  so  much  gold  !  You  have  lived  in  such  a  style  that  you  would  have  run 
through  millions,  had  you  had  them;  and  you  had  not  one  million,  though 
you  had  a  noble  inheritance.  Of  course  you  possess  such  quantities  of  pic- 
tures and  statues,  and  all  that  kind  of  thing,  and  your  estate  itself  is  such  an 
untouched  mine,  that  there  can  be  no  fear  of  your  personal  liberty  ever  being 
endangered;  but  I  am  grievously  afraid,  I  am  indeed,  that  you  will  be  obliged 
to  give  up  almost  everything, — give  up  even  Clarencieux  !  " 

The  words,  so  deftly  strung  together  to  goad  and  taunt  and  add  misery  to 
misery,  wound  their  pitiless  speech,  unchecked,  with  all  the  fiendish  ingenuity 
of  hatred  that  could  not  sate  itself  enough  in  the  vastness  of  this  wreck  it 
wrought. 

Chandos  heard  them,  yet  only  dimly  as  men  hear  in  whose  ears  the  noise 
of  great  sea-waves  is  surging.  He  raised  himself  erect,  rigid  in  an  unnatural 
calm.  Years  of  ag2  and  wretchedness  could  not  have  changed  his  face  as  this 
brief  moment  had  changed  it;  its  radiance  and  its  splendor  had  died  out  as 
though  the  breath  of  death  had  passed  on  it;  its  ashen  white  looked  ghastlier 
beside  the  ball-room  gayety  of  his  dress,  and  in  the  stillness  that  followed  the 
loud,  slow,  labored  beatings  of  his  heart  were  audible, — each  throb  a  pang. 
"  You  swear  that  this  is  truth  ?  " 

His  voice  was  broken  and  strained,  like  the  voice  of  a  man  just  arisen  from 
a  bed  ot  lengthened  sickness;  and  his  hot  lips  had  parted  twice  before  words 
came  to  them. 


CHANDOS.  179 

"  To  the  uttermost  letter." 

Chandos'  head  dropped  as  though  he  had  been  suddenly  stabbed;  all  the 
vigor  and  grace  and  perfection  of  his  frame  seemed  to  wither  and  grow  old;  a 
shudder,  such  as  the  limbs  shiver  with  involuntarily  under  some  unendurable 
bodily  torment  of  the  flames  or  of  the  knife,  shook  him  from  head  to  foot. 

"  Clarencieux  lost  !     O  God  !  " 

The  words  died  in  his  throat, — the  stifled  cry  of  a  vain  agony  for  his  lost 
birthright.  This  alone,  through  all  the  blindness  and  the  stupor  of  misery  that 
had  fallen  on  him,  rose  out  clear  before  him  in  its  burning  torture, — the  pas- 
sionate yearning  of  his  heart  towards  his  home. 

As  the  flare  of  a  torch  suddenly  shows  the  abyss  that  yawns  beneath  the 
traveller's  feet,  so  the  glare  and  the  shame  of  the  sentence  he  heard  showed 
him  the  bottomless  desolation  over  which  he  stood.  He  was  awakened  from 
his  dreamful  ease  to  be  flung  face  to  face  with  an  absolute  despair.  For  the 
moment  strength  gave  way,  manhood  was  shattered  down,  consciousness  itself 
could  keep  no  hold  on  life;  the  lights  of  the  chamber  reeled  in  giddy  gyrations 
round  him,  a  sound  like  rushing  waters  beat  in  on  his  brain,  a  darkness  like  the 
darkness  of  death  fell  upon  him.  He  swayed  forward,  like  a  drunken  man, 
against  the  broad  marble  ledge  above  the  hearth;  his  hands  instinctively 
clenched  on  the  stone  as  the  hands  of  those  sinking  to  their  grave  down  the 
glassy  slope  of  an  Alpine  mountain  clench  on  the  ice-ridge  that  they  meet;  his 
head  sunk  on  his  arms,  the  suffocated  labor  of  each  breath  panted  out  on  the 
silence  like  a  death-spasm: — at  one  stroke  he  was  bereaved  of  all  ! 

His  torturer  looked  on.  Never  in  the  cells  of  the  Inquisition  could  Fran- 
ciscan or  Dominican  have  watched  the  gradual  wrenching  of  the  rack,  the 
winding-out  of  the  strained  limbs  till  they  broke,  the  wringing  and  bruising 
and  slaying  of  the  quivering  nerves  till  they  could  bear  no  more,  as  Trevenna 
watched  this  moral  torment,  this  assassination  of  joy  and  honor,  peace  and 
love  and  fame,  and  every  fair  thing  of  a  gracious  world,  laid  desert  and  deso- 
late at  his  word.  He  looked  on,  as  in  the  legends  of  the  early  Church  devils 
looked  on  at  the  impotent  despair  of  those  whose  souls  they  had  lured  and 
tempted  and  meshed  in  their  net  and  made  their  own.  He  looked  on,  and  was 
repaid. 

"  Chandos,"  he  said,  gravely,  almost  softly,  pouring  the  last  drop  of  burn- 
ing oil  into  the  fresh  wound  his  stab  had  dealt, — "  Chandos,  believe  me, — from 
my  soul  \  pity  you  !  " 

He  had  studied  long  the  nature  of  the  man  now  in  his  power,  and  he  knew 
the  keenest  sting  to  give.  Yet  for  once  his  greed  erred  in  its  mark;  the  last 
bolt  shortened  the  hour  of  his  rich,  insatiate  enjoyment. 

It  roused  Chandos  as  the  bay  of  the  pack  rouses  the  dying  stag  from  its 
mortal  throes  to  stagger  up  and  drag  its  bleeding  limbs  to  solitude,  where  it  can 


180 


OU IDA'S     WORKS. 


die  alone.     It  pierced  his  stupefaction;  it  told  him  more  widely  than  all  other 
words  could  tell,  how  mighty  was  his  fall,  how  utter  his  desolation. 

This  man  pitied  him  !  He  raised  himself  with  a  sudden  force;  the  pride  of 
his  race  was  not  dead  in  him,  and  the  same  courage  in  the  teeth  of  calamity, 
which  had  sent  the  last  marquis  with  a  smile  to  the  Tower  scaffold,  was  in  him 
now  under  the  lash  of  his  dependant's  mockery  of  compassion.  His  face  was 
strangely  and  terribly  calm,  but  a  premature  age  seemed  to  have  withered  all 
life  from  it;  his  lips  were  colorless,  and  on  his  forehead  alone  the  dark  con- 
gested blood  flushed  heavily,  red  and  burning  as  in  the  heat  of  fever. 

"  If  this  be  the  truth,"  he  said,  hoarsely,  while  his  throat  was  parched  and 
almost  voiceless,  "  you  have  had  little  mercy  in  the  telling  !  Go;  take  the 
town  your  story;  it  will  startle  them.  Spare  more  of  it  to  me  !  " 

The  words  were  spoken  with  a  tranquillity  more  horrible  than  the  fiercest 
outbreaks  of  delirium  or  the  most  hopeless  abandonment  of  woe.  He 
stood  as,  in  the  days  of  Philip  the  Fair,  one  of  his  race  had  stood  to  be  bound 
to  the  Templars'  pyre;  his  hand  was  clenched  on  the  marble  ledge,  and  every 
now  and  then  a  quick  shudder  ran  through  all  his  limbs,  shaking  him  as  with  the 
shudder  of  an  icy  cold;  but  his  eyes  were  dry,  and  fronted  his  tormenter 
with  a  look  under  which  the  other  shrank,  and  no  sign  or  sigh  of  pain  es- 
caped him. 

Trevenna  moved  slightly;  he  could  not  meet  the  gaze  of  those  calm,  tear- 
less eyes,  from  whose  depths  there  looked  so  wide  a  world  of  unuttered  re- 
proach, of  unuttered  agony. 

"  Chandos,  Chandos,  there  will  be  no  need  for  me  to  tell  the  town;  it  will 
be  whispered  soon  enough  !  Would  you  give  the  task  to  your  debtor,  your 
guest,  your  friend?  No  !  There  are  too  many  who  will  take  it  fast  enough. 
Leave  it  to  the  men  you  have  outrivalled  and  the  women  you  have  forsaken ; 
those  are  the  glib  tongues  for  such  a  theme!  As  for  mercy 'in  the  telling, 
what  mercy  can  the  man  show  who  has  to  bring  his  death-warrant  to  another  ? 
I  would  have  warned  you  long  ago,  and  you  would  not  be  warned.  Is  it  my 
fault  that  you  have  wasted  your  princely  substance  and  are  a  beggar  now  ? 
Oh,  my  friend,  there  is  no  error  in  this  thing  save  your  own." 

He  toyed  too  long  with  the  theme  that  was  so  sweet  to  him;  he  counted  too 
surely  on  the  endurance  of  the  man  he  lashed  and  stung  and  stretched  upon  the 
rack  of  his  subtle  mockery  of  pity  and  of  sympathy;  there  was  a  latent  force 
he  had  not  known,  a  latent  passion  he  had  not  divined,  in  the  pleasure-steeped 
softness  of  his  victim's  nature. 

Chandos  gave  a  forward  gesture,  like  a  maddened  animal  rising  to  its  spring; 
he  did  not  reel,  or  stagger,  or  let  escape  one  sign  of  the  anguish  within  him, 
but  he  stood  there  upon  his  desolated  hearth  erect,  brought  to  bay  as  the  deer 
by  the  sleuth-hounds,  livid  to  the  lips,  with  only  the  blood  burning  like  fire 


CHAN  DOS.  181 

across  his  brow,  his  golden  hair  dashed  back  disordered,  his  eyes  proud  and 
fearless  even  in  their  misery.  It  was  no  longer  Alcibiades  amidst  the  gay 
levity,  the  dreamy  languor,  the  fragrant  rose-crowns,  and  the  laurel-wreathed 
amphorae  of  the  revels  of  his  youth;  it  was  Alcibiades,  grander  in  his  fall  than 
in  his  reign,  facing  alone  the  dead  cold  of  the  winter's  night  and  the  un- 
sheathed circle  of  his  assassins'  steel,  until  they  cowed  and  fell  asunder  and 
pierced  him  with  dastard  surety  afar  off  with  the  arrows  of  the  Bactrian  bows. 
He  raised  his  right  hand  and  pointed  to  the  door. 

"If  you  are  man,  not  devil,  let  me  be  !     Go  !  I  command  you!     Go  !  " 

Bold  though  they  were,  his  torturer's  eyes  could  not  meet  hts;  victorious 
though  he  was,  Trevenna  dared  not  dispute  that  bidding;  insatiate  though  his 
greed  for  this  exhaustless  triumph  would  still  have  been  for  hour  upon  hour, 
he  was  forced  to  obey  that  gesture  of  command.  Mastiff-like  both  in  courage 
and  ferocity,  he  was  still  driven  out  as  a  murderous  animal  is  driven  out  by  the 
will  it  reads  in  a  human  gaze.  He  longed  to  linger  there  the  whole  night 
through,  and  ring  every  change  upon  that  note  of  ruin,  and  watch  every  spasm 
of  the  overburdened  life,  and  turn  every  screw  and  wheel  in  that  rack  on  which 
he  stretched  his  friend.  But  he  dared  not;  he  felt  that  he  must  leave  his  work 
to  bear  its  fruit  and  harvest  of  misery  unwatched;  he  knew  it  as  the  murderers 
of  Alcibiades  knew  that  none  could  come  near,  with  life,  to  the  menaced  danger 
and  the  mighty  woe  that  looked  unquailing  on  them  from  the  flaming  eyes  of 
the  roused  Sybarite,  the  discrowned  idol,  the  awakened  Epicurean,  called  out 
in  the  dead  of  night  to  stand  face  to  face  with  his  destruction.  The  hirelings  of 
Pharnabazus  slew  the  Greek;  Trevenna,  less  merciful,  left  the  living  man  to  suffer 

The  velvet  swept  down  behind  him,  the  door  closed,  and  he  drew  it  softly 
after  him;  then  he  paused  in  the  stillness  of  the  breaking  dawn  that  was  rising 
on  all  the  sleeping  world  without,  and  listened  with  an  expectancy  upon  his  face. 

On  the  silence  he  heard  a  heavy  crashing  fall,  like  the  fall  of  a  stricken 
tree;  then  all  was  still  with  the  stillness  of  the  grave. 

He  smiled;  and  passed  onward  through  the  second  door,  and  down  the  cor- 
ridor and  staircase  of  the  house  that  had  been  opened  to  him,  night  and  day, 
with  a  hospitality  that  no  claims  could  weary  and  no  exactions  chill,  and  went 
out  through  the  lighted  hall,  with  its  bloom  of  exotic  color  and  its  richness  of 
jasper  and  porphyry.  As  he  passed  the  statue  of  the  great  minister  standing 
there,  white  and  majestic,  amidst  the  foliage  of  American  plants  and  the  glow 
of  Eastern  flowers,  he  looked  upward  to  the  sculptured  face  with  a  glance  of 
triumph,  of  achievement,  of  satisfied  revenge,  that  in  the  intensity  of  its  evil  and 
its  cruelty  was  almost  grand  by  the  sheer  force  of  strength  and  purpose. 

"  Monseigneur,  monseigneur,"  he  murmured,  in  that  thirsty  exultation, 
flinging  his  victory  and  his  mockery  in  the  face  of  the  lifeless  marble,  "  how  is 
it  with  your  beloved  one  now  ?  " 


182  OUIDA'S     WORKS 

CHAPTER    II. 

"TOUT   EST   PERDU,   FORS   I/HONNEUR.' 

THE  morning  sun  straying  fitfully  in  through  the  thick  leafy  shades  and  trel- 
lised  creepers  of  the  winter  garden  beyond,  as  the  day  rose  high  and  bright 
over  a  busy  waking  world,  found  the  ruined  man  lying  where  he  had  fallen, 
struck  down  by  the  blow  that  had  beggared  him  of  all,  as  a  cedar  is  struck 
by  the  lightning.  He  lay  there  insensible  to  all  except  his  agony,  his  hands 
clenched  upon  the  leopard  skins  that  strewed  his  hearth,  his  brain  heavy  with 
the  pent  blood  that  seemed  on  fire. 

The  shock  had  fallen  on  his  life  as  suddenly  as,  in  tropic  latitudes,  the  black 
tempestuous  night  falls  down  upon  the  shadowless  day.  Yesterday  he  had  been 
rich  in  every  earthly  treasure;  to-day  he  was  beggared,  shamed,  dishonored. 
Ruin  ! — it  was  upon  him  like  the  vague,  confused  horror  of  a  nightmare  whose 
bonds  he  could  not  break;  he  could  not  realize  its  despair  nor  measure  its  de- 
solation; he  felt  like  one  drugged  with  opiate  poisons  that  bring  a  thousand 
loathsome  shapes  thronging  between  their  dreamer  and  the  light  of  day  and  the 
world  of  men.  He  had  been  a  stranger  to  the  mere  pain  of  transient  human 
sorrow;  he  was  stunned  to  unconsciousness  by  the  world-wide  misery  that  felled 
him  down  at  a  stroke  as  the  iron  mace  fells  an  ox.  Hours  passed;  he  knew 
nothing  of  their  flight;  the  gas  burned  in  the  chandeliers  above  him,  still  shed- 
ding its  flood  of  light  that  looked  garish  and  yellow  beside  the  brightness  of 
morning  that  streamed  in  from  the  garden  beyond.  There  was  profound  silence 
round  him,  broken  by  nothing  save  the  monotonous  murmur  of  the  fountains 
falling  yonder;  the  faint  noise  of  the  streets  could  not  penetrate  here,  and  the 
sounds  of  the  moving  household  were  shut  out  in  a  deathly  stillness.  He  was 
left  to  the  solitude  which  was  all  the  mercy  that  life  now  could  give  him.  The 
dog  alone  was  with  him,  and  crouched,  patient  and  watchful,  moaning  now  and 
then  with  sympathic  pain  for  the  misery  it  could  not  comprehend,  and  gathered 
close  against  him  where  he  lay. 

As  the  sun  grew  brighter  in  the  palm  and  flower  isles  beyond,  the  retriever 
tried  to  rouse  him,  as  on  a  battle-field  dogs  will  essay  to  waken  their  slaughtered 
masters;  it  thrust  its  muzzle  against  his  hands,  and  laid  its  broad  head 
against  the  disordered  richness  of  his  hair,  moaning  with  piteous  entreaty  and 
fond,  dumb  caress.  At  last  the  patient  efforts  moved  him;  he  looked  up  in  the 
dog's  eyes  with  a  blind,  bewildered  gaze,  and  rose  slowly  and  staggering  to  his 
feet,  like  a  man  feeble  from  protracted  illness.  He  had  no  clear  memory  of 
what  had  passed:  he  could  have  recalled  nothing,  save  that  one  word  in  which 
all  was  told, — "  ruin  !  " 


CHAN  DOS.  183 

He  looked  mechanically  round  the  familiar  beauty  of  the  chamber;  the 
hues  of  the  pictures,  the  grace  of  the  sculpture,  the  lavish  luxury  of  every  detail, 
the  peace  and  fairness  of  the  charmed  tranquillity,  seemed  so  many  mockeries 
of  his  woe.  In  the  midst  of  wealth  he  stood  a  beggared  man:  with  the  world  at 
his  feet  yesterday,  he  stood  now  dispossessed  of  every  earthly  thing. 

He  had  sold  his  birthright  for  ten  years'  delight  !  And  not  of  the  world, 
not  of  his  wealth,  not  of  the  fame  of  his  name  and  the  worship  of  men,  not  even 
of  the  woman  whom  he  loved,  did  he  think  in  that  first  moment  of  awaking  to 
this  mighty  desolation  that  had  fallen  on  him:  it  was  of  the  trust  of  his  fathers 
that  he  had  forfeited,  of  the  home  of  his  race  that  he  had  lost. 

Esau-like,  he  had  bartered  his  kingly  heritance  for  the  sensuous  pleasures 
of  an  hour;  and  the' sole  memory  that  lived  through  the  stupor  of  his  brain 
were  those  brief,  brutal  words  that  devils  seemed  to  hiss  forever  in  his  ear, — 
«  You  have  lost  all  !  " 

A  convulsion  shook  his  limbs;  a  great  voiceless  sob  rose  in  his  throat;  his 
head  drooped  upon  his  arms,  veiling  his  face  as  the  Romans  veiled  theirs  before 
outrage  and  calamity.  "  O  my  God  !  my  God  !  "  he  prayed,  in  his  agony, 

"give  me  death, — not  this !  " 

******* 

The  only  mercy  life  had  left  him — the  privilege  to  suffer  in  solitude — could 
be  his  but  a  brief  space.  After  the  bitterness  of  the  night  followed  the  worse 
bitterness  of  the  risen  day,  when  its  witnesses  must  come  about  him,  when  its 
wretched  tale  must  be  wrung  on  his  ear  in  all  its  changes;  when  the  world  must 
flood  in  to  wonder,  to  smile,  to  sigh,  to  censure,  and,  yet  worse,  to  pity;  when 
the  condemned  must  go  out  to  the  cross,  to  be  stretched  and  nailed  and  lifted 
up  in  crucifixion  within  sight  of  the  gathered  crowds.  When  he  remembered 
all  these  things,  it  seemed  to  him  more  than  life  could  bear  to  go  through  them; 
when  he  slowly  roused  to  the  real  meaning  of  this  beggary  that  had  suddenly 
seized  him  in  the  midst  of  his  joyous  and  magnificent  existence,  he  recoiled 
from  its  endurance  with  a  sickening  shudder,  as  the  bravest  man  will  recoil  from 
the  approach  of  a  drawn-out  and  excruciating  death. 

Once  the  thought  passed  him, — Why  meet  it  ?  Why  await  this  living  grave 
which  yawned  for  him,  when  the  re';;  of  the  dead  might  be  taken, — the  blank, 
best  silence  of  the  tomb  be  '  .0,  instead  of  the  world's  pillory  and  the  exile's 
wretchedness  ? 

Close  at  his  v'  ^a  lay  the  pistols  to  which  his  torturer  had  referred  with  a 
jest  that  m:0at  be  his  tempting;  they  were  loaded  to  the  muzzle,  as  they  had 
been  carelessly  laid  down  the  morning  previous,  after  an  hour's  pistol-shooting 
in  his  gardens  below  with  a  gay  party.  His  grasp  mechanically  closed  on  one 
of  them.  Over  and  over  again,  in  his  serene  security  of  happiness,  he  had 
smiled  and  said  he  would  not  live  to  brook  a  single  hour  of  pain;  the  jest  had 


184  OUIDA'S     WORKS. 

become  a  terrible  reality.  One  touch,  one  moment's  blindness, — then  oblivion; 
the  world  and  his  own  ruin  would  be  as  naught,  powerless  to  sting  or  harm. 
Were  it  not  better  than  to  live  on  to  face  all  that  must  come  to  him  with  the 
rising  day  ?  The  old  weary  wonder  of  Hamlet,  that  pursues  every  mind  through 
every  age,  rose  in  him  now;  the  old,  eternal,  never-answered  question  came  to 
him  as  it  comes  to  so  many: — Why  live,  when  every  breath  of  life  is  pain  ? 

For  a  moment  his  worst  foe  was  nigh  the  fulfilment  of  his  worst  wish ;  for 
a  moment,  in  the  devastation  of  every  hope  and  every  possession,  death  and 
its  escape  allured  him  with  a  horrible  force.  All  that  made  life  worth  the  liv- 
ing was  dead  in  him;  the  body  only  was  left  to  perish:  why  leave  breath  in  it, 
when  to  breathe  was  only  to  prolong  and  to  intensify  an  anguish  without  hope  ? 
For  a  moment  he  lifted  the  weapon  up,  and  pressed  the  cold  ring  of  its  steel 
tube  against  his  brow;  its  chill  touch  was  the  only  kiss  left  to  him  now,  the  only 
caress  of  pity  he  could  know.  His  head  sunk  down  against  it,  leaning  on  its 
mouth  as  it  had  used  to  lean  on  the  softly-beating  hearts  of  women  who  loved 
him.  A  moment,  and  his  dead  limbs  would  have  been  stretched  there  on  his 
hearth  in  such  a  close  to  the  history  of  his  life  as  would  have  sated  even  the 
lust  of  his  unrelenting  foe. 

A  ray  of  the  sun,  straying  in  across  the  yellow  heat  of  the  chandelier- 
lights,  fell  across  the  white  features  of  a  bust  that  stood  at  the  far  end  of  the 
chamber, — the  same  features  and  the  same  sculpture  as  the  statue  to  which 
Trevenna  had  murmured  valediction.  The  light  illumined  the  marble,  giving 
to  the  mouth  almost  breath,  to  the  eyes  almost  life,  with  its  sweet  spring-day 
warmth.  Chandos  saw  it  as  his  eyes  stared  vacantly  and  without  sense  into 
the  empty  space. 

His  arm  dropped;  his  hand  unloosed  its  hold;  he  laid  the  weapon  down 
unused. 

He  had  treasured  his  father's  memory,  he  had  venerated  his  father's  fame, 
with  a  great  love  that  no  time  weakened.  He  remembered  how  his  father  once 
had  bidden  him  make  "  the  people  honor  him  for  his  own  sake;  "  and  he  was 
about  to  die  a  dog's  death  by  his  own  act,  lacking  the  courage  to  rise  and  meet 
the  fate  that  his  own  madness  brought  him  ! 

With  that  memory  the  temptation  pa  -d.  Philip  Chandos  had  died,  like 
Chatham,  in  his  nation's  cause;  the  last  marqu^  ^ad  died  upon  the  scaffold  to 
save  his  honor  from  forfeit,  and  those  who  had  trustc/  him  from  betrayal;  he 
would  not  put  beside  those  deaths  the  history  of  a  suicide's  J:1'. 

Such  as  his  doom  was  he  accepted  it. 

He  rose  and  walked  towards  the  window,  with  the  uncertain,  tremulous  gait 
of  a  man  dead-drunk.  He  drew  the  heavy  curtains  aside  and  looked  out  with 
aching,  scorching  eyes.  The  hum  of  the  streets  in  the  distance  rolled  in  on 
the  morning  air;  the  faint  busy  noises  of  life  came  across  the  stillness  of  the 


CHAN  DOS.  185 

gardens;  a  clock  was  striking  twelve.  Each  sound,  each  murmur,  every  echo 
of  the  existence  stirring  round  him,  every  shiver  of  the  linden  leaves  near  him, 
throbbed  through  his  brain  as  though  they  were  clanging,  jangling  iron  strokes 
of  deafening  bells;  every  sense  and  pulse  of  living  things  came  to  him  with  an 
excruciating  pain,  like  the  touch  of  a  knife  on  a  bared  nerve.  The  day  was  at 
its  height;  solitude  could  be  no  longer  possible.  Even  now  the  woman  whom 
he  loved  watched  for  his  coming;  in  a  few  hours  his  world  awaited  him;  even 
that  very  night,  all  that  was  highest  and  fairest  in  the  land  was  bidden  to  his 
house;  even  that  very  night,  the  fame  and  fashion  of  his  name  were  to  give 
success  to  the  crippled  artist's  best-beloved  creation.  The  world  looked  for 
him;  to  be  alone  was  too  rich  a  luxury,  too  merciful  a  sentence.  He  must  go 
out  and  endure  this  thing  which  had  come  to  him  in  the  broadness  of  daylight, 
— in  the  sight  of  all  men. 

As  memory  rushed  on  him  of  all  that  must  be  borne,  of  all  that  had  been 
lost,  he  bent  his  head  as  though  under  the  weight  of  some  insupportable  bodily 
burden;  a  sickness  of  horror  was  upon  him;  he  strove  to  realize  all  that  was 
ended  for  him,  and  he  could  not.  Only  yesterday  his  hands  had  been  filled 
with  every  fairest  gift  of  life;  he  could  not  bring  himself  to  know  that  they  were 
now  stricken  as  empty  as  the  outstretched  hands  of  any  beggar  sitting  at  his  gate. 

The  paralysis  of  an  absolute  despair  fell  on  him,  mute,  tearless,  unmoved, 
— the  rigidity  that  falls  on  mind  and  brain  and  heart  under  the  pressure  of 
some  immeasurable  adversity. 

He  had  to  hear  the  worst;  with  the  rising  day  came  all  the  day's  course 
must  unfold.  He  could  not  have  the  partial  peace  of  loneliness;  he  could  not 
have  such  comparative  mercy  as  those  have  who,  bereaved  of  what  they  love, 
know  their  doom  at  once  and  can  seek  solitude  to  bear  it.  Step  by  step,  letter 
by  letter,  he  must  pass  through  every  detail  of  his  desolation;  and,  soon  or 
late,  publicity  must  proclaim  it  to  all  who  should  choose  to  listen.  He  could 
have  no  rest,  no  pause,  no  reprieve;  his  misery  had  hunted  him  down,  and 
must  be  met  and  faced. 

The  sun  shining  in  through  the  gas-light,  that  burned  dull  and  lustreless  in 
the  noonday,  shone  on  the  diamonds  glittering  on  his  dress;  his  eyes  fell  on 
them  as,  in  the  extremity  of  wretchedness,  the  mind  will  strangely  play  with 
some  trifle  of  which  it  has  no  consciousness.  He  looked  at  them  dreamily, 
and  wondered  why  he  wore  them:  a  blank  had  fallen  between  him  and  every 
memory;  it  seemed  a  lifetime  since  the  night  just  passed;  it  seemed  as  though 
the  life  that  was  parted  from  him  by  a  few  hours  only  had  been  destroyed  for 
an  eternity.  Yet  with  the  sight  of  them  came  one  remembrance;  he  heard,  as 
if  it  stole  on  his  ear  now,  the  low  whisper  of  the  lips  he  loved,  as  they  had 
murmured,  "  Come  to  me  to-morrow," — murmured  it  with  the  softness  of  a 
good-night  blush,  with  the  lingering  light  of  sweet  eyes  of  farewell  ! 


18e  OUIDA'S     WORKS. 

The  morrow  was  now  to-day.     How  had  it  dawned  for  each  . 

*  *  *  *  *  * 

He  had  to  hear  the  worst.  In  this  thing  there  could  be  no  delay;  under 
this  sentence  there  could  be  no  waiting-point  of  preparation  or  of  hope.  He 
must  meet  the  gaze  of  other  men,  and  listen  while  their  voices  coldly  told  the 
story  of  his  ruin. 

He  bade  them  come  and  tell  him  all,— to  the  furthest  letter  of  his  doom. 
Despair  is  often  bitterly  calm;  it  was  so  now  with  him.  In  solitude,  nature  had 
given  way,  and  sunk  prostrated;  before  another's  eyes,  pride  supplied  the  place 
of  strength,  and  lent  him  its  fictitious  force.  He  met  his  fate  as  the  last  max- 
quis  had  met  his;  and  in  the  sight  of  men  the  enervated  Epicurean  showed  the 
steel-like  endurance  of  the  Spartan.  With  the  noon  Trevenna  returned,  as  a 
hound  returns  to  the  slot  of  his  quarry,  when  once  loosed  from  the  coursing- 
slip  that  has  held  it  back  perforce.  He  re-entered  the  chamber  as  soon  as  per- 
mission came  to  him.  He  was  the  holder  of  all  papers,  the  comptroller  of  all 
finance,  the  director  of  all  affairs,  connected  with  the  Clarencieux  properties; 
with  him,  even  more  than  with  the  lawyers,  lay  the  knowledge  of  all  their 
minutiae;  through  him,  more  than  through  any,  must  come  the  unfolding  of 
the  million  things  that  went  to  make  up  the  one  vast  sum  of  destruction.  He 
could  not  be  driven  out  from  the  scene  of  his  work;  for,  by  him  alone  could 
the  thousand  meshes  of  the  net  which,  unseen  and  unsuspected,  he  had  woven, 
be  traced  and  moved.  He  had  secured  more  than  his  victory  and  his  ven- 
geance; he  had  secured  the  imperative  necessity  that  he  should  behold  the 
fruits  of  both. 

Yet  even  he,  evil  as  was  the  brute  greed  in  him,  pitiless  as  was  the  envious 
hatred  which  scarcely  success  could  slake,  started,  as  he  entered  again  the 
room  he  had  changed  from  its  dreamful  peace  into  a  torture-chamber  as  terrible 
as  any  that  the  will  of  Torquemada  ever  shut  in  with  iron-clamped  walls  and 
filled  with  human  misery, — started  at  sight  of  the  wreck  that  he  had  wrought. 
Last  night  he  had  looked  upon  Chandos  in  the  full  brilliance  of  his  youth,  of 
his  splendor,  of  his  fashion,  of  his  shadowless  content;  he  saw  him  now  broken, 
exhausted,  aged,  altered  as  the  flight  of  twenty  peaceful  years  could  never  have 
changed  him.  He  was  still  in  the  court-dress  of  the  ball  he  had  quitted  when 
his  fate  fell  on  him:  its  richness  was  disordered,  its  lace  crushed  and  soiled,  its 
ribbon-knots  and  broideries  tangled;  but  its  jewelled  elegance  set  in  deadlier 
contrast  the  haggard  whiteness  of  his  face,  the  shattered  look  of  his  whole  form; 
it  marked  in  ghastlier  contrast  what  he  had  been  and  what  he  was. 

But  "calamity  is  man's  true  touchstone,"  as  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  wrote. 
Met  by  misfortune,  he  who  had  shunned  every  shadow  and  every  weariness 
with  all  the  indolence  and  fastidiousness  of  the  voluptuary  faced  it  with  a  proud 
serenity  from  which  no  confession  of  suffering  was  wrung. 


CHANDOS.  187 

The  gas  was  still  burning  in  all  the  crystal  globes  and  silver  branches  as 
Trevenna  entered.  Chandos  had  no  sense  of  the  things  that  were  about  him, 
of  the  dress  he  wore,  of  the  passage  of  the  noonday  hours;  and  his  household, 
who  felt  that  some  great  adversity  had  suddenly  befallen  him,  dared  not  venture 
nigh  unsummoned.  He  stood  against  the  hearth  as  his  guest  advanced;  his 
eyes  were  bloodshot,  his  hair  disordered  and  damp  with  the  dew  of  his  fore- 
head; his  face  was  bloodless:  beyond  these,  he  "gave  no  sign." 

Trevenna  stretched  out  his  hand  in  their  old  friendship  and  familiarity  of 
greeting.  Chandos  did  not  give  his  own:  he  looked  at  Trevenna  with  a  tran- 
quil lingering  gaze;  if  there  were  reproach  in  it,  the  reproach  remained  other- 
wise unspoken. 

"  Tell  me  all,"  he  said,  briefly;  and  his  voice,  faint  though  it  was,  did  not 
falter. 

For  one  instant  his  traitor  was  silent,  baffled  and  wonder-struck. 

Fine  as  were  his  intuition  and  insight  into  character,  he  had  made  an  error 
common  with  men  of  his  mold;  he  had  undervalued  a  nature  it  was  impossible 
he  could  comprehend.  Studying  the  weaknesses  of  his  patron's  temper,  he  had 
not  perceived  that  they  were  rather  on  the  surface  than  ingrained;  he  had  dis- 
dained the  facility  that  had  lent  Chandos  so  willing  a  tool  into  his  hands,  the 
gentleness,  the  frankness,  the  generosity,  the  unsuspecting  pliability  of  temper; 
he  had  looked  with  contempt  on  the  imaginative,  idealic  mind  and  the  effem- 
inate softness  of  the  man  he  hated.  He  had  never  perceived  that  there  were 
qualities  beneath  these  that  might  leap  to  life  in  an  instant,  if  once  roused;  he 
had  never  dreamed  that  Alcibiades  the  voluptuary  could  ever  become  Alci- 
biades  the  warrior.  Had  he  found  Chandos  shot  by  his  own  hand,  in  the  light 
of  the  young  day,  he  would  have  felt  no  surprise;  he  would  have  thought  the 
close  in  fitting  keeping  with  the  tenor  of  his  career;  to  find  him  braced  to  look 
his  desolation  calmly  in  the  face  staggered,  and  almost  unnerved  him. 

But  in  an  instant  he  recovered  himself.  The  ruin  was  complete;  and  it 
should  go  hard,  he  thought,  if  to  it  he  did  not  drive  his  victim  to  add — dishonor  ! 

With  the  concise  rapidity  of  a  mind  trained  to  precis-writing  and  to  logical 
analysis  and  compression,  he  had  every  detail  clear  as  the  daylight,  proved  to 
the  letter;  and  he  showed  with  mathematical  exactitude  that  everything  was 
gone.  His  papers  were  of  the  plainest,  his  accounts  the  most  perfectly  audited, 
his  representation  of  others'  statements  lucid  to  a  marvel.  If  he  had  been 
opening  a  budget  to  a  crowded  House,  he  could  not  have  more  finely  mingled 
conciseness  with  comprehensiveness,  geometrical  exactitude  with  unerring 
quotation,  than  now  when  he  came  to  prove  the  hopelessness  of  his  best  friend's 
beggary. 

Hopeless  it  was.  The  inheritance  which  Chandos  and  his  world  had  thought 
so  secure  and  so  exhaustless  had  melted  away  as»a  summer  evening's  golden 


188  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

pomp  and  color  fade,  till  not  a  line  of  light  is  left  to  show  where  once  it  glowed. 
It  was  the  old,  worn-out,  ever-recurring  story  of  endless  imprudence,  of  abso- 
lute destruction.  If  other  hands  had  woven  half  the  meshes  of  the  net  spread 
round  him,  if  other  hands  had  spread  their  snares  and  temptings  to  make  the 
fatal  descent  the  surer,  if  any  villany  were  in  this  thing,  there  was  no  trace  that 
could  even  hint  it.  It  might  even  have  been  said  that  the  best  had  been  done, 
with  patient  labor,  to  arrest  the  downward  and  irresistible  course  of  a  blind  and 
unthinking  extravagance,  and  done  wisely  and  toilsomely,  though  in  vain. 

It  was  true,  as  he  had  stated,  that  Chandos  had  lived  at  a  rate  of  expendi- 
ture quadrupling  his  income;  vast  sums  had  been  drawn  out  without  thought 
or  inquiry,  and  in  many  cases  there  was  no  record  of  why  or  how  they  had  been 
used.  He  had  lived  with  prodigal  munificence;  his  houses  had  been  as  open, 
night  and  day,  to  all  who  choose  to  enjoy  their  hospitality,  as  the  palace  of 
Philip  of  Burgundy:  his  gold  had  been  ever  ready  to  aid  his  friend  or  to  assist 
his  foe.  None  had  come  to  him  for  help  and  gone  from  him  empty-handed; 
he  had  relieved  the  necessities  of  other  men,  without  a  memory  that  they  might 
recoil  on  him  and  become  his  own.  His  households  had  been  very  large,  and 
utterly  unchecked;  the  maitres-d'hotel,  the  butlers,  the  heads  of  every  office, 
had  exercised  their  own  choice  in  the  magnitude  of  their  expenditure.  No  in- 
quiry had  ever  been  made  as  to  the  cost  of  all  the  princely  entertainments  for 
which  each  one  of  his  residences  had  alike  been  noted.  He  had  given  money, 
drawn  money,  scattered  money,  as  he  was  asked;  and  the  indulgence  in  every 
fancy,  and  the  ignorance  of  all  wealth's  worth,  which  were  the  fruit  of  the 
habits  he  had  been  bred  in  from  his  earliest  childhood,  he  made  him  as  uncon- 
scious that  he  was  sapping  the  very  root  and  foundation  of  his  whole  fortunes 
as  the  madman  of  the  ancient  fable,  who  sawed  asunder  the  branch  on  which 
he  rested  and  which  alone  held  him  suspended  above  a  bottomless  abyss. 

It  was  true,  as  Trevenna  had  said,  that,  having  but  ordinary  possessions  of 
an  English  gentleman  (and  much  of  Clarencieux  was  rendered,  by  its  very 
dower  of  wild  beauty,  in  beach  and  rock  and  forest  wilderness,  profitless  in  a 
monetary  sense),  he  had  spent  his  years  as  though  he  had  been  a  sovereign -with 
an  exhaustless  treasury.  He  had  given  as  royally,  he  had  paid  as  lavishly,  he 
had  bought  in  every  delicate  gem  or  priceless  picture,  he  had  offered  his  aid  to 
every  unfriended  talent  or  merit,  as  though  he  had  had,  not  the  rent-roll  of 
Clarencieux,  but  the  exchequer  of  two  kingdoms  as  the  ever-filling  well  from 
which  to  draw. 

This  having  been  done  through  ten  years  of  an  uncheckered  life,  there  was 
no  wonder  in  the  crash  that  followed  it.  No  warning  had  arrested  him  midway 
in  its  ruinous  course;  Trevenna  had  uttered  none,  and  the  remonstrance  of  any 
other  could  only  have  reached  him  through  Trevenna's  medium. 

The  whole  mass  of  the  fortune  was  expended;  the  debt-pressure  had  accu- 


CHANDOS.  189 

mulated  to  an  enormous  extent.  Who  could  say  where  what  was  scattered  was 
gone  ?  Who  could  check  now  the  piled-up  bills  of  hirelings  and  kitchen-chiefs  ? 
Who  could  tell  now  whether  all  the  great  sums  paid  had  been  paid  rightly  ? 
Who  could  know  whether  the  items  of  that  magnificent  prodigality  were  justly 
scored  down  or  not  ?  It  would  have  been  as  hopeless  a  task  to  thread  the  buried 
intricacies  of  all  these  things  as  to  take  the  Danai'ds'  labors  and  seek  to  fill 
with  the  waters  of  a  too-late  prudence  the  bottomless  vessels  through  which 
this  lost  wealth  had  been  poured. 

Trevenna,  indeed,  had  every  detail  at  his  fingers'  end.  He  ran  through 
them  as  rapidly  and  as  accurately  as  though  he  told  the  details  of  a  new  tax  to 
the  benches.  He  showed  how,  when  he  had  first  come  to  share  any  manage- 
ment of  these  matters,  the  locust-swarm  had  already  eaten  far  into  the  fair 
birthright  that  Philip  Chandos  had  bequeathed.  He  failed  to  show  why  he 
had  not  forced  the  bitter  knowledge  on  his  friend's  careless  ease  in  time  to  save 
much,  though  not  all:  yet  even  this  discrepancy  in  his  narrative  he  glossed 
over  with  an  orator's  skill,  a  tactician's  sophistry,  until  he  seemed  throughout 
it  to  have  been  the  one  steadfast,  wise,  and  unheeded  Artabanus  who  had  vainly 
stood  by  the  side  of  the  crowned  Xerxes  and  pleaded  with  him  not  to  fling 
riches  and  honor  and  life  into  the  grave  of  the  devouring  ^Egean. 

Chandos  heard  in  unbroken  silence. 

Gigantic  sums  were  numbered  and  added  before  him  in  gigantic  confusion. 
Tables  of  figures  and  of  estimates  were  placed  before  his  eyes,  and  told 
him  nothing,  save  that  their  sum-total  was — bankruptcy  !  He  had  never  known 
or  asked  the  cost  of  the  pleasures  he  enjoyed;  he  had  never  speculated  on  the 
worth  of  all  the  luxuries  by  which  he  had  been  surrounded  from  his  infancy. 
His  mind  had  never  been  trained  to  balance  the  comparisons  of  receipt  and 
expenditure.  He  could  have  told,  to  a  marvel  of  accuracy,  whether  a  picture, 
a  statue,  a  cameo,  was  worth  its  price,  through  the  fineness  of  a  connoisseur's 
judgment;  but  beyond  these  he  knew  no  more  than  any  child-Dauphin  in  the 
Bourbon  age  what  was  the  value  of  all  the  things  which  made  up  the  amusement 
and  adornment  of  his  life.  A  man  well  skilled  in  finance  finds  it  a  hopeless 
task  to  glean  the  truth  of  squandered  moneys.  To  him  only  one  thing  could 
stand  out  clear  and  immutable, — the  fact  that  all  was  gone.  It  was  impossible 
for  him  to  dispute  the  mass  of  evidence  heaped  before  him,  as  impossible 
also  to  dispute  the  mass  of  debt  that  was  brought  before  him.  He  had 
believed  that  no  creditor  had  ever  had  claim  on  him  for  a  day;  but,  now  that 
the  demands  were  made,  he  could  not  prove  they  were  undue.  Of  receipts,  of 
accounts  he  had  never  given  a  thought:  his  agents  and  his  stewards  had  been 
allowed  carte  blanche  to  do  as  they  would;  they  could  not  be  blamed  for  hav- 
ing used  the  power,  and  there  was  no  evidence  that  they  had  abused  it.  The 
demands  of  the  debts  were  vast;  there  was  not  a  witness  that  could  be  brought 


190 


OU IDA'S     WORKS. 


to  their  injustice  or  their  illegality.  There  was  nothing  with  which  to  face 
or  to  deny  them;  they  must  devour  as  they  would.  He  heard  in  unbroken 
silence.  Once  alone  he  spoke:  it  was  as  the  name  of  Tindall  &  Co.,  the  bill- 
discounting  firm,  among  his  creditors,  came  into  sight,  pressing  for  heavy  sums. 
"  How  are  they  among  the  swarm?  "  he  said,  with  that  unnatural  serenity  which 
he  had  preserved  throughout  the  interview  unmoved  still.  "  I  never  in  my  life 
borrowed  gold,  either  of  Jew  or  Christian." 

For  an  instant  the  face  of  his  tormentor  flushed  slightly  with  the  same 
transient  emotion  of  shame  which  had  moved  him  in  the  portrait-gallery  of 
Clarencieux. 

"  For  yourself  ?  Perhaps  not  to  your  own  knowledge,"  he  answered, 
promptly;  "but  for  your  friends  you  have  many  a  time.  How  many  bills  you 
have  accepted  for  men  in  momentary  embarrassment  !  In  nine  cases  out  of 
ten  these  bills  have  never  been  met  by  those  in  whose  favor  they  were  drawn. 
They  have  always  been  popular  with  the  trade.  Your  signature  was  thought 
the  signature  of  so  rich  a  man  !  This  firm  has  bought  in  most  of  that  floating 
paper,  and  has  taken  its  own  time  to  press  for  payment:  that  time  has  come  at 
last.  There  lies  your  writing;  the  bills  cannot  be  dishonored  without  dishonor- 
ing you.  No  loan  was  ever  so  costly  to  its  lender  as  that  loan  which  looks  so 
slight  at  first, — the  loan  of  your  mere  name  ! " 

Chandos  heard  him  calmly  still.  The  extremity  of  misery  had  reached 
him,  and  the  peace  of  absolute  hopelessness  was  on  him. 

"You  say,  'perhaps  not  to  my  own  knowledge;'  unknown  to  me,  then, 
have  I  borrowed  moneys  of  these  usurers  ? " 

"  Once  or  twice  lately, — yes.  Forgive  me,  Chandos,  if  in  my  zeal  to  screen 
or  save  you  I  plunged  you  deeper  into  this  chaos.  You  sent  over  for  great 
sums  to  be  lodged  in  Turkish  and  Athenian  banks,  whilst  you  were  abroad  this 
winter:  you  wrote  to  me  to  lodge  them  there.  I  knew  that  if  I  sent,  on  your 
bidding,  to  your  own  bankers,  the  amounts  you  required  from  time  to  time 
would  overdraw  by  thousands  the  little  left  of  your  original  capital,  and  that 
the  bank  would  inform  you  of  your  improvidence  without  delay  or  preparation. 
I  could  not  tell  how  to  spare  you;  and  I  always  persuaded  myself  that  in  some 
way  or  other — mainly,  I  thought,  by  some  very  high  marriage — you  would  re- 
build your  shattered  fortunes;  I  went  to  these  Tindall  people;  I  effected  ar- 
rangements with  them  to  supply  you  with  the  moneys.  They  held  my  acknow- 
ledgements for  the  amounts  till  you  returned;  they  knew  me,  and  they  knew  you. 
When  you  came  back,  you  may  remember,  I  brought  you  papers  to  sign  at 
Clarencieux,  and  pressed  you  to  give  me  a  business  interview.  You  would  not 
wait  and  hear  me, — you  never  would ;  you  signed ;  and  I  had  not  heart  or  courage, 
I  confess,  to  tell  you  then  at  how  terrible  a  pass  things  were  with  you.  I  did 
wrong;  I  admit  it  frankly.  I  was  guilty  of  what  I  should  call  the  most  villa- 


CHANDOS.  191 

nous  procrastination  in  another  man;  but  I  knew  it  was  too  late  to  save  you. 
I  was  willing  to  let  you  have  as  long  a  repreive  in  your  soft  pleasures  as  I  could; 
and  until  your  engagement  with  the  Lady  Valencia  I  always  thought  that  some 
distinguished  and  rich  alliance  would  restore  the  balance  of  your  affairs.  And 
there  is  this  much  to  be  said  for  it:  the  error  I  committed  in  essaying  to  save 
you  added  but  very,  very  little  to  the  mountain  already  raised  of  inextricable 
debts  and  difficulties.  It  only  gave  you  six  months  more  of  peace:  you, 
self-indulgent  as  you  have  been,  would  have  deemed  even  those  worth  pur- 
chasing." 

The  sophistries  were  deftly  spoken.  To  a  man  more  aware  of  business 
customs  and  of  monetary  negotiations,  Trevenna  would  have  been  too  astute 
to  offer  such  an  untenable  and  unlikely  explanation;  with  Chandos  the  discre- 
pancies passed  unnoted,  because  he  knew  nothing  of  the  method  of  pecuniary 
transactions.  All  he  had  known  had  been  to  draw  money  and  to  have  it.  But, 
though  the  financial  errors  passed  him,  his  instinct  led  him  to  feel  the  falsity 
and  the  hollowness  of  the  arguments  to  himself.  Suspicion  was  utterly  foreign 
to  him;  his  attachment  to  Trevenna  was  genuine  and  of  long  date;  doubt  forced 
itself  slowly  in  on  a  nature  to  which  it  was  alien:  yet  a  vague  loathing  of  this 
man,  who  had  let  him  go  on  unwarned  to  his  destruction,  began  to  steal  on 
him;  a  disbelief  in  his  friend  wound  its  way  into  his  thoughts  with  an  abhorrent 
strength.  It  had  been  there  when  he  had  refused  his  hand  in  the  day's  accus- 
tomed greeting. 

His  eyes  dwelt  on  Trevenna  now  with  a  strange  wistfulness,  rather  reproach 
than  rebuke, — a  look  which  mutely  said,  "  Is  it  thee,  Brutus  ?  " 

"I  understand,"  he  said,  simply;  "you  have  betrayed  me  !  " 

For  the  instant  his  traitor's  eyes  dropped,  his  cheek  flushed,  his  conscience 
smote  him.  Under  the  accusation  of  the  man  to  whom  he  owed  all,  and  whom 
he  had  pursued  with  a  bloodhound's  lust,  the  baseness  of  his  own  treachery 
rose  up  for  a  single  moment  before  his  own  sight.  But  it  passed;  he  even 
frankly  met  the  eyes  whose  silent  reproach  condemned  him  more  utterly  -than 
any  words. 

"  Betrayed  ?  Do  you  take  me  for  a  second  Iscariot  ?  Betrayed  !  how  so  ? 
Because  I  tried  to  save  you  pain  with  means  that  proved  at  best  fallacious  ? 
Because  I  was  guilty  of  an  error  of  judgment  that  I  frankly  regret  and  as  frankly 
condemn  ?  No  !  blame  me  as  you  will,  I  may  have  deserved  it;  but  accuse  me 
of  disloyality  you  shall  not.  If  every  one  had  been  as  faithful  to  you,  Ernest, 
as  I  have  been,  you  would  not  now  hear  the  history  of  your  own  ruin." 

There  was  a  grim,  ironic  truth  in  the  inverted  meaning  of  the  last  sentence 
that  the  temper  of  the  speaker  relished  with  cynical  humor.  If  others  had  been 
as  faithful  to  Chandos  in  friendship  as  he  had  been  in  hatred,  the  positions  of 
both  would  have  indeed  been  changed. 


192 


QUID  AS     WORKS. 


Chandos  answered  nothing;  his  eyes  still  rested  with  the  same  look  on  the 
man  whom  he  had  defended  through  all  evil  report  and  enriched  with  such  un- 
tiring gifts.  The  truth  of  his  own  nature  instinctively  felt  the  falsity  of  the 
loyality  avowed  him;  yet  that  such  black  ingratitude  could  live  in  men  as  would 
be  present  here  were  his  doubt  real,  took  longer  than  these  few  hours— more 
evidence  even  than  these  testimonies— to  be  believed  by  him.  He  had  loved 
humanity,  and  thought  well  of  it,  and  served  it  with  unexhausted  charity. 

Trevenna  moved  slightly;  hardened  and  tempered  as  was  the  steel  of  his 
bright,  bold  audacity,  even  he  could  not  bear  the  voiceless  rebuke  that  asked 
still,  "  Et  tu,  Brute  ? " 

"Let  us  speak  of  the  future,"  he  said,  rapidly;  "we  have  seen  that  the 
past  is  hopeless  and  irremediable.  You  know  the  worst  now;  how  do  you 
propose  to  meet  it  ?  " 

"  You  have  said  already,  all  must  go." 

The  same  perfect  tranquillity  was  in  the  reply;  it  was  the  ossification  of 
despair. 

"  True, — even  Clarencieux." 

The  deadliest  words  that  he  had  spoken  in  the  past  night  ! — he  could  not 
resist  the  choice  of  them  again.  He  knew  the  sharpest  torture  he  could  inflict 
lay  in  them. 

An  irrepressible  shudder  shook  his  listener's  limbs,  but  he  bent  his  head  in 
unchanged  silence. 

"  And  will  the  woman  you  love  not  go  with  the  rest  ? " 

Chandos  moved  involuntarily,  so  that  his  face  was  in  the  shadow. 

"  She  will  be  given  her  freedom." 

Trevenna  looked  at  him  with  the  same  impatient  amaze  with  which  he  had 
started  as  he  had  entered  the  chamber.  He  could  not  realize  that  the  voluptuary 
whose  weakness  he  had  so  long  studied,  that  the  pleasure-seeker  whose  poco- 
curantism  had  so  long  been  the  subject  of  his  scorn,  could  be  the  man  who 
answered  him  now,  thus  calm  in  his  endurance. 

"  But,  if  she  love  you,  she  will  not  take  it.  If  all  that  you  poets  say  of 
the  sex  be  true,  she  will  cling  but  the  closer  to  you  in  your  fallen  fortunes. 
What  think  you  !  I,  I  confess,  doubt  it.  She  is  so  poor;  she  is  so  ambitious; 
she  has  so  sought  the  restoration  of  your  marquisate  !  " 

Chandos  stretched  out  his  hand;  his  breath  caught  as  with  the  pang  of  one 
who  can  endure  no  more. 

"  It  matters  nothing  to  speak  of  this.  I  have  heard  your  worst  tidings;  now 
leave  me  for  a  space." 

"  No;  hear  me  yet  a  little  longer.  I  fancy  I  see  a  way  to  spare  you  some 
portion,  at  least,  of  your  inheritance,  and  to  spare  you  at  least  this  loveliness 
you  covet.  Will  you  listen  ?  " 


CHANDOS.  193 

He  made  a  gesture  of  assent.  Hope  was  dead  in  him;  but  he  was  passive 
through  the  very  exhaustion  of  extreme  suffering. 

"  See  here  !  "  pursued  his  tempter.  "  If  you  go  to  her  and  say,  <  I  am  a 
beggared  man,'  will  her  tenderness  remain  with  you  ?  You  know  her  best.  I 
trust  it  may;  but,  frankly,  my  friend,  I  fear  !  She  loves  you;  yes,  all  women  do. 
She  loves  you  as  well  as  she  can  love;  but  she  loves  power  more.  Tell  her  of 
this  thing  which  has  overtaken  you,  and  I  believe  she  will  be  lost  to  you  forever." 

Chandos  shrank  from  the  words. 

"  Leave  me  !  let  me  be  !     It  avails  nothing " 

"  Yes,  it  does.      Why  need  she  know  it?  " 

The  question  stole  out,  tempting  and  alluring  as  the  sophistries  that 
beguiled  Faust. 

"  Why  ? "     He  re-echoed  the  word  almost  in  stupor. 

"  Ah,  why  ?  Who  need  tell  her  ?  Listen  here.  I  can  temporize  with  your 
creditors  for  a  little  while.  Each  does  not  know  how  heavy  the  claims  of  the 
rest  are,  and  none  wholly  suspect — hell-hounds  though  they  be — how  complete 
is  your  beggary.  Your  marriage  is  fixed  for  an  early  date  from  this;  let  the 
settlements  be  drawn  up  as  they  would  have  been,  and  the  ceremony  concluded. 
A  marriage,  even  though  to  a  penniless  bride,  will  throw  your  creditors  off  their 
cast.  They  will  believe  you  are  secure,  or  would  you  wed  with  one  so  portion- 
less? You  can  leave  for  abroad  on  your  marriage-day;  I  fancy  I  could  quiet 
them  enough  to  let  you  go.  Take  the  Clarencieux  diamonds  with  you.  Mean- 
while I  will  send  off,  under  divers  names  and  in  secret,  many  treasures  of 
yours,  that  will  pass  out  of  England  unknown  to  those  who  have  these  claims, 
and  will  be  sufficient  by  their  sale  to  enable  you  to  live  in  moderate  ease, 
though,  it  is  true,  without  affluence.  The  rest  you  must  let  go;  but  you 
will  have  secured  much, — your  liberty,  your  love,  and  a  remnant  of  your 
possessions." 

"  What  !  you  would  tempt  me  to  dishonor  !  " 

The  temptation  broke  down  the  enforced  serenity  that  Chandos  had  hitherto 
borne;  the  veins  swelled  out  black  upon  his  forehead,  a  shuddering  passion 
seized  him,  his  voice  was  hoarse  and  harsh. 

.  "  Dishonor  ?  Whew  !  "  answered  Trevenna,  lightly.  "  Call  it  so,  if  you  like, 
/  call  it  common  sense.  How  many  men,  pray,  quit  England  for  their  debts, 
and  see  nothing  but  a  sensible  care-taking  for  themselves  in  it  ?  Doubtless 
there  are  in  those  bills  and  estimates  very  heavy  overcharges — we  can't  check 
them  now;  but  I  don't  doubt  there  are;  maitres  d'hotel  will  cheat,  butlers  will 
charge  percentage,  tradesmen  will  add  compound  interest,  bill  discounter's 
will  demand  usurer's  toll;  if  you  take  a  little  from  them,  you  only  take  your 
own.  As  regards  your  fair  Queen  of  Lilies,  if  she  love  you,  what  wrong  can 
you  do  her?  Wed  her,  and  she  will  be  your  own;  and,  granted,  she  is  very 

VOL.  ill.— 7 


194  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

lovely.  Go  to  her  now  and  say,  '  I  am  a  beggared,  self-outlawed,  ruined  man/ 
and  you  must  know  as  well  as  I,  Chandos,  that  in  a  few  months'  time  you  will 
see  her  given  to  one  of  your  rival's  arms." 

Chandos  swept  round  to  face  him,  the  fire  of  passion  flashing  into  the 
weary  pain  of  his  eyes,  the  contraction  of  a  great  torture  in  the  quivering  lines 
of  his  lips. 

"  Are  you  a  fiend  ?  You  would  tempt  me  to  disgrace,  after  having  lured 
me  into  ruin  ? " 

"  Patience,  caro  mio"  said  his  allurer,  softly.  "  You  are  hard  on  your  best 
friend.  And  dorit  be  so  disdainful.  Men  stood  it  while  you  dazzled  the  world; 
but  they  won't  be  so  passive  when  the  comet  has  taken  its  plunge  into  dark- 
ness. They'll  bear  the  curb  when  it  pays,  but  they  won't  when  it  don't  ! 
Tempt  you  ?  what  is  there  of  '  dishonor  '  in  what  I  suggest  ?  On  my  life,  I  see 
nothing.  Last  night  you  knew  no  more  of  your  ruin  than  the  world  knows 
now;  certainly,  you  are  justified  in  withholding  the  world  from  your  confidence 
as  long  as  you  choose.  Is  a  man  '  dishonored  '  because  when  he  holds  a  bad 
hand  at  whist  he  does  not  show  the  cards  and  tell  his  ill-luck,  but  keeps  his  own 
counsel  and  plays  the  game  out  in  the  best  way  he  can  ?  Your  cards  are  bad 
now;  but  you  are  no  more  bound  to  expose  them  than  he.  Men  are  not  your 
keepers,  that  you  are  called  on  to  proclaim  to  them  that  while  you  thought 
yourself  a  millionnaire  you  were,  in  truth,  a  beggar.  You  are  proud:  why  give 
yourself  this  degradation  ?  why  pillory  yourself  for  public  mockery  ?  You  have 
dazzled  them  and  outshone  them:  will  you  bear  their  laugh  and  their  sneer 
when  the  tables  are  turned  ?  You  have  had  homage  from  the  highest:  will  you 
brook  it  when  the  lowest,  unpunished,  may  jeer  at  your  fall  ?  You  have  lived 
with  royal  brilliance:  will  you  feel  no  sting  when  society  chatters  of  how  rotten 
at  core  was  the  royalty  ?  You  love  with  all  the  blindness  of  passion:  will  you 
feel  no  sting  when  the  beauty  you  covet  is  possessed  and  enjoyed  by  another?" 

Blunt,  sometimes  coarse,  in  ordinary  speech,  when  he  saw  occasion  Tre- 
venna  could  summon  both  eloquence  of  language  and  pursuasiveness  of  phrase, 
could  wind  with  subtle  tact  into  the  hearts  of  his  listeners  and  strike  surely  and 
softly  what  bolt  he  would  home. 

Chandos  heard  him:  his  head  had  sunk  upon  his  breast,  and  from  his  white, 
parched  lips  his  breath  came  in  painful,  gasping  spasms.  His  agony  was 
mortal;  his  temptation,  for  the  moment,  was  very  great. 

Subtlely  and  insidiously  the  words  stole  on  his  ear,  goading  pride,  tortur- 
ing passion,  waking  all  the  longing  of  desire,  lulling  and  confusing  every 
dictate  of  honor,  like  the  dreamy  potence  of  a  nicotine,  till  cowardice  looked 
strength,  fraud  looked  wisdom,— till  a  sin  seemed  just,  a  lie  seemed  holy. 

"Because  you  have  forfeited  your  birthright,"  pursued  his  Iscariot,  "you 
are  not  called  on  to  beggar  yourself  utterly  and  to  summon  the  world  in  to  pity 


CHAN  DOS.  195 

and  to  jibe  you.  That  which  you  did  not  know  yourself  last  night,  it  can  be  a 
small  sin  not  to  proclaim  to  men  to-day  !  If  she  loves  you,  she  will  thank  you 
that  you  do  not  mar  her  sweetest  hours  with  your  own  calamity.  If  she  loves 
you,  the  blow  will  fall  softer  on  her  if  she  only  learn  it  when  she  is  your  wife, 
whom  no  evil  can  part  from  you.  Conceal  your  ruin  but  a  few  weeks,- — a  few 
days, — and  the  woman  you  covet  is  yours;  proclaim  it  now,  and  you  will  for- 
feit her,  with  all  the  rest  that  you  have  gambled  away  in  ten  mad  years.  Do  as 
I  say,  and  her  beauty  is  your  own." 

A  sigh,  wrenched  as  in  a  death-pang,  alone  answered  him.  Chandos  stood, 
still  with  his  head  sunk,  and  great  dews  gathered  on  his  brow:  honor  drifted 
from  his  grasp  and  paled  and  withered  under  this  devilish  tempting;  while 
passion,  coiling  round  his  strength,  numbed  him  to  all  memory,  save  of  his  own 
burning  pain,  its  own  imperious  dictates. 

"Can  you  hesitate  ?"  said  Trevenna;  and  his  eyes  gleamed  with  an  eager 
light,  as  he  lured  his  prey  on.  "  Only  withhold  for  a  few  days  the  knowledge 
you  yourself  had  not  last  night,  and  she  is  given  to  you;  tell  it,  and  some  other 
will  taste  the  sweetness  of  her  lips,  and  rifle  as  his  own  the  loveliness  you  covet. 
Choose." 

A  low  moan  broke  from  the  man  he  tortured;  he  wavered:  he  almost 
yielded;  he  was  sorely  tempted. 

All  his  nobler,  better  instincts  were  forgotten  under  the  spell  of  that  insid- 
ious tempting:  all  he  knew  was  the  yearning  of  his  love;  all  he  heard  was  the 
subtle  voice  that  bade  him  take  evil  as  his  good,  was  hung  out  to  him,  as  the 
sole  price  of  all  he  longed  for,  one  single  sin, — a  lie, — a  sin  so  venial,  as  men 
hold  it,  a  sin  so  familiar  in  the  world,  that  every  trader's  ordinary  commerce 
and  every  social  difficulty's  small  entanglement  is  filled  with  it  and  solved  by  it, 
— a  sin  so  slight,  as  a  baneful  license  has  decreed  it,  yet  a  sin  in  his  eyes  accursed 
as  the  vilest  of  dishonor, — a  sin,  as  he  deemed  it,  that  would  mark  him  out  for- 
ever an  alien  to  his  blood  and  a  disgrace  to  his  name. 

For  the  instant  only  it  tempted  him, — tempted  him  with  all  the  mad  long- 
ing of  passion  that  dulled  and  dwarfed  all  other  thoughts  in  its  own  intensity; 
then  the  voluptuary,  who  had  never  in  his  life  risen  to  front  a  painful  thought  or 
to  deny  desire,  had  strength  to  overcome  this  allurement  which  came  to  lead 
him  into  shame  and  evil  whilst  he  was  broken  and  worn  out  with  misery.  He 
lifted  his  head,  and  for  the  moment  his  voice  rang  out — all  faint  with  pain  and 
want  of  food  and  sleep  as  it  was — with  the  old,  clear  melody  of  other  days: — • 

"  Out  of  my  presence  !  Cease  to  tempt  me  ! — cease  to  torture  me  !  By 
God,  I  will  not  yield  !  " 

Trevenna  bowed,  and  backed  towards  the  door;  he  was  too  careful  a  tacti- 
cian to  press  what  was  useless,  to  pursue  what  was  unasked. 

"So  be  it,  monseigneur;  I  have  done  !     I  spoke  but  in  the  roughness  of  my 


196  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

common  sense,  in  the  ignorance  of  my  coarser  nature  of  the  fine  porcelain  you 
haughty  gentlemen  are  made  of.  I  would  have  served  you,  had  you  let  me; 
but  since  you  have  such  a  fancy  for  flinging  yourself  to  the  crying  pack,  why, 
it  must  be  so;  and  they  are  ready  !  You  have  the  last  marquis's  superb  con- 
solation,— '  Tout  est perdu,  fors  Vhonneur!  I  hope  it  may  content  you  !  " 

Chandos,  from  where  he  stood,  crossed  the  room  with  a  sudden  impulse,  as 
a  stag,  driven  from  bay,  springs  at  the  hounds  surrounding  him. 

"  If  it  were  not  tomake  you  viler  than  the  beasts,  I  should  think  it  failed 
to  content  you  and  that,  after  the  beggary  you  have  let  me  drift  to  without 
a  word  of  warning,  you  want  to  drive  me  farther  yet  down  into  shame  and 
shamelessness  !  " 

Trevenna  looked  at  him  with  a  steady,  unflinching  gaze;  he  was  on  his 
guard  now. 

"  You  speak  on  the  spur  of  pain,  mon  prince,  and  wrong  me.  I  sought  to 
serve  you.  If  my  blunter,  ruder  senses  failed  to  feel  the  '  dishonor '  your 
aristocratic  blood  recoils  from,  put  it  down  to  my  failure  in  delicacy,  not  to 
my  lack  of  loyalty.  One  word  more,  and  I  leave  you,  at  your  wish.  Have 
you  forgotten  that  this  is  the  day  of  the  new  opera,  and  that  all  your  world  will 
be  about  you  before  many  hours  ?  Without  you,  the  opera  must  fail.  Shall  I 
give  out  that  you  are  ill,  and  that  the  matter  is  postponed  ?  " 

Chandos  shuddered  involuntarily,  and  the  nerves  of  his  mouth  quivered. 
All  that  had  befallen  him,  all  that  the  future  held,  had  never  stood  out  before 
him  in  its  desolation  as  now,  when  he  remembered — the  world. 

"  Alter  nothing,"  he  said,  with  an  effort.     "  Let  them  come." 

"  Come  !    What !     Can  you  meet  them  ? " 

He  smiled, — a  smile  more  utterly  haggard  and  heart-broken  than  any 
sign  of  grief.  There  was  a  meaning  in  it,  too,  from  whjch  the  daring  and 
hardy  nature  of  his  foe  recoiled. 

"  I  have  neither  killed  myself  nor  you  in  these  past  hours.  There  is  little 
that  will  he  hard  to  endure,  since  I  have  withheld  from  that!" 

Trevenna  looked  upward  at  him  for  one  glance,  then,  silenced  and  with  an 
unfamiliar  awe  and  fear  upon  him,  let  fall  the  heavy  velvet  and  left  him  once 
more  to  his  solitude. 


CHANDOS.  197 

CHAPTER   III. 

THE   LOVE    OF   WOMAN. 

SUCH  temptation  as  Chandos  now  resisted  is  like  an  ordeal  by  fire  to  men 
of  strong  will  and  of  braced  endurance;  with  him,  formed  to  yield  and  to  enjoy, 
to  surrender  himself  to  pleasure  and  caprice,  to  be  facilely  persuaded,  and  to 
resist  nothing  that  allured  him,  it  was  the  first  conflict  that  had  ever  come  to 
him.  Yet  where  men  moral  in  their  lives  and  stainless  in  their  repute  might 
not  have  shrunk  from  the  lie,  but  might  have  eagerly  embraced  the  expedient, 
he  whom  many  called  an  effeminate  ibertine  had  found  strength  to  save  his  honor 
from  the  shipwreck  which  swamped  all  beside. 

The  woman  he  loved  he  would  not  win  by  a  fraud. 

The  day  was  far  spent  when  his  tempter  left  him.  Of  the  flight  of  time  he 
had  no  consciousness;  one  thing  alone  he  remembered  now:  she  must  know  it, 
and  at  once.  The  agony  of  the  last  few  hours  had  kept  him  strong  and  braced, 
as  men  are  with  the  burning  strength  of  opium  or  brandy.  When  life  has  done 
its  worst,  it  lends  a  singular  power,  for  a  brief  time,  to  endure  it.  Nothing 
greater  than  this  can  come  upon  us;  and  we  gain  such  a  courage  as  that  force 
of  desperation  with  which  Spartans  and  Thespians  buckled  on  their  shields  and 
waited  calmly  in  the  Pass  for  that  certain  death  which  Megistius  had  foretold 
to  them.  Thus  it  was  now  with  him;  he  acted  mechanically,  and  with  a  calm- 
ness that  was  horrible  even  to  himself,  as  he  left  the  favorite  and  luxurious 
chamber  which  had  been  fated  to  see  suffering  as  intense  as  ever  filled  a  lazar- 
ward,  and  went  out  into  the  bright  air  of  the  young  summer. 

As  his  carriage,  with  all  its  blinds  down,  rolled  through  the  streets,  he 
leaned  his  forehead  on  his  hands,  and  wondered  if  he  lived,  or  if  he  lay  dream- 
ing in  his  grave.  Every  sound,  every  sight  of  the  familiar  thoroughfares, 
seemed  unreal  and  unknown  to  him,  as  to  one  who  rises  from  a  bed  of  fever; 
he  felt  to  have  no  share  in  all  the  life  about  him,  no  more  part  with  it  than 
though  he  came,  a  disembodied  ghost,  to  gaze  upon  the  scenes  of  his  past  life 
on  earth.  He  had  never  known  before  this  what  it  was  to  suffer  for  an  hour: 
in  the  intensity  of  his  present  suffering,  existence  itself  seemed  paralyzed  in 
him.  The  light  of  the  sun  blinded  him;  the  movement  and  noise  around 
seemed  loud  on  his  ear  as  the  roar  of  torrents;  every  sense  and  nerve  was 
quickened  to  acutest  perception;  yet  he  never  lost  the  sensation  of  unreality,  of 
consciousness  completely  severed  from  corporeality. 


The  Queen  of  Lilies  stood  beside  one  of  the  windows  of  her  own  boudoir, 


198  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

restless,  disquieted,  half  swayed  by  anger  and  half  by  anxiety.  So  many  hours 
of  the  day  had  passed,  and  her  lover  had  not  approached  her.  Where  she  stood, 
there  was  nothing  near  her  but  the  foliage  and  clusters  of  innumerable  flowers; 
the  brightness  of  the  declining  day  was  shed  full  on  her.  She  looked  a  woman 
to  satisfy  a  sculptor's  dream,  to  haunt  an  artist's  thoughts,  to  be  hymned  in  a 
poet's  cantion;  yet  there  was  about  her  that  nameless  and  fugitive  coldness 
which,  in  the  fairest  statue,  chills  the  senses  and  the  heart. 

Her  hand  was  listlessly  wandering  among  the  clusters  of  blossoms;  and 
every  now  and  then,  as  the  impatience  and  disquiet  of  her  thoughts  increased, 
she  broke  them  off  and  cast  them  down,  beating  her  foot  in  haughty  irritation 
on  them  till  their  fragrance  and  their  color  perished. 

The  door  unclosed;  she  turned,  a  smile  lighting  her  eyes  and  lending  a 
lovely  warmth  to  her  cheek.  She  swept  forward  with  the  grace  of  her  step, 
with  half-playful,  half  proud  words  of  reproach  for  suck  unexplained  desertion. 
Quickly  they  paused  upon  her  lips;  she  looked  in  his  face  alarmed  and  amazed. 

"  Ernest  !  what  has  happened  ?    You  are  ill  ? " 

For  all  answer,  he  pressed  her  to  his  heart  and  kissed  her  many  times  with 
a  passion  almost  terrible  in  its  force,  the  fever  of  his  lips  scorching  her  own 
like  fire.  He  held  her  as  men  hold  the  dead  form  of  their  mistress,  which  they 
must  lay  down  and  leave  forever,  never  again  to  meet  their  sight,  never  again 
to  cling  to  their  embrace. 

Then  in  silence  he  released  her,  with  his  last  caress  upon  her  lips,  and  moved 
from  her,  while  his  limbs,  weak  with  long  fasting,  shook  like  a  woman's,  and 
his  head  sank  down  upon  his  breast.  He  would  sooner  have  gone  out  to  his 
death  upon  a  scaffold  than  have  told  her  what  he  came  to  tell. 

She  watched  him  in  fear  and  terror.  She  saw  that  he  had  suffered  as  no 
physical  pain  could  make  him  surfer;  she  saw  that  he  was  altered  as  no  illness 
could  have  changed  him.  She  swept  softly  to  his  side  again;  she  laid  her  fair 
arms  round  him;  she  lifted  to  him  her  beautiful  face,  which  in  that  moment 
tempted  him  to  dishonor  as  his  betrayer's  words  had  never  done. 

"  My  love,  my  love,"  she  murmured  anxiously,  "  what  is  it  ? — what  has 
grieved  you  ?  " 

He  turned  his  eyes  on  hers,  and  in  them  she  read  a  look  that  paralyzed 
her,  that  haunted  her  throughout  her  lifetime,— a  look  of  such  unutterable  an- 
guish that  she  cowered  down  and  shrank  back  as  she  met  it,  struck  by  it  as  by 
a  blow. 

Calamity  has  come  to  me,"  he  said,  briefly,  whilst  his  voice  sounded 
low  as  a  reed,  and  wrung  from  him  as  confessions  were  wrung  from  men 

"  I  have  been  living  a  lie  to  you  and  to  the  world.     Listen." 
icn,  as  he  spoke  the  last  word,  his  calm  forsook  and  his  strength  failed 
him;  he  fell  before  her,  his  hands  clenched  in  her  dress,  his  head  bowed  down 


CHAN  DOS.  199 

upon  her  feet.  In  a  few  broken,  passionate,  disconnected  words,  wild  in  their 
misery,  yet  burned  into  her  mind  forever  as  aqua-fortis  burns  its  record  into 
steel,  he  told  her  all. 

There  was  a  profound  silence  in  the  chamber, — a  silence  in  which  he  only 
heard  the  dull,  oppressed  beating  of  his  heart, — a  silence  in  which  his  head 
was  still  bowed  down  as  he  knelt.  He  dared  not  look  upward  to  her  face.  He 
loved  her,  and  it  passed  the  bitterness  of  death  to  bring  this  misery  on  her 
young  life;  he  loved  her,  and  he  had  to  utter  words  that  might  divorce  them 
for  eternity. 

For  many  moments  the  silence  lasted, — a  silence  so  agonized  to  him  that 
in  it  he  seemed  to  live  through  years,  as  men  in  the  moments  of  a  violent 
death.  He  longed,  as  one  perishing  in  the  desert  longs  for  water,  for  one 
word  of  tenderness,  one  promise  of  fidelity;  he  longed  for  them  with  an  inten- 
sity great  as  the  fall  he  bade  her  look  upon. 

None  came. 

She  drew  herself  slowly  from  him  where  he  knelt,  and  stood  in  the  dignity 
of  her  matchless  grace,  mutely  gazing  at  him  with  those  eyes  which  had  all  the 
chilliness,  as  they  had  all  the  lustre,  of  the  stars.  Her  face  was  white  and 
drawn  like  his  own;  but  in  the  amazed  fixity  into  which  it  had  set  there  was  no 
trace  of  pity  for  him,  there  was  no  grief  that  sprang  from  tenderness. 

"  This  is  a  strange  tale,"  she  said,  at  last,  and  her  voice  was  bitterly,  bitterly 
cold,  though  it  was  tremulous  with  the  tremor  of  incredulous  rage.  "  A  strange 
tale.  You  must  pardon  me  if  I  fail  to  believe  it." 

He  looked  for  the  first  time  upward  at  her.  All  hope  he  might  uncon- 
sciously have  cherished  that  her  love  might  be  stronger  than  its  trial,  and  vows 
that  had  been  vowed  him  in  his  prosperity  not  prove  false  in  his  adversity,  for- 
sook him  now.  He  rose  slowly  to  his  feet,  and  stood  beside  her;  and  in  his 
eyes  came  the  same  wistful  reproachful  pain  that  had  been  in  them  when  he 
had  looked  at  his  betrayer, — the  pain  that  silently  said,  "  Dost  thou,  too,  then 
forsake  me  ? " 

"  Believe  !  "  he  said,  wearily;  "  believe  !  Can  you  look  me  in  the  face  and 
doubt  ? " 

She  stood  aloof  from  him,  lifted  in  her  full  height,  her  foot  beating  the 
bruised  colorless  petals  of  the  flowers  she  had  destroyed,  her  fair  face  haggard 
and  rigid,  her  gaze  fixed  on  him  pitiless  yet  passionate  in  the  coldness  of  its 
unrelenting  scorn. 

"  Believe  !  "  she  repeated,  while  her  lips  shook  and  her  bosom  heaved. 
"  Believe  that  you  are  the  ruined  bankrupt  that  you  tell  me, — yes;  but  believe 
that  you  have  been  in  the  ignorance  of  your  own  beggary  that  you  plead, — no  ! 
ten  thousand  times  no  !  " 

He  looked   at  her  in  a  mute  amazed  stupor  that  stilled  the  force  of  the 


200 


QUID  AS     WORKS. 


anguish  in  which  he  had  knelt  before  her  into  an  icy  serenity  such  as  that  with 
which  he  had  faced  John  Trevenna. 

He  had  never  known  but  the  tenderness  and  the  softness  of  women.  This 
vileness  of  imputed  fraud  flung  at  him  by  the  one  who  but  a  moment  before  had 
lifted  her  sweet  lips  for  his  kiss  paralyzed  him  with  its  wantonness  of  merciless 
indignity. 

"  Ruin  does  not  fall  in  a  day,"  she  pursued,  while  the  haughty  acrid  words 
came  from  her  lips  in  a  quiver  of  rage  that  her  graceful  breeding  alone  reined 
in  from  the  violence  of  passion.  "  Such  ruin  as  yours  is,  you  confess,  the  work 
of  years.  How  perfectly  you  have  duped  the  world  and  me  !  " 

He  who  had  loved  her  with  a  great  and  most  disinterested  love,  yet  who 
had  refused  19  win  her  through  a  falsehood,  could  have  killed  her  in  his  agony 
as  he  heard  her  now,  could  have  crushed  her  in  his  embrace,  and  trampled  out 
this  life  that  looked  so  fair  aud  was  so  merciless,  that  had  smiled  on  him  with 
so  divine  a  forgery  of  love,  and  that  flung  at  him  in  his  darkest  hour  a  dishonor 
that  his  worst  foe  would  never  have  dared  to  hint. 

Yet  he  stood  before  her  with  a  calm  dignity,  a  proud  reproach. 

"  Look  in  my  eyes,  and  see  if  I  could  lie  !  Had  I  chosen,  I  could  have 
wedded  you  by  a  fraud,  and  made  you  mine,  in  ignorance  of  my  fall.  As  it  is, 
I  set  you  free:  it  is  your  right." 

"My  right?"  There,  in  the  glow  of  the  late  day's  sunlight,  she  stood 
amidst  the  flowers,  her  patrician  beauty  instinct  with  the  scornful  passion  that 
her  own  lost  ambitions,  her  own  thwarted  pride,  made  so  intolerable  a  misery, 
— fronting  him  with  a  gaze  as  unyielding  as  stone,  scourging  him  with  words 
clear  and  frozen  in  their  utterance  as  ice.  "  Indeed  !  my  right !  The  pity  is 
you  did  not  earlier  remember  what  my  rights  and  the  world's  both  were,  ere 
you  chicaned  us  and  misled  us  with  the  paste  brilliance  of  your  tinsel  glitter. 
You  could  have  wedded  me  by  a  fraud  ?  I  wonder  you  could  hesitate  at  one 
fraud  more,  when  you  were  so  long  practised  in  so  many." 

"  Oh,  God  ! — And  yesterday  you  loved  me  !  " 

The  cry  broke  out  involuntarily  from  him.  Yesterday  her  soft  caresses  had 
been  his;  a  few  days  or  weeks  later,  and  she  had  been  his  wife;  now — from 
her  lips  poured  the  cruellest  invectives  his  ruin  could  ever  hear,  from  her 
thoughts  came  the  foulest  taunt  that  could  be  thrown  at  him  to  goad  his 
wretchedness. 

"  Yesterday,— yes  !  Yesterday  the  world  and  I  alike  believed  in  your  honor 
and  your  rank.  Yesterday  we  did  not  know  you  as  you  are, — a  gamester,  a 
trickster,  a  living  falsehood  to  us  both." 

Men  under  less  torture  than  he  bore  then  have  killed  with  a  madman's 
blow  the  fair,  false  thing  that  taunted  and  that  jibed  them.  A  convulsive  effort 
of  self-restraint  shuddered  through  him;  then  he  stood  tranquil  still,  and  al- 


"FOH  THE   MERCY  OF   GOD,  MY  LOVE,  MY   WIFE  !  "—Page  201,    Vol.  III. 


CHANDOS.  201 

most  yielding  to  her  still  the  forbearance  her  sex  claimed  for  her.     She  had  no 
pity  for  him;  he  would  claim  none. 

"  Your  insult  is  undeserved,"  he  said,  briefly,  while  his  teeth  clenched  tight 
to  hold  back  the  flood  of  passionate  yearning,  of  agonized  reproach,  that  rushed 
to  his  utterance.  "  Believe  or  not,  as  you  will ;  I  have  spoken  truth,  and  all 
the  truth.  I  sought  you  when  my  fate  was  such  as  all  men  envied  me;  it  has 
changed,  and  I  set  you  free.  All  I  ask  is,  for  the  sake  of  others,  keep  these 
tidings  back  until  to-morrow;  and,  for  yourself,  forgive  me  that  I  ever — 

His  voice  broke  down;  his  control  forsook  himj;  he  loved  her,  and  he  thought 
only  of  all  they  would  have  been,  of  all  they  never  now  could  be,  to  one  an- 
other, and  his  heart  went  out  to  her  in  a  great  resistless  longing  that  shattered 
pride  and  forgot  injury,  and  only  craved  one  touch  of  tenderness,  one  echo  of  the 
fond  faith  but  yesterday  so  lovingly  vowed  to  him.  He  was  not  changed :  were 
these  accidents  of  fortune,  this  visitation  of  calamity,  to  make  him  loathsome 
where  he  had  been  adored  ? 

He  stretched  out  his  arms  involuntarily  in  the  suffering  of  his  passion. 

"  For  the  mercy  of  God,  my  love,  my  wife  ! — for  the  sake  of  all  we  should 
have  been  ! — speak  gentler  to  me  in  our  wretchedness." 

It  was  the  only  prayer  he  ever  prayed  for  pity.  In  the  moment  of  its  en- 
treaty, something  softer,  some  grief  more  piteous  and  less  absorbed  in  selfish 
violence,  passed  over  her  face.  In  the  moment  of  that  gesture  of  beseeching 
tenderness  she  could  have  thrown  herself  upon  his  breast  and  given  up  the 
world  for  him.  Trevenna  had  rightly  said  she  loved  as  well  as  she  could  love, 
and  in  this  instant  life  asunder  seemed  a  doom  too  ter-rible  to  bear.  But  the 
impulse  passed  swiftly:  the  weight  of  the  world  was  heavier  and  stronger  on 
her  than  her  love  for  him;  he  had  destroyed  her  ambitions  and  had  shattered 
her  victory;  she  knew  no  thought  save  for  what  she  deemed  her  wrong,  no  grief 
save  for  what  she  deemed  her  degradation;  for  the  loveliness  enshrined  a  heart 
of  bronze,  and  her  solitary  idol  was — herself.  She  stood  unmoved,  her  head 
turned  towards  the  light  with  a  gesture  of  scorn,  her  foot  still  treading  out  the 
bruised  fragments  of  the  wasted  flowers. 

"  Claim  gentler  words  when  you  can  prove  juster  deeds,"  she  said,  with  a 
bitterness  that  seemed  to  leave  her  fair  lips  with  the  lash  of  a  leaden-weighted 
scourge.  "You  have  lived  one  long  falsehood  in  the  sight  of  men;  they  may 
believe  your  pleaded  ignorance  of  your  bankrupt  shame;  they  have  long  been 
your  dupes,  and  they  may  be  so  still:  /shall  not.  The  premier  offered  you 
your  marquis's  coronet;  go  take  it  !  You  refused  it  to  my  wish;  you  will  accept 
it  to  screen  you  from  the  claimants  of  your  debts  !  " 

His  gaze  fastened  on  her,  riveted  there  by  a  horrible  fascination.  Were 
those  eyes,  that  froze  him  with  so  unpitying  a  hate,  thee  yes  that  yesterday  had 


002  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

smiled  up  in  his  own  ?  were  those  lips,  that  lashed  him  with  such  brutal  taunts, 
the  lips  that  yesterday  had  met  his  own  in  their  last  lingering  caress  ? 

His  breath  came  slowly,  and  drawn  with  effort,  as  though  life  were  ebbing 
out  of  him;  yet  he  stood  before  her  prouder  and  sterner  in  the  extremity  of  in- 
sult than  he  had  ever  been  in  the  full  splendor  of  his  power. 

"  Silence  !  You  shame  your  sex  !  I  ask  you  forgiveness  of  any  wrong  I 
may,  through  my  own  improvidence,  have  wrought  you;  but  I  thank  God  that 
I  have  known  you  as  you  are  before  my  life  was  cursed  with  you." 

Without  another  word,  he  turned  and  left  her, — left  her  with  the  crushed 
blossoms  lying  beneath  her  foot,  and  the  summer  light  upon  her  loveliness. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

THE   LAST   NIGHT    AMONG   THE    PURPLES. 

THE  new  opera  began. 

The  house  was  crowded  with  all  that  had  rank  and  had  fashion  to  make 
the  applause  become  renown.  For  the  sake  of  its  patron,  the  aristocracies  of 
England  and  of  France  came  to  its  representation,  willing  to  be  charmed  and 
prepared  to  admire;  for  the  sake  of  its  patron,  court-beauties  flocked  thither, 
resolute  to  be  enchanted  though  there  were  not  a  note  of  melody  in  it;  and 
connoisseurs  came  in  the  gentlest,  most  generous  of  tempers,  inclined  to  be 
lenient,  indeed,  secure  to  be  pleased.  All  the  world  was  ready  to  be  complacent 
to  Genius,  since  Fashion  had  chanced  to  have  lent  it  her  bright-jewelled  aegis. 
There  is  a  sublime  arrangement  in  this  world:  the  greater  things  must  always 
be  floated  up  by  the  lesser.  Does  not  the  world  phrase  it  that  a  queen  "  honors  " 
a  great  statesman  with  her  presence,  and  that  a  prince  "  honors  "  a  great  artist 
with  his  sitting  ?  The  world  always  loves  these  transposed  phrases  and  clings 
to  these  inverted  orders  of  precedence. 

So  Fashion  was  prepared  to  patronize  Genius;  happily  for  Genius,  it  does 
not  do  it  very  often. 

The  Ariadnt  in  ATaxos  was  commenced,  and  the  most  brilliant  audience  of 
the  season  glanced  in  surprise  to  the  empty  box  of  its  patron.  The  grand  swell 
of  the  overture  rolled  out,  and  thrilled  through  the  silent  house  with  a  new 
emotion.  Such  marvellous  poems  of  sound,  such  pathetic  echoes  of  sadness, 
such  intense  vibrations  of  passion,  such  spiritual  cadences  of  thought  !— in  the 
creation  that  had  issued  from  the  lonely  chamber  of  suffering,  from  the  dreamy 
mind  of  a  feeble  cripple,  there  was  that  which  caught  the  ear  of  the  hearers 


CHANDOS.  203 

with  a  new  voice  and  spoke  to  them  with  a  new  eloquence.  They  came  to 
patronize;  they  stayed  to  feel  ! 

As  the  overture  closed  in  the  throbbing  of  the  waves  of  melody  that  swelled 
with  a  mighty  thunder  through  the  stilness,  into  the  dazzling  light  and  glitter 
of  the  thronged  theatre  Chandos  entered. 

The  fairness  of  his  face  was  unusually  pale  and  unusually  cold;  his  eyes 
had  dark  shadows  under  them,  and  had  a  singular  hectic  brilliance;  otherwise 
there  was  no  change. 

"Late  he  is;  been  drinking,"  said  a  person  in  the  stalls,  who  did  not  know 
him. 

"Never  drinks,"  said  one  who  did.     "Been  gambling." 

Trevenna,  sitting  by,  set  his  teeth  while  he  smiled. 

"  Gambling  '  au  roi  depouille?  Curse  him  !  he  dies  game,"  he  thought 
while  he  looked  upward  to  the  box  as  Chandos  advanced  to  the  front  and  stood 
there  for  a  second,  as  though  blinded  with  the  light,  then  seated  himself  in  his 
accustomed  chair  and  leaned  slightly  forward  in  full  view  of  the  thronged  build- 
ing, where  there  was  scarce  a  seat  in  the  grand  tier  but  held  some  titled  friend 
or  foreign  beauty  who  knew  him  familiarly  or  loved  him  well.  No  other  noticed 
that  slight  pause  as  he  stood  with  a  paralyzed,  dizzy  stupefaction  coming  into 
that  blaze  of  radiance  and  crash  of  sound, — no  one  except  his  foe,  who  knew 
all  that  was  suffered  in  it  and  all  it  meant.  There  had  never  been  a  night  in 
which  Chandos  had  been  more  on  people's  lips,  and  more  in  their  praise  and 
babble,  than  he  was  to-night.  The  interest  of  the  stage  and  of  the  artists  whose 
unrivalled  talent  had  been  brought  together  to  do  justice  to  the  new  opera  was 
divided  with  the  interest  that  the  well-known  box  where  he  sat  had  for  all  present. 
Foreigners  looked  at  him  eagerly  as  the  man  with  whose  fetes  all  Paris  had 
rung;  strangers  had  him  pointed  out  to  them  as  the  leader  of  the  aristocracy, 
the  former  of  fashion,  the  author  of  "  Lucrece,"  the  owner  of  Clarencieux. 
Peeresses  wondered  at  the  absence  of  his  betrothed,  and  spoke  of  his  appear- 
ance as  the  Due  de  Richelieu  at  the  princess's  fancy-ball, — of  his  Watteau 
water-party  at  his  Richmond  bijou  villa, — of  the  magnificence  of  the  bridal  gifts 
he  had  ordered  for  the  Queen  of  Lilies.  Poor  men  envied  him  bitterly, — bit- 
terly; and  rich  men  wondered  why,  with  all  their  wealth,  they  could  not  buy  his 
grace,  his  fame,  his  popularity.  Women  who  had  been  loved  by  him,  or  had 
loved  him  vainly,  looked  at  him,  and  alone  were  struck  by  some  vague  sense  of 
pain  and  disquiet  at  the  serenity  of  his  face,  at  the  glitter  in  the  blue  depths 
of  the  eyes  that  had  ever  till  now  smiled  at  life  with  so  careless  a  brilliance. 

He  sat  unmoved.  He  spoke,  listened,  acted  precisely  as  he  had  done  on 
any  other  of  the  many  nights  when  he  had  led  the  verdict  of  that  house  on  some 
new  talent;  there  was  not  even  a  tremor  in  his  hand,  not  even  a  quiver  in  his 
voice.  The  intense  strength  of  intense  agony  was  lent  him  fora  time;  the 


204  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

world-wide  desert  of  desolation  that  spread  around  him  gave  him  the  desert's 
arid  and  passionless  calm;  he  had  all  the  fictitious  force,  all  the  mechancial 
action,  of  fever.  The  recklessness  of  his  nature  was  roused  till  he  could  have 
laughed  aloud  to  think  how  he  sat  there,  the  observed  of  all  eyes,  the  envied  of 
all  men,  accredited  by  the  world  about  him  with  every  gift  the  gods  could  give, 
and  knew  himself  that  not  a  beggar  in  the  streets  was  poorer,  not  a  homeless 
dog  starving  to  death  more  wretched,  than  he  was. 

He  had  not  come  to  play  out  his  terrible  comedy  from  mockery  or  desper- 
ation; he  had  come  because  even  in  his  darkest  hour  he  would  not  forsake  the 
man  who  was  dependent  on  him,  and  whose  whole  future  hung  on  the  success 
which  his  own  presence  here  alone  could  be  certain  to  secure.  But  passing 
through  it  for  this  man's  sake,  the  gigantic  gulf  that  yawned  between  what  he 
seemed  and  what  he  was,  the  knowledge  of  what  his  world  thought  of  him  and 
said  of  him  in  this  his  last  night's  reign  over  it,  and  of  the  mighty  lie  that,  all 
unwitting  to  him,  his  whole  life  had  been  and  was,  struck  on  him  with  the  hor- 
rible jest  which  despair  oftentimes  will  seem  to  itself,  and  woke  in  him  the  des- 
perate and  reckless  laughter  with  which  men  of  his  race  had  ridden  in  the  old 
days  of  warfare  down  on  to  the  ring  of  spear-heads,  down  on  to  a  certain  death, 
to  laugh  still  while  the  life-blood  burst  forth  from  a  hundred  wounds  and  the 
hoofs  of  trampling  chargers  broke  their  bone  and  tore  their  nerve. 

The  music  swelled  out  on  the  air,  rising  in  aerial  cadence  and  throbbing  in 
eloquent  passion,  now  clear  and  fresh  as  a  spring  bird's  song,  now  supreme  in 
its  melancholy  as  the  moan  of  autumn  winds  through  Western  forests  of  pine. 
Every  joy  denied  him,  every  hope  forbidden  him,  every  smile  he  sought  in  vain, 
every  sigh  he  breathed  in  suffering,  Guido  Lulli  seemed  to  have  recorded  here. 
The  music  was  sublime  as  a  song  of  David,  pure  as  a  young  child's  eyes.  It 
might  not  throughout  be  coldly  perfect  for  the  ear,  but  it  was  far  more;  it  was 
passionately  human  for  the  heart,  it  was  eternally  true  for  every  time. 

Chandos  sat  unmoved  to  the  end.  To  him  though  his  hand  had  molded 
many  of  its  parts,  though  his  sympathy  had  cherished  it  from  its  earliest  birth, 
though  his  thoughts  had  many  a  time  vibrated  to  its  every  chord,  it  was  without 
sense  or  melody  or  meaning  now;  it  was  like  the  sound  of  rushing  waters  in  his 
ear, — no  more.  Yet  he  sat  unwavering  to  the  end,  and  led  with  an  unerring  pre- 
cision the  bursts  of  applause  that  ever  and  again  rang  through  the  Opera-House. 

It  closed;  the  last  magnificent  chords  re-echoed  through  a  dead  silence; 
then,  through  the  thunder  of  public  admiration,  the  name  of  Guido  Lulli  was 
given  forever  to  the  fame  he  sought. 

Chandos  rose  and  left  his  box  with  an  apology  to  the  Due  d'Orvale  and  a 
Russian  prince,  who,  with  others,  had  joined  him  there.  He  went  to  one,  small, 
obscure,  shut  wholly  away  from  the  sight  of  the  audience;  here,  alone,  Lulli 
had  been  placed,  shunning  the  view  of  the  glittering  throng,  and  dreading  the 


CHAN  DOS.  205 

notice  or  the  speech  of  any  with  the  nervous  terror  of  a  recluse.  He  unclosed 
the  door  softly.  Stretched  senseless  on  the  ground  he  saw  the  Provencal's 
form,  his  hands  above  his  head  as  he  had  fallen  in  the  moment  of  ecstasy  when 
for  the  first  time  the  voices  of  the  world  had  given  him  that  promise  of  immor- 
tality of  which  he  had  so  long  and  vainly  dreamed. 

Chandos  stooped  and  raised  him  gently,  the  movement  and  the  sweep  of  air 
from  the  open  doorway  roused  him  from  his  trance;  his  eyes  unclosed,  he 
looked  upward,  scarcely  conscious  still. 

"  It  has  triumphed  !     Ah  !  I  can  die  so  happy  !  " 

The  words  left  the  cripple's  lips  with  the  sigh  so  rare  in  human  life, — the 
sigh  of  perfect  joy. 

His  gaze,  dreamy  and  distant,  like  one  who  sees  the  visions  of  the  future, 
wandered  back,  and  knew  the  features  that  bent  above  him.  The  smile  that 
was  like  sunlight  beamed  upon  his  face;  he  took  his  benefactor's  hands  and 
kissed  them,  the  great  tears  coursing  down  his  cheeks. 

"  Monseigneur,  this  is  your  gift  !  I  cannot  thank  you.  What  are  words  ? 
You  have  given  me  life,  and  more  than  life;  you  have  given  me  immortality  ! 
/  cannot  reward  you,  but  night  and  day  I  pray  that  God  may  pay  my  debt." 

A  smile  came  on  Chandos'  lips, — a  smile  so  sad  that  it  might  have  been 
either  curse  or  prayer.  He  stooped  over  Lulli,  and  spoke  with  an  infinite 
gentleness. 

"  You  will  be  very  famous  in  the  years  to  come.  Once  or  twice  remember 
that  I  aided  something  to  it.  I  shall  be  repaid  enough." 

And  with  those  words  of  farewell — a  last  farewell,  though  the  other  knew  it 
not — he  left  him  before  the  musician  could  reply. 


"You  eclipse  yourself  to-night,"  said  a  French  princess  to  him,  when  an 
hour  later,  his  great  world,  having  ordained  the  triumph  of  the  opera,  came,  as 
they  had  long  been  bidden,  to  an  entertainment  in  celebration  of  the  success  of 
the  Ariadne  in  IVaxos.  "  You  revive  the  fetes  of  our  Grand  Siecle." 

He  bowed,  and  smiled  slightly. 

"You  do  me  much  honor,  madame.  It  was  in  the  Grand  Siecle  that  a 
Chandos  gave  a  supper  to  Marie  Antoinette  when  she  was  dauphiness,  with 
which  all  Paris  rang  from  the  Court  to  the  Cerveau,  and — when  his  guests  were 
gone,  fell  on  his  own  sword  ! " 

"  How  horrible  ! "  murmured  the  lady.  "  Pray,  do  not  revive  the  century 
to  that  extent." 

"  Oh,  no.     We  wear  no  rapiers,  and  we  make  no  scenes." 


206  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

Every  highest  title,  every  fairest  beauty,  in  the  two  aristocracies  of  which  he 
was  the  idol  came  to  his  house  that  night;  every  distinction  in  intellect,  or 
blood,  or  fashion,  or  loveliness  met  round  him  as  they  had  met  a  thousand 
times.  The  gardens  were  lighted  with  innumerable  lamps  gleaming  among  the 
trees;  the  winter-garden  glanced  a  very  paradise  of  Oriental  color;  the  wax 
radiance  fell  on  fairest  brows,  and  the  diamonds  and  sapphires  glistened  among 
silkiest  hair;  the  low,  pleasant  murmur  of  voices,  with  "  fashion  not  with  feeling 
softly  freighted,"  filled  the  chambers:  the  echoes  of  music  came  from  the  ball- 
rooms beyond;  all  the  old  life  that  he  had  known  so  well,  and  led  so  dazzlingly, 
was  about  him  now  for  the  last  time. 

As  the  "  thousand  great  lords  "  who  "  drank  and  praised  the  gods  of  gold 
and  silver  "  at  Belshazzar's  banquet,  while  laughter  and  song  echoed  through 
the  high  halls  of  Babylon,  saw  not  the  foreshadowed  doom  written  on  the  brow 
of  the  lord  of  the  feast,  and  read  not  among  the  jewelled  arabesques  of  the 
palace-wall  the  "  Mene,  Tekel,  Upharsin  "  that  rose  out  to  his  own  sight,  so 
those  who  came  to  Chandos  to-night  saw  no  sign  upon  his  face,  and  had  no 
thought  that  this  was  a  farewell, — a  farewell  to  joy,  and  peace,  and  women's 
love,  and  the  honor  of  men,  and  all  the  gracious  gifts  and  treasures  of  his  life. 
They  did  not  know.  They  saw  no  change  in  him.  Great  ladies  found  his 
voice  as  soft,  his  courtesies  as  graceful;  men  thought  his  wit  keener,  his  insouci- 
ance lighter,  than  they  had  ever  been.  He  had  said  in  his  heart  that  none 
should  be  able  on  the  morrow  to  recall  having  noted  in  him  one  shadow  of  pain. 
The  men  of  his  race  had  always  been  proud  as  they  were  reckless,  capable  of 
intense  endurance  as  they  were  resigned  to  limitless  indulgence;  the  spirit  of 
his  race  rose  in  him  now.  Throughout  this  night— a  night  when  such  agony 
was  on  him  as  men  of  stronger  will  and  harder  training  might  have  sunk  under 
without  shame — he  let  the  world  about  see  no  trace  that  all  was  not  with  him 
as  it  had  ever  been.  His  face  was  quite  colorless,  and  now  and  then  he  lost  all 
sight  or  sense  of  where  he  was;  yet  he  never  let  a  word,  a  glance,  a  sigh,  escape 
him  which  could  have  told  his  deadly  secret. 

One  only,  mingled  among  the  crowds  of  princes,  peers,  and  statesmen  by 
right  of  long-established  footing  and  familiarity,  noted  the  dark  gleam  in  his 
eyes  as  of  one  who  defied  fate  with  all  the  delirious  daring  of  desperation,  and 
knew  all  that  was  suffered,  all  that  was  suppressed, — and  was  content. 

Once  their  eyes  met,  with  a  swaying  cloud  of  perfumed  laces,  and  delicate 
hues,  and  fair  faces,  and  glittering  orders,  and  sparkling  jewels,  parting  them 
for  the  breadth  of  a  chamber.  It  was  a  strange  fellowship  between  the  betrayer 
and  the  betrayed,  this  solitary  knowledge  of  the  doom  that  hung  over  the  house 
that  was  now  filled  with  light  and  melody  and  the  music  of  women's  voices  and 
the  names  of  those  who  controlled  nations, — this  mutual  consciousness  alone 
that  as  they  met  now  they  met  for  the  last  time  forever,  that  when  this  night 


CHANDOS.  207 

should  end  with  it  would  end  forever  the  shadowless  life  that  had  been  here 
so  long. 

To-night  was  the  supreme  martyrdom  of  the  one,  the  supreme  triumph  of 
the  other. 

"  Finished  at  last  !  "  thought  the  man  who  had  never  let  go  his  vow  of  ven- 
geance since  the  summer  night  long  before  in  his  childhood  when  he  had  sworn 
it  at  his  mother's  instance.  "  All  the  toil,  all  the  lie,  all  the  envy,  all  the  bitter- 
ness and  humiliation,  finished  forme;  all  the  glory,  all  the  peace,  all  the  fame,  all 
the  luxurious  ease  and  the  royal  pride  and  the  world-wide  love,  finished  for  you. 
After  to-night  we  shall  change  parts,  my  proud,  beautiful,  caressed  darling  of 
women, — my  careless  Chandos  of  Clarencieux  !  Ah,  what  a  thing  is  patience  ! 
it  sits  and  weaves  so  long  in  the  gloom  futilely,  but  it  traps  at  the  last.  There 
is  only  one  thing  wanting, — if  you  would  wince.  But  you  die  like  the  last  mar- 
quis, curse  you  !  you  die  game  through  it  all  !  " 


Imperceptibly,  one  by  one,  the  aristocratic  crowd  thinned,  and  left  the  long 
vista  of  rooms  that  had  so  often  and  so  long  seen  the  most  exclusive  and  the 
most  superb  entertainments  of  the  time;  they  passed  away,  seeing  nothing, 
dreaming  nothing,  of  the  fate  that  had  fallen  on  the  man  who  thus  took  his 
farewell  of  them,  but  speaking  only,  as  their  carriages  rolled  away,  of  the  new 
genius  that  he  had  introduced  among  them,  and  of  the  lavish  and  fantastic  roy- 
alty of  splendor  with  which  his  fetes  were  always  given. ,  The  murmur  of  the 
voices  died  away,  the  strains  of  the  music  ceased,  the  low  subdued  laughter 
sank  to  silence,  the  glittering  throngs  dispersed;  they  left  him — his  long-familiar 
friends,  companions,  and  associates — never  again  to  rally  round  their  rot  gail- 
lartt,  never  again  to  be  summoned  at  his  bidding. 

He  stood  alone, — alone  as  he  must  ever  be  henceforth. 

The  perfect  stillness  followed  strangely  on  the  movement  and  melody  and 
radiance  of  life  that  had  all  died  out;  a  clock  struck  a  mournful  silvery  chime 
upon  the  silence,  the  fall  of  the  water  splashed  in  the  fountains;  other  sound 
there  was  none.  The  light  from  a  million  points  fell  on  the  clustering  colors 
of  the  tropic  flowers,  the  drooping  fronds  of  the  pale-green  palms,  the  fair 
limbs  of  the  statues,  the  deep  glow  of  the  paintings:  he  looked  at  these  things, 
and  knew  that  from  this  hour  they  would  be  his  no  more. 

To-night  for  the  last  time  they  were  his  own;  when  the  sun  should  rise,  the 
fiat  would  go  forth  that  would  scatter  them  abroad  to  strangers'  hands  and 
enemies'  spoil.  Henceforth  they  and  he  would  be  divided, — the  things  that  he 
had  gathered  and  cherished  would  be  divided,  broadcast  to  whoever  should 


208  OVID  AS    WORKS. 

choose  to  buy,— and  under  the  roof  that  had  known  him  so  long  his  voice 
be  unheard,  his  face  unseen,  his  name  forgotten,  his  place  behold  him  no  more. 

Far  behind  him,  parted  from  him  by  an  eternal  gulf,  lay  the  life  of  his  past, 
which  had  been  one  glad  and  gorgeous  revel,  one  cloudless  and  unthinking  joy, 
and  which  he  must  now  lay  down,  as  the  Discrowned  whom  the  Praetorians 
summoned  laid  aside  golden  pomp,  and  Tyrian  purples,  and  brimming  amphorae, 
and  dew-laden  rose-crowns,  and  went  out,  unpitied  and  alone,  to  die. 

That  sweet  and  cloudless  life  of  his  rich  past ! — to-night  he  was  dethroned 
and  driven  out  from  it  forever;  to-night,  a  living  man,  he  knew  all  the  desola- 
tion of  death,  and  in  the  full  glory  of  his  youth  was  condemned  to  the  anguish 
and  the  beggary  of  impoverished  and  stricken  age. 

To-night  he  was  driven  out  to  exile;  and  behind  him  closed  forever  were 
the  barred  gates  of  his  lost  Eden. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE   DEATH    OF   THE   TITAN. 

THE  Duke  of  Castlemaine  sat  in  his  library  in  his  mighty  Abbey  of  War- 
burne,  whither  he  had  come  by  his  physician's  counsels.  He  was  alone;  for 
secretaries  and  chaplains  and  stewards  were  no  companions  for  the  superb  old 
Titan  of  the  Regency.  His  bright  blue  eyes,  so  fiery  and  so  eloquent  still,  were 
looking  outward  at  the  tumbled  mass  of  rock  and  moorland  and  giant  forest- 
breadths  that  made  the  grandeur  of  Warburne;  his  head  so  stately,  though 
white  with  eighty  winters,  was  slightly  bent;  his  thoughts  were  with  dead  days, 
— days  when  his  voice  rang  through  the  House  of  Peers  or  wound  its  silky 
way  to  the  hearts  of  women, — days  when  he  could  riot  in  the  wildest  orgies 
through  the  night  and  dictate  despatches  on  which  the  Fate  of  Europe  hung, 
with  a  clear  brain  and  a  calm  pulse,  when  the  morning  rose, — days  when  he 
had  loitered  laughing  over  ladies'  supper-tables  with  half  a  dozen  duels  on  his 
hands,  and  looked  in  the  soft  eyes  of  cloistered  Spaniards  ere  leading  his  cavalry 
to  the  charge, — days  when  his  frame  had  been  iron  and  his  voice  magic,  when 
nations  were  guided  by  his  will  and  soft  lips  had  been  warm  on  his  own, — days, 
in  one  word,  of  his  Youth. 

Though  in  extreme  age,  the  duke  was  a  greater  man  yet  than  those  of  this 
generation, — more  powerful,  more  fearless,  more  full  of  fine  wit,  of  stately 
courtesy,  of  haughty  honor.  He  was  of  another  breed,  another  creed,  another 
age,  than  ours, — the  age  when  men  drank  their  brandy  where  we  sip  our  claret, 
when  men  punished  a  lie  with  their  sword  where  we  pass  it  over  in  prudence, 


209 

when  disgrace  was  washed  out  with  life  where  we  bring  it  in  court  and  make 
money  of  it,  when  if  their  morals  were  more  openly  lax  their  honor  was  more 
inexorably  stringent,  when  if  their  revels  were  wilder  their  dealing  was  fairer, 
and  when  the  same  strength  which  made  their  orgies  fiercer  and  their  blow 
harder  made  their  eloquence  loftier,  their  mettle  higher,  their  wit  keener,  their 
courage  brighter,  than  our  own.  And  in  his  extreme  grace  the  Titan  was  a 
Titan  yet,  dwarfing  and  paling  those  of  weaklier  stature  and  of  more  timorous 
breed.  He  sat  there  looking  out  at  the  brown  moors,  warm  with  the  golden 
gorse;  and  he  moved  in  surprise  as  the  door  opened,  with  a  smile  of  pleasure 
lighting  his  eyes. 

"  You !  Has  an  earthquake  swallowed  the  town,  that  we  see  you  in  the 
country,  my  dear  Ernest  ?  " 

Even  as  the  first  word  was  spoken,  even  as  his  first  glance  fell  on  Chandos, 
he  knew  vaguely  but  terribly  that  some  calamity,  vaster  than  his  thoughts 
could  compass,  had  fallen  here,  on  the  man  whom  he  cared  for  as  he  cared  for 
no  other  of  his  race.  Chandos  was  the  only  one  of  his  blood  who  had  his  own 
code,  his  own  creed, — the  only  one  in  whose  companionship  he  heard  the  echoes 
of  a  long-passed  age;  and  he  was  proud  of  him,  and  built  mighty  hopes  on 
him, — proud  of  his  eminence,  of  his  brilliance,  of  his  success,  proud  even  of  his 
personal  grace  and  beauty. 

Chandos  drew  near  without  a  word.  Those  who  loved  him  as  the  old  duke 
loved  saw  a  change  on  him  more  ghastly  than  though  they  had  seen  his  face 
set  in  the  colorless  calm  of  sudden  death. 

Castlemaine  leaned  towards  him,  and  his  long  white  fingers  closed  with  a 
convulsive  pressure  on  the  Mignard  snuff-bok  that  he  held. 

"  What  is  it  ?  " 

Chandos  answered  nothing;  he  sank  down  into  a  seat,  and  his  head  fell  for- 
ward on  his  arms.  The  recklessness  of  desperation,  the  fever  of  utter  hope- 
lessness, had  given  him  strength  to  pass  through  the  ordeal  of  the  night  before; 
but  here  his  strength  broke  down.  He  knew  how  the  pride  of  the  gallant  old 
man  had  been  centred  in  him;  he  suffered  for  the  pain  he  must  deal,  not  less 
than  for  the  misery  he  bore. 

The  duke's  mellow  voice  shook  huskily: — 

"  Tell  me  in  a  word.     I  have  never  loved  suspense." 

Chandos  did  not  lift  his  head;  his  answer  came  slowly  dragged  out,  hoarse 
and  faint  from  exhaustion,  excitation,  and  long  want  of  food  and  sleep:  for  he 
had  tasted  nothing  from  the  hour  that  he  had  learned  his  fate,  and  his  eyes  had 
never  closed. 

"  I  can  tell  you  in  one  word: — ruin  !  " 

The  duke's  hand  trembled,  making  the  diamonds  flash  and  glitter  on  the 
enamel  lid;  it  had  never  so  trembled  when  it  had  shaken  the  dice,  though  a  fort- 


210  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

une  hung  on  a  throw,  when  it  had  lifted  a  pistol,  though  a  life  hung  on  the  shot, 
when  it  had  pointed  to  a  serried  square  of  Soult's  picked  troops,  though  an 
army  hung  on  the  charge. 

"  Ruin  !     A  wide  word.     And  for  whom  ? " 

"  For  me." 

"  You  1 " 

"  Yes  ! "  he  answered,  with  a  reckless  laugh, — such  a  laugh  as  the  gamester 
gives  when  his  last  coin  is  staked  and  gone  and  no  resource  is  left  except  the 
suicide's  grave.  "As  Trevenna  phrases  it,  ' Croesus  has  ceased  to  reign  in 
Sardis  ! '  It  will  amuse  the  world, — for  a  week  at  least.  A  long  time  for  the 
absent  to  be  remembered." 

A  deep  oath  sprang  from  the  close-shut  lips  of  the  old  duke;  his  face  grew 
white  as  the  hoary  silky  hair  that  shaded  it,  and  the  diamonds  shook  and  glit- 
tered in  the  tremor  of  his  hand.  But  he  loved  the  temper  that  made  a  jest  even 
of  a  death-blow;  he  had  seen  much  of  it  in  his  early  day;  he  followed  the  lead 
with  gallant  endurance. 

"  Ruin  for  you  ?    It  is  very  sudden,  is  it  not  ?     Tell  me  more;  tell  me  more." 

His  voice  was  very  faint,  but  it  was  steady;  he  loved  the  man  of  whom  he 
heard  this  thing  with  the  generous  love  of  an  age  that  kept  all  the  warmth  and 
all  the  fire  of  his  youth;  yet  they  were  both  of  the  same  school, — they  both 
suppressed  all  sign  of  pain  as  shame.  He  heard;  his  head — the  head  of  an 
Agamemnon — bowed;  his  hand  closed  convulsively  on  the  Louis  Quatorze  toy; 
his  breathing  was  quick  and  loud.  Once  alone  he  interrupted  the  recital ;  it 
was  at  Trevenna' s  name. 

"  That  vile  fellow  ! — I  bade  you  beware  of  him.     He  hates  you,  Ernest." 

"It  maybe/'  said  Ohandos,  wearily.  "I  have  almost  thought  so  since — 
since  this.  And  yet  he  owes  me  much, — more  than  you  know." 

"  Who  hate  us  so  remorselessly  as  those  who  owe  us  anything?  " 

"  Then  are  men  devils  !  " 

"  Most  of  them.     Who  doubts  it  ?     Did  he  ever  owe  you  any  grudge  ? " 

"  None, — only  benefits." 

"  They  are  the  less  easily  forgiven  of  the  two.  Had  you  any  mistress  whom 
this  man  loved  ? " 

"  Never,  to  my  knowledge." 

"  But  you  may  have  had,  unknown  to  you  ?  '  Who  was  the  woman  ?  '  may 
be  asked  wellnigh  of  every  feud  and  misery  !  Whatever  for,  he  hates  you, 
haunts  you,  envies  you  ruthlessly,— hates  you  if  only  because  his  hands  are 
large  and  coarse  and  yours  are  long  and  slender  !  " 

"  You  make  him  knave  and  fool  in  one." 

"  The  combination  is  not  rare  !  But,  pardon  me,  go  on.  I  will  hear  more 
patiently." 


CHAN  DOS.  211 

He  heard  very  patiently, — heard  to  the  end. 

His  head  sank,  his  breathing  grew  fast  and  labored,  the  veins  swelled  on 
his  still  fair  broad  brow,  his  giant  limbs  trembled.  It  was  the  heaviest  blow 
life  had  it  in  its  power  to  deal  him;  and,  though  still  of  the  race  of  Titans,  the 
duke  had  lost  something  of  the  force  of  his  manhood;  the  strength  which  had 
risen  from  the  Regent's  orgies  unscathed,  and  borne  unjaded  the  heat  and  bur- 
den of  Vittoria  and  Waterloo,  was  not  now  what  it  had  been. 

"  Great  God  !  if  Philip  Chandos  had  foreseen — 

His  voice  faltered;  his  listener  stretched  out  his  hand  in  an  involuntary 
supplication. 

"In  mercy  spare  me  that!  Do  you  think  /have  not  remembered 
him  ?" 

There  was  a  piteous  anguish  m  the  few  words,  that  pierced  the  duke's  heart 
to  the  core;  his  own  tones,  as  he  answered,  were  sorely  enfeebled  for  the  voice 
that  had  used  to  roll  his  thunder  through  the  Lords,  and  peal  down  the  ranks 
of  "  Castlemaine's  Horse,"  in  the  dauntless  days  of  his  manhood. 

"  I  meant  no  reproach  !  You  would  have  heard  none  from  your  father's 
lips.  He  loved  you  well;  and  though  you  have  been  improvident,  you  have  not 
lost  all.  You  have  been  true  to  your  house :  you  have  saved  your  honor. 
Pardon  me,  Ernest;  your  news  has  left  me  scarcely  myself.  But — but — must 
Clarencieux  go  ? " 

Where  Chandos  sat,  in  the  gloom  of  themullioned  window,  the  shiver  passed 
over  him  that  had  always  come  there  at  the  name  of  his  idolized  inheritance; 
he  could  have  better  borne  to  part  from  wealth,  and  repute,  and  the  love  of  the 
world,  and  the  love  of  woman,  than  he  could  bear  to  part  from  Clarencieux. 

"  They  say  so,"  he  answered,  simply. 

"  My  God  !  and  we  cannot  help  you.  Warburne  is  mortgaged  to  its  pettiest 
farm.  We — of  the  Plantagenet  blood  ! — are  beggars  !  I  would  give  my  life  to 
aid  you,  and  I  have  nothing." 

The  confession  broke  from  him  so  low  that  it  barely  was  above  hi»  breath. 
It  was  very  terrible  to  the  great  noble  to  know  that  in  the  dire  extremity  of  the 
man  he  loved  he  could  aid  him  no  more  than  though  he  were  the  poorest  peasant 
on  his  lands. 

Chandos  looked  up;  the  unnatural  coldness  and  fixity  that  had  set  upon  the 
fairness  of  his  face  from  the  moment  this  calamity  had  fallen  on  him  softened 
and  changed;  his  lips  trembled;  he  rose  with  a  sudden  impulse,  and  stooped 
over  the  duke's  chair,  laying  his  hand  tenderly  on  the  old  man's. 

"  Forgive  me  that  I  bring  this  shame  and  wretchedness  upon  you.  I  came 
here  that  you  might  learn  it  from  no  other  first;  not  the  least  bitter  of  my 
memories  has  been  the  grief  that  I  must  entail  on  you." 

The  duke's  fingers  grasped  his  hand  close,  and  wrung  it  hard;  no  reproach, 


212  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

no  rebuke,  came  from  him;  he  could  not  have  raised  his  voice  more  than  he 
could  have  lifted  his  arm  against  Chandos  in  his  suffering. 

"Do  not  think  of  me;  I  shall  live  but  little  time  to  suffer  anything.  One 
question  more.  She  who  is  to  be  your  wife  ?  " 

Chandos  moved  from  him  into  the  shadow  that  was  thrown  darkly  across 
the  casement  by  the  great  cedar-boughs  without. 

"  She  is  dead  to  me." 

Another  oath,  loud  and  deep,  rattled  in  his  hearer's  throat;  the  fire  of  his 
manhood's  wrath  gleamed  in  his  azure  eyes.  The  haughty  patrician  could 
have  borne  anything  sooner  than  this, — that  one  of  his  blood  should  be  for- 
saken. Still,  no  recrimination  escaped  him;  he  never  said  "/  warned  you  !  " 
The  grand  old  pagan  of  a  colossal  age,  hardened  by  long  combat,  and  used  to 
the  proud  supreme  dominion  of  a  great  chieftainship  through  such  long  years 
of  war  and  of  state  power,  was  more  merciful  to  adversity  than  the  young  and 
delicate  Lily  Queen. 

Silence  fell  between  them.  The  duke  sat  with  his  white  crest  bowed,  and  an 
unusual  dimness  over  the  brightness  of  his  Plantagenet  eyes;  and  every  now  and 
then  the  diamonds  in  the  box  he  held  shook  with  a  quick  tremor  in  the  sunlight. 

"  What  will  you  do  ? "  he  asked,  suddenly,  shading  his  glance  with  the 
enamelled  box. 

"  Do  !  "  echoed  Chandos,  wearily;  it  seemed  to  him  that  his  life  was  ended. 
"  What  is  there  to  do?  Nothing;  except — to  end  like  the  last  marquis.  An 
axe  on  Tower  Hill  was  more  dignified,  but  a  dose  of  laudanum  will  be  as 
rapid.  It  would  make  the  best  ending  for  the  story  for  the  clubs,  and  the 
sales  will  realize  better  if  their  interest  be  heightened  by  a  suicide  !  " 

The  duke  looked  hastily  up,  with  that  fin  sourire  with  which  throughout  his 
career  his  Grace  of  Castlemaine  had  veiled  very  deep  agitation. 

"Well,  you  would  have  precedent.  You  would  but  do  what  Evelyn 
Chandos  did  after  his  master's  death,  you  remember  ?  Doubtless  it  would  finish 
the  meftdrame  well  for  the  world.  Still,  were  I  you,  I  would  not.  I  am  an 
old  soldier,  and  I  confess  I  do  not  like  surrender — to  fortune  or  anything  else. 
Your  father  died  in  the  Commons  like  a  gladiator;  I  should  not  like  you  to  die 
in  a  ditch  like  a  dog.  They  would  not  be  meet  companion-pictures.  Besides 
—I  do  not  wish  to  see  your  grave;  I  have  seen  so  many  !  " 

Calmly,  dispassionately,  the  old  soldier  spoke,  toying  with  his  Bourbon  box. 
None  could  have  guessed  the  intense  anxiety  hidden  under  that  courtly  man- 
ner, the  yearning  emotion  concealed  under  that  serene  smile.  Once  only  his 
voice  shook:  he  had  seen  the  graves  of  so  many  ! — of  the  friends  of  his  youth, 
of  his  brothers  in  council,  of  the  comrades  who  had  fought  and  fallen  beside 
him,  of  the  women  who  had  lain  in  his  bosom  and  smiled  in  his  eyes.  He  had 
seen  so  many  ! 


CHAN  DOS.  213 

Chandbs  knew  his  meaning, — knew  all  that  was  veiled  under  the  gracious 
courtesy,  the  gentle  smile;  those  brief  and  tranquil  words  to  him  bore  an 
unspeakable  eloquence, — an  eloquence  which  moved  him  as  no  insult,  no 
indignity,  no  adversity,  had  power  to  move  him. 

Where  he  stood,  he  bowed  low,  very  low,  till  his  head  was  stooped  and  his 
lips  touched  the  aged  noble's  hand. 

"You  are  right,  and  I  thank  you.  Have  no  fear;  your  words  shall  be 
remembered.  Whatever  my  fate  is,  I  will  accept  it  and  endure  it." 

The  duke  looked  upward  at  him. 

"  I  am  glad,"  he  said,  almost  faintly.  "  Centre  fortune  bon  cceur.  Pardon 
me  if  I  intrude  my  counsels:  it  is  the  privilege  of  Nestors  to  prose  !  You  go 
now  ?  I  shall  see  you  again  ? " 

"  Surely."  Chandos'  voice  sank  very  low  as  he  stood  before  the  grand  old 
man.  "  Before  I  go — forgive  me." 

The  duke's  eyes,  so  blue,  so  fiery  still,  dwelt  on  him  with  a  great  unuttered 
tenderness;  and  the  tones  that  had  used  to  ring  like  a  clarion  down  the  battle- 
fields were  gentle  as  a  woman's. 

"  I  have  nothing  to  forgive.  Had  you  loved  and  served  yourself  as  you 
have  loved  and  served  others,  it  would  not  be  thus  with  you  now." 

Then  they  parted,  never  to  meet  again. 

The  duke  sat  listening  to  the  echo  of  his  footsteps,  then,  with  a  slight  sigh, 
he  leaned  back  in  his  arm-chair,  his  hand  relaxed  its  clasp  upon  the  jewelled 
box,  a  weariness  came  over  him  new  to  his  nerve  of  steel,  a  mist  stole  before  his 
eyes,  shutting  from  his  sight  the  flickering  leaves  and  the  purple  moorlands  and 
all  the  light  and  movement  of  the  forest-world. 

The  summer  light  quivered  through  innumerable  boughs,  young  fawns 
played  in  the  warmth,  white  clouds  drifted  over  sunny  skies,  and  a  nest-bird 
above  in  the  cedar's  branches  sang  low  and  softly,  as  though  not  to  break  the 
rest  of  the  sleeper  within.  And  the  duke  still  leaned  back  in  his  ebony  chair, 
with  the  slight  smile  about  his  lips,  and  the  diamonds  flashing  in  the  box  that 
was  lying  at  his  feet. 

The  golden  day  stole  onward,  the  shadows  lengthened,  the  birds  sought 
their  roost,  and  the  young  fawns  their  couches;  the  peace  of  evening  brooded 
on  the  earth,  all  things  were  at  rest,  and  so  was  he;  for  he  still  sat  there,  motion- 
less and  with  the  jewels  gleaming  at  his  feet. 

The  sunset  faded,  and  the  twilight  came,  the  purple  haze  upon  the  moor- 
lands deepening  to  night.  Still  he  sat  there,  while  the  shadows  stole  the  brill- 
iance from  the  diamonds  and  softly  veiled  his  face  as  though  in  reverence. 
And  when  some  of  his  wide  household,  who  were  so  nigh,  yet  whom  he  could 
not  lift  his  hand  to  summon,  dared  to  venture  at  length  unbidden  to  his  pres- 


314  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

ence,  they  found  him  thus;  and  a  great  awe  fell  on  them,  and  the  hush  of  a 
breathless  dread;  for  they  knew  that  they  were  standing  in  the  presence  of 

Death. 

The  last  of  a  race  of  Titans  had  died,  as  well  became  him,  in  silence  and 
alone,  without  a  sign,  and  with  a  smile  upon  his  lips. 


CHAPTER   VI. 

"AND   THE   SPOILERS   CAME   DOWN." 

IT  was  night  at  Clarencieux. 

In  the  Greuze  cabinet,  where  a  few  weeks  before  Chandos  had  stood  lightly 
glancing  through  the  French  novel,  with  the  warmth  of  its  fire  shed  mellow  and 
ruddy  about  him,  he  stood  now.  The  twilight  of  the  summer  evening  had  but 
just  fallen;  the  pale  moon  steamed  in  through  the  oriels;  even  the  fair,  rich 
hues  of  the  French  painter's  women  looked  ashen  and  weary  in  the  misty  half- 
light  that  was  alone  in  the  chamber.  Chandos  leaned  against  the  high  carved 
marble  of  the  mantel -piece;  his  chest  was  bowed  as  with  the  weight  of  age;  he 
breathed  heavily,  and  with  each  breath  pain;  his  face  was  white  as  the  sculp- 
ture he  rested  on,  and  set  into  that  deadly  calm  which  had  never  left  him  when 
in  others'  sight.  The  tidings  of  the  duke's  death  had  reached  him  some  days, 
and  had  filled  up  the  measure  of  his  anguish,  adding  to  it  the  torture  of  a  pas- 
sionate regret,  of  an  eternal  remorse.  He  had  loved  the  grand  old  man  from 
whose  fearless,  fiery  eyes  no  glance  but  one  of  kindness  and  of  gentleness  had 
looked  on  him  from  his  earliest  childhood;  and  he  knew  that  the  shock  of  his 
own  ruin  had  slain  the  mighty  strength  of  the  old  noble,  if  ever  grief  killed  age. 

He  stood  alone;  his  heart  seemed  numb  and  dead  with  misery;  he  gave  no 
sign  of  emotion;  no  tears  had  ever  come  into  his  eyes  since  the  hour  in  which 
his  fate  fell  on  him.  The  nights  had  passed  pacing  sleeplessly  to  and  fro  his 
chamber,  or  heavily  drugged  to  rest  with  opium;  the  days  had  passed  almost 
fasting,  and  in  an  apathy  that  awed  those  about  him  with  a  vague  terror  lest 
his  end  should  be  in  the  vacant  gloom  of  madness.  He  was  self-possessed, 
self-controlled;  he  answered  tranquilly,  he  heard  patiently;  but  there  was  that 
in  this  mechanical  action,  this  unnatural  serenity,  that  had  a  more  horrible 
dread  for  those  who  saw  him  than  all  the  ravings  of  delirium,  all  the  passion  of 
grief,  could  ever  have  had. 

The  door  unclosed:  John  Trevenna  entered. 

"  They  are  all  here,"  he  said,  more  softly  than  he  had  ever  spoken. 

Chandos  bent  his  head  and  followed  him  out  of  the  chamber.  They  who 
waited  were  his  creditors. 


CHANDOS.  215 

In  a  day.  with  the  rush  of  hell-hounds  let  out  of  leash,  and  as  though  at  a 
given  unanimous  signal,  his  claimants  had  poured  and  pressed  in  on  him,  bay- 
ing with  one  tongue  for  their  own  quarry, — money.  He  had  bidden  them  all 
meet  here,  and  they  had  come  without  one  missing, — a  strange  gathering  for 
the  halls  of  Clarencieux,  where  kings  had  used  to  find  their  surest  shelter, 
and  courts  had  been  entertained  through  Plantagenet  and  Elizabethan  and 
Stuart  days. 

They  were  collected  in  the  great  banqueting-hall;  a  mob  of  more  than  a 
hundred  men, — men  who  had  come  down  on  the  same  errand,  in  the  same 
temper,  sullen  yet  eager,  defiant  yet  suspicious,  savage  yet  audacious, — men 
who  had  no  mercy  on  a  dethroned  royalty,  and  who  had  no  sight  save  for  the 
deficit  they  pushed  to  claim.  Still  even  on  them  the  solemn  and  venerable 
beauty  of  Clarencieux  had  a  quieting  spell.  As  they  had  entered,  their  voices 
unconsciously  had  sunk  lower,  their  gait  involuntarily  had  grown  less  swagger- 
ing; and  as  they  stood  now,  counting  with  greedy  eyes  the  worth  and  magnifi- 
cence of  the  banqueting-room,  a  silence  had  fallen  on  them. 

"  Feels  a'most  like  a  church,"  whispered  one,  a  picture-dealer,  as  he  looked 
down  the  vista  of  the  double  porphyry  columns. 

As  he  spoke,  Chandos  entered. 

He  bowed  to  them  with  a  grave  and  courteous  grace;  all  had  their  hats  on, 
even  those  better  bred,  from  the  sense  of  scorn  in  which  they  held  a  debtor, 
and  for  the  sake  of  vaunting  and  of  claiming  their  own  superiority.  Involun- 
tarily, as  they  saw  him,  they  uncovered  in  respectful  silence,  the  Jew  Ignatius 
Mathias,  who  represented  the  bill-discounting  firm,  alone  remaining  the  excep- 
tion. Trevenna's  eye  had  glanced  at  him  as  his  hand  went  to  his  velvet  cap, 
and  his  arm  had  dropped  as  though  paralysed. 

In  the  stillness  Chandos  advanced  up  the  hall,  his  eyes  resting  unmoved  on 
the  strange  and  motley  group  that  filled  with  their  uncomely  forms,  and  with 
almost  every  type  of  European  nationality,  the  porphyry  chamber  where  king 
and  prince  and  peer  had  used  to  sit,  his  guests  and  his  boon  friends.  His 
perfect  calmness  was  unchanged;  his  bearing  was  grave  and  proud;  his  face 
looked  white  as  the  marble  of  a  statue  against  which  he  paused,  death-white 
beside  the  black  velvet  of  the  morning-dress  he  wore,  but  it  was  composed, 
haughty,  thoughtful, — strangely  like  the  face  of  the  last  marquis.  There  was 
not  a  murmur,  not  a  whisper,  raised;  there  was  that  in  his  look  which  held  the 
coarsest,  the  greediest,  the  most  pitiless,  silent. 

He  stood  beside  the  statue  (it  was  that  of  his  father)  and  turned  towards 
them.  He  was  at  the  upper  end  of  the  porphyry  hall,  and  the  multitude  faced 
him  in  the  glow  of  the  lights  that  were  illumined  here. 

"  Gentlemen,"  he  said,  calmly,  with  a  tremor  in  his  voice,  though  it  was  faint 
as  after  long  illness,  "  I  have  but  a  few  words  to  say  to  you.  You  are  here  to 


216 


OUIDA'S    WOXKS. 


enforce  your  claims.  Of  any  one  of  those  claims  I  was  in  ignorance  a  few  days 
since;  but  I  dispute  none  of  them:  the  improvidence  of  my  life  has  left  me  no 
title  to  do  so.  You  will  doubt  me,  perhaps,  when  I  say  I  never  knew  I  owed  a 
single  debt;  yet  such  is  the  truth." 

There  was  a  stir  among  the  crowd,  restless,  pained,  yet  curious;  they  could 

not  tell  the  meaning  of  this,  yet  they  were  stirred  with  a  singular  awe  and 

wonder.     One  voice,  the  picture-dealer's,  rough  yet  cordial,  broke  the  silence:— 

"  We  believe  you  !  damned  if  we  don't !     You  ha'n't  got  a  face  what  lies  !  " 

Chandos  bent  his  head  in  silent  acknowledgment. 

"  For  the  rest,"  he  continued,  still  with  that  unchanged  tranquillity,  "  I  have 
but  little  to  add.  The  amount  of  your  claims  on  me  is,  in  the  aggregate,  suffi- 
cient to  wreck  fortunes  ten  times  larger  than  mine  has  been;  yet,  as  I  under- 
stand, you  can  be  paid  in  full  by  my  entire  surrender  of  all  that  I  possess. 
This  surrender  I  make;  my  lawyers  will  explain  its  value  better  than  I  can  do. 
I  resign  everything  unconditionally  to  you;  it  has  become  no  longer  mine, 
but  yours.  I  believe  there  will  be  enough  to  satisfy  you  to  the  uttermost 
farthing." 

The  murmur  rose  deeper  and  louder  in  the  hall ;  the  mass  of  men  swayed 
together  as  though  stirred  by  a  universal  impulse.  They  had  come  prepared 
to  bully,  to  bluster,  to  demand,  to  enforce,  and  they  were  disarmed.  Moreover 
as  he  stood  against  the  statue,  they  remembered  the  fame  of  Philip  Chandos; 
the  coarsest  among  them  felt  a  pang  of  shame  that  his  only  son  should  be 
standing  thus  before  them  now. 

They  looked  at  one  another;  they  could  not  comprehend  this  man  who 
voluntarily  came  and  laid  down  all  his  possessions  at  their  feet,  and  yet  in  their 
own  rough  way  they  understood  him;  they  would  fain  now  have  sympathized 
with  him  had  they  known  how.  The  picture-dealer — a  rude,  broad  boar,  who 
was  worth  near  a  million,  and  whose  claims  were  the  largest  of  any  there,  save 
the  Jew's — pressed  himself  forward  again,  and  spoke  what  all  there  felt,  spoke 
with  a  genuine  emotion  in  his  harsh  voice,  with  a  mist  before  his  sharp  and  eager 
eyes: — 

"  Sir,  you're  a  gentleman,  and  have  behaved  like  one.  We  thank  you,  all 
on  us.  If  we'd  a'  known,  we'd  a'  waited, — ay,  bless  you,  we  would;  but  that 
a'n't  here  nor  there.  Your  father  was  a  great  man,  but  damned  if  I  don't 
think  you're  a  greater;  and  if  there's  any  little  matter— any  picter',  or  that  like 
—that  you  set  particular  store  on,  say  the  word,  and  it  shall  be  kept  for  you,  or 
I'll  know  the  reason  why." 

"  Spoke  up  right  well,  Caleb  !  hear  !  hear  !  "  muttered  another;  and  the 
applause  was  echoed  and  murmured  down  the  whole  body  of  the  hall,  till  even 
the  fashionable  tradesmen,  who  had  heard  and  had  looked  on  supercilious  and 
impassive,  were  moved  by  it,  and  joined  it. 


CHAN  DOS.  217 

Chandos  bowed  his  head  again. 

"  I  thank  you  for  your  good  will  and  for  the  belief  you  give  me.  I  will 
leave  you  now.  My  men  of  business  will  conclude  all  arrangements  with  you, 
and  my  servants  will  bring  you  refreshments  here.  For  your  offer,  there  is 
nothing  I  would  claim.  I  have  said  I  give  up  all;  but  if  there  be  any  surplus 
left,  I  will  ask  you  to  do  me  the  favor  to  sink  it  in  an  annuity  for  one  who  has 
been  long  dependent  upon  me,  and  whose  health  can  never  let  him  be  as  other 
men  are:  I  mean  the  musician,  Guido  Lulli." 

A  profound  silence  followed  on  his  words, — the  silence  of  supreme  astonish- 
ment. He  might  have  taken  advantage  of  their  offer  to  ask  anything,  and  he 
thought  only  of  providing  for  a  foreign  cripple  ! 

Caleb,  the  dealer,  broke  the  stillness  as  before,  dashing  his  hat  down  on  the 
mosaic  with  a  stormy  oath. 

"  I  wore  that  hat  afore  you; — I'd  sooner  uncover  to  you  than  to  all  the 
kings.  Lulli  shall  be  took  care  of;  /'ll  go  bail  for  that." 

Chandos  turned  with  that  royal  grace  which  had  made  him  the  darling  of 
courts,  and  could  never  leave  him  while  he  had  life,  and  silently  stretched  out 
his  hand — the  delicate  patrician  hand  which  his  foe  had  hated — to  the  rough, 
uncleanly,  hairy  palm  of  the  dealer.  Then,  with  a  bow  to  the  standing  multi- 
tude, he  passed  out  of  the  porphyry  chamber;  and  they  made  way  for  their 
debtor  as  men  make  way  for  monarchs. 

The  Israelite  Ignatius  smothered  a  sigh  in  his  patriarchal  beard. 

"  Agostino  was  right.     It  is  worse  than  murder  !  "  he  thought. 

Trevenna  ground  his  teeth,  baffled  even  in  the  sweetness  of  his  utter  victory. 

"  Curse  him  !     Do  what  you  will,  you  can't  lower  him  !  "  he  mused. 

Caleb,  the  dealer,  stood  curiously  looking  at  and  touching  with  a  sort  of 
wonder  his  own  tough  broad  right  hand. 

"He  shook  it,  he  did,"  he  murmured;  "and  they  call  him  as  proud  as  the 
devil.  He  warn't  above  taking  it.  Damn  me  if  it  shall  ever  do  so  much  dirty 
work  agen  !  " 


A  few  hours  later,  Trevenna  re-entered  the  Greuze  cabinet. 

Chandos  sat  alone  before  the  still-opened  window;  there  was  even  now  no 
light,  except  the  pale  radiance  of  the  moon,  in  which  the  fair  women  of  the 
French  painter  lost  life  and  color  and  smiled  a  deathly  smile.  His  head  was 
drooped  forward;  his  eyes  fixed  on  the  moonlit  forest  and  river  scenes  beyond. 
In  his  hand  was  the  tube  of  a  great  Eastern  narghile,  and  the  smoke  that  curled 
from  it  was  suffocating  in  its  perfume;  it  was  the  smoke  of  opium.  Thus, 
hour  after  hour  of  night  or  day,  in  solitude,  he  would  sit  and  gaze  out  at  the 


218  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

lands  he  had  lost,  and  strive  to  steep  his  senses  and  his  agony  in  the  insensi- 
bility of  the  nicotine. 

Trevenna  looked  at  him  and  smiled. 

"Ah,  monseigneur,"  he  thought,  "you  are  proud  as  the  devil,  and  calm  as 
a  statue,  and  unmoved  as  ice,  before  the  eyes  of  the  world;  but  you  suffer  the 
worse  for  that.  You  bear  it  grandly  now,  and  will  not  show  that  you  are  fallen; 
but  you  will  go  to  wreck  and  ruin  body  and  soul  in  no  time,  for  all  that.  You 
have  taken  to  opium,  have  you  ?  There  will  not  be  much  left  of  your  beauty 
and  your  genius  in  twelve  months'  time.  You  had  better  have  shot  yourself 
that  night  you  were  so  minded  to;  it  would  have  saved  you  a  world  o  f trouble, 
and  could  not  have  destroyed  you  more  utterly  than  that  will  do  !  " 

He  moved  forward;  Chandos  neither  heard  nor  saw  him.  Trevenna  called 
him  by  his  name;  he  did  not  raise  his  head  nor  give  a  sign  of  knowledge;  he 
sat,  bent  forward,  looking  dreamily  out  at  the  night-world  of  dew-laden  grasses, 
and  mighty  forests  bathed  in  starlight,  and  dark  skies  with  wreathing  mists  of 
white  summer  vapor,  and  beyond  all  the  silver  line  of  the  calm  sea. 

Trevenna  touched  him  on  the  shoulder;  then  he  raised  his  eyes;  there  was 
in  them  so  senseless,  so  sightless  a  look  of  intolerable  pain,  yet  almost  utter 
unconsciousness,  while,  dilated  by  the  opiate,  the  pupils  were  twice  their  natural 
size,  that  the  man  who  had  pursued  him  might  well  have  thought  his  pursuit 
would  end  in  the  chambers  of  a  madhouse. 

"  Chandos,  can't  you  hear  me  ?  " 

"  Hear  !  "  he  echoed,  wearily.  "  Shall  I  never  have  heard  all  ?  What  more 
can  there  be  ?  " 

"  What  more  ?  Then  have  you  no  heed  as  to  what  becomes  of  Claren- 
cieux?" 

Trevenna  saw  the  shudder  which  always  passed  over  him  at  the  name  shake 
him  from  head  to  foot. 

"  No  heed  ?    //  " 

In  the  stifled  words  there  was  a  piteous  anguish  that  might  have  moved  his 
torturer  to  mercy,  were  not  the  man  who  hates,  a  bloodhound  whom  no  death- 
struggles  will  sate  till  the  last  drop  of  life-blood  has  ebbed  out. 

"  Well,  it  must  go,"  he  went  on  without  remorse;  he  had  had  many  a  pleas- 
ant banquet  in  that  choice  Greuze  room,  but  none  so  full  of  flavor  to  him  as 
the  banquet  he  enjoyed  now.  "  The  men  are  in  a  good  mood;  you  have  pleased 
them  mightily;  and  it's  a  great  pity  when  you  had  the  offer  that  you  didn't  clinch 
it  and  ask  'em  straight  off  for  the  Clarencieux  diamonds.  I  do  believe  you 
might  have  had  them.  Englishmen  are  such  almighty  fools  when  they  once  get 
soft  and  sentimental  !  Still,  though  they've  taken  such  a  fancy  to  you,  they 
won't  do  without  their  money.  Park  Lane  must  go,  and  Clarencieux  must  go  !  " 

Chandos  rose  to  his  feet;  his  large  eyes,  looking  twice  as  large  with  the 


CHAN  DOS.  219 

dark  dreamy  gaze  the  opiate  gave  them,  dwelt  with  weary,  heart-sick  pain  on 
his  tormentor. 

"  Why  come  to  tell  me  this  ?    You  heard  me.     I  gave  them  all." 

Trevenna  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"  Tres-cher,  you  did.  It  was  just  as  well  to  give  it  them  with  a  good  grace, 
seeing  that  they  would  assuredly  have  taken  it.  But  the  point  that  concerns 
Clarencieux  is,  how  will  it  go  ?  It  may  go  by  private  contract,  if  they're  all  of 
one  mind, — which  no  set  of  Britons  ever  was  yet;  if  not,  it  goes  by  public 
auction." 

Chandos  drew  his  breath  with  a  sharp  contraction.  Despite  the  dull,  heavy, 
half-drunk  stupor  of  the  opium,  each  one  of  these  phrases  quivered  through  him 
with  a  fearful  force. 

"  And  if  it  go  by  public  auction,  they  will  divide  it,"  pursued  Trevenna, 
while  almost  unconsciously  in  his  triumph  he  lost  his  caution,  and  in  his  friend's 
ruin  eased  himself  for  the  yoke  so  long  borne  before  his  friend's  superiority  by 
an  indulgence  in  a  contemptuous  authoritative  insolence  that  prudence  would 
have  forbidden  him,  precious  as  its  enjoyment  was. 

"  Divide  it !  " 

The  echoed  words  were  hollow  and  inarticulate;  a  fresh  misery  faced  him. 
He  knew  that  he  and  his  home  must  part,  that  strangers  must  rule  in  his 
father's  heritage,  and  that  the  place  he  loved  must  see  his  face  no  more;  but 
he  had  never  thought  that  his  heritage  could  be  parcelled  out  and  severed  among 
the  spoilers,  and  scattered  north  and  south,  east  and  west. 

"Yes, — divided." 

The  certain  vulgarity  which  had  always  underlaid  the  tone  of  Trevenna's 
manner,  though  his  scholarly  culture  had  counterbalanced  it  and  his  familiarity 
with  good  society  almost  effaced  it,  came  out  now  almost  unconsciously  to 
himself,  as  he  stood  on  the  hearth,  with  the  careless  insolence  of  a  coarse  tem- 
per to  adversity,  and  addressed,  with  a  roughness  he  had  never  dared  to  use, 
the  man  who  now  had  no  power  and  no  title  in  the  home  that  had  so  long  called 
him  master. 

"  You  won't  be  consulted,  you  know;  it's  theirs  now,  and  of  course  they'll 
go  the  best  way  to  work  to  make  money  by  it.  We  can't  help  that:  wish  we 
could  !  It  will  bring  most  so,  sold  in  lots.  The  Castle  will  go  with  the  Home 
Park,  of  course;  some  millionnaire  will  buy  it,  very  likely,  just  as  it  stands,  fur- 
niture, pictures,  and  all;  or  else,  they  say,  it  may  be  bought  by  Government 
for  a  new  military  hospital.  I  don't  know  about  that  myself;  but  some  say  so. 
The  rest  will  go  in  lots;  the  forests  will  fetch  no  end  for  timber;  those  oaks 
and  elms  are  worth  any  money  for  ship-building  and  railway-carriages.  The 
deer-park  they'll  turn  into  a  sheep-walk,  kill  the  herds,  and  drain  the  land;  and 
all  that  waste  part  by  the  sea,  so  pretty  to  look  at,  you  know,  and  worth  just 


220  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

nothing  at  all  for  agriculture,  they'll  sell  for  building  purposes.  All  that  rock, 
and  gorse,  and  moor,  and  pine-wood  will  tell  uncommonly  well  in  an  auctioneer's 
periods.  The  air's  beautiful;  the  sea  runs  right  up  under  the  trees.  It  will 
take  the  public  mightily  as  a  bathing-place.  I'll  be  bound  in  ten  years'  time 
villas  will  cover  the  whole  sea-line,  and  hotels  will  be  cropping  up  among  the 
firs  like  mad.  A  company's  sure  to  dart  at  it." 

For  his  life  he  could  not  restrain  the  merciless  jocularity;  it  was  so  delicious 
to  him  to  stand  there  in  that  Greuze  cabinet,  where  the  pangs  of  envy  had 
gnawed  him  so  bitterly  many  a  time,  and  parcel  out  by  his  words  the  magnifi- 
cent demesne  he  had  longed  so  savagely  to  see  sold  to  the  Egyptians  and 
divided  among  the  thieves,  as  the  sons  of  Jacob  longed  to  tear  the  many-colored 
coat  in  rags  and  sell  the  favorite  of  Israel  into  bondage. 

Chandos,  standing  where  he  had  risen,  heard  in  silence,  his  teeth  clenched 
on  his  under  lip  till  the  blood  started  among  the  golden  luxuriance  of  his  beard, 
and  his  breath  came  slow,  loud,  and  stertorously. 

"  Best  thing  that  can  be  done  with  it  for  you,"  went  on  Trevenna,  standing 
at  ease  there,  with  his  hands  behind  his  back,  and  in  his  whole  attitude  the 
insolence  of  a  coarse  triumph  more  legibly  spoken  than  he  knew.  "  There  may 
be  a  surplus  if  it  sell  well,  and  of  course  that  will  come  to  you.  I  don't  think 
there  can  be  much;  but  still  something,  ever  so  little,  if  it's  only  just  as  much 
as  you  used  to  give  for  an  actress's  bracelet,  of  course  we  shall  be  glad  if  we 
can  save  for  you  now.  I  suspect  the  building  idea  will  be  very  profitable;  there 
are  always  such  a  lot  of  builders  ready  to  rush  at  a  new  place;  and  when  the 
villas  spring  up  like  mushrooms,  and  the  lodging-houses  grow  thick,  I  shouldn't 
be  surprised  if  Clarencieux  beats  Ventnor.  By  Jove  !  what  would  the  last 
marquis  have  said  if  he:d  foreseen  bricks  and  mortar  invading  his  mighty  Druidic 
woods  ? " 

Still  Chandos  said  nothing;  his  eyes  never  left  their  gaze  at  Trevenna,  but 
there  was  rising  in  them  darker  and  darker  that  look  which  the  Hanoverian 
nobles  had  seen  in  the  eyes  of  the  last  marquis  when  he  had  sent  them  from 
his  Tower  cell,  with  a  single  syllable,  like  lashed  curs. 

"  But  what  I  came  to  ask  you,  my  dear  Chandos,"  pursued  his  tormentor, 
"  was,  What  will  you  do  ?  What  is  your  future  to  be  ?  " 

Still  no  word  of  answer  escaped  Chandos;  and  Trevenna's  glance  meeting 
his,  his  pitiless  pursuer  thought,  "  Small  need  to  ask..  Before  another  three 
months  are  out,  he  will  be  raving  mad  in  some  lunatic  ward." 

"  You  must  do  something,"  continued  Trevenna,  with  a  kick  to  the  silver 
andirons.  "  You  have  not  the  worth  of  one  of  those  fire-dogs  now.  If  you 
had  listened  to  me,  you  might  have  been  living  comfortably  abroad,  with  the 
Lily  Queen  to  console  you;  but  you  wouldn't.  You  chose  'honor.'  Now, 
honor  don't  give  us  bread  and  cheese.  It's  quite  a  patrician  luxury,  and  I  can 


CHANDOS.  221 

assure  you  you'll  never  get  your  salt  out  of  it.  There  a'n't  anything  the  world 
pays  so  badly;  you  see,  there  a'n't  any  demand  for  it !  What's  to  be  done  ? 
To  be  sure,  you  write;  but  now  you're  down  in  the  world,  tres-cher,  I'm  sadly 
afraid  your  books  will  go  down  in  the  world  too,  and  I  shouldn't  be  at  all  sur- 
prised if  the  critics  find  you  immoral.  They  always  do,  unless  a  writer  gives 
'em  good  dinners;  they  always  shy  that  stone,  unless  their  hands  are  filled  with 
a  claret-jug.  Besides,  as  Scott  says,  '  literature's  a  good  crutch,  but  a  sorry 
staff,'  unless  you  cant  in  it;  and  I  don't  suppose  you'd  ever  cant,  not  if  you 
were  living  on  a  loaf  in  a  garret  ? " 

Still  there  was  no  answer  to  him;  only  the  gleam  in  his  dilated  eyes  grew 
blacker  as  Chandos  heard. 

"  Literature,  of  course,  you  can  turn  back  to,"  resumed  Trevenna,  too 
appreciative  of  the  satisfaction  he  enjoyed,  and  "too  absorbed  in  his  ingenuity  at 
stretching  every  pulley  and  turning  every  screw  of  the  rack  he  had  his  prey 
stretched  on,  to  note  how  dangerous  a  pastime  he  had  chosen.  "  But  I  fear 
you  won't  be  much  able  to  write  at  present.  Meanwhile,  of  course  Warburne 
will  be  open  to  you;  but  I  suppose  you  will  hardly  care  to  live  there,  a  hanger- 
on  upon  your  mother's  family.  Forgive  me  if  I  speak  bluntly.  I  mean  well. 
What  remains  ?  You  can  say  with  truth,  if  ever  anybody  could,  '  I  cannot 
work,  to  beg  I  am  ashamed.'  To  be  sure,  the  country — the  Cabinet — would 
give  you  some  post,  perhaps,  out  of  respecjt  to  the  great  minister's  name;  but, 
on  my  life,  unless  it's  to  choose  pictures  for  the  nation,  or  to  preside  over  a 
competitive  examination  of  pretty  women  for  the  palm  of  beauty,  I  don't  know 
any  public  office  for  which  you've  trained  !  You're  an  Epicurean,  and  there's 
no  room  for  Epicureans  in  these  busy,  practical  days.  Your  pride,  your  po- 
curantism,  your  art-fancies,  your  fashionable  caprices,  were  thought  charming 
by  the  world,  my  dear  Ernest,  while  you  were  rich  and  were  its  idol;  but  I  am 
sadly  afraid,  now  that  you're  a  sold-up  bankrupt,  the  world  won't  care  to  give 
you  back  your  v  ery  good  dinners,  and  will  tell  you,  like  Job's  friends, 
that  the  best  thing  you  can  do  to  please  them  is  to  'curse  God  and 
die.'  " 

He  had  gone  one  step  too  far.  As  the  lion-tamer  amuses  himself  with  goad- 
ing and  insulting  the  fallen  monarch  that  lies  chained  before  him,  till  he  forgets 
that  the  desert-blood  is  still  there,  and  in  incautious  insolence  tampers  and 
stings  one  moment  too  long,  until  the  captive  king,  with  a  single  leap,  clears 
his  barrier  and  breaks  his  bonds,  and  avenges  his  injuries  with  the  old  desert- 
might,  so  Trevenna  had  played  for  one  moment  too  protracted  with  the  man 
he  tortured.  With  a  spring  light  and  long  as  a  deer's,  unerring  and  irresistible 
as  a  leopard's,  Chandos  threw  himself  on  him,  one  hand  grasping  his  shoulder, 
the  other  twisted  tight  in  the  linen  at  his  throat,  and  silently,  with  a  resistless 
force,  strong  as  steal  to  clasp,  thrust  him  downward  across  the  painted  cabinet 


222  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

towards  the  door,  his  height  above  the  low  square  form  of  Trevenna,  like  a 
Greek  god's  above  a  'faun's. 

"  To-night  at  least  this  house  is  mine.  If  it  were  not  that  I  have  benefited 
you,  if  it  were  not  that  you  are  too  vile  to  be  avenged  on,  you  should  not  leave 
me  with  life  in  you, — you  mocker,  liar,  traitor,  you  foul  tempter  who  sold  your 
friend  !  " 

The  words  were  uttered  low  in  his  throat,  yet  so  distinct  that  every  syllable 
in  them  vibrated  on  the  other's  ear;  and,  powerless,  breathless,  deprived  of  all 
his  strength  and  all  his  self-possession  by  the  amaze  that  seized  him,  and  by 
the  force  that  hurled  him  out,  Trevenna  was  thrust  passive  and  without 
answer  through  the  doorway  of  the  Greuze  cabinet,  and  flung  down  on  to  the 
floor  of  the  corridor  without. 

The  door  closed,  baring  him  out. '  He  rose  livid  with  rage,  and  passionately 
bitter  that  in  one  moment  of  thoughtless  self-indulgence  he  should  have  undone 
the  caution  and  the  acumen  of  so  many  years  and  betrayed  the  carefully  veiled 
secret  of  his  hate.  Yet,  as  he  shook  himself,  jarred  but  unbruised  by  the  fall 
on  the  yielding  velvet  carpets,  he  smiled  in  a  contemptuous  triumph,  a  compen- 
sative satisfaction:  he  had  what  life  could  never  take  from  him, — his  vengeance. 

"  The  last  exercise  of  your  droits  de  seigneur,  my  beggared  Lord  of  Claren- 
cieux,"  he  thought,  content,  though  angered  at  himself.  "  You  won't  find  any 
one  put  up  with  your  pride  now.  You  are  bitter;  yes,  I  daresay  you  are  bitter; 
but  all  your  misery  won't  prevent  this  haughty  castle  going  to  the  hammer,  and 
one  day  or  other  you  shall  see  me  in  it  !  When  I  do  come,  I'll  light  my  first 
fire  with  my  Lord  Marquis's  Kneller  picture,  and  I'll  build  my  kennels  with  the 
pounded  dust  of  Philip  Chandos'  statue  !  " 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE   FEW   WHO   WERE   FAITHFUL 

THE  morning  came, — a  beautiful  summer  morning,  with  its  light  on  the  sea, 
and  its  west  wind  blowing  over  the  limitless  blossoms  of  acres  on  acres  of  lilies- 
of-the-valley  and  of  wild  dog-roses  that  filled  the  forest-glades  with  fragrance 
and  made  their  dewy  couches  for  the  deer  and  their  perfumed  shelter  for  the 
earth-nesting  birds.  The  earliest  rays  glancing  in  to  the  painted  cabinet  found 
Chandos  sitting  there  as  he  had  sat  all  the  night  through;  he  had  never  stirred: 
now  and  then  his  head  had  sunk  forward  on  his  breast,  and  the  sleep  of  the 
opiate  had  fallen  on  him  for  an  hour,  heavy,  dreamless,  merciful,  insomuch  as 
it  annihilated  thought;  at  all  other  times  he  sat  motionless,  save  once  or  twice 


CHANDOS.  223 

when  he  drank  off  great  floods  of  iced  water  on  brimming  draughts  of  brandy, 
looking  outward  at  all  he  loved  so  passionately, — at  all  he  had  lost  forever. 

With  that  single  roused  action  towards  his  traitor,  all  revival  of  sense  or 
movement  seemed  to  have  ebbed  out  again  in  him.  He  sat  dulling  his  senses 
to  insensibility  with  the  nicotine,  but  never  dulling  with  it  the  pangs  that  ate 
at  his  heart,  as  the  vulture  at  Prometheus'. 

Trevenna  had  not  made  a  wide  nor  an  unlikely  guess  when  he  had  thought 
to  himself  that  the  end  of  the  brilliant  career  he  had  so  brutally  and  lustfully 
envied  would  be  a  mad-house. 

The  joys  of  Chandos  had  been  vivid  and  unshadowed  above  all  other  men's; 
his  suifering  was  proportionate.  The  very  nature  which  had  rendered  his  pleas- 
ures so  perfect  in  the  days  that  were  gone,  now  only  seemed  to  render  his  torture 
ten  thousand-fold  more  acute.  The  opiate  drugged  his  brain  and  his  senses, 
but  it  could  not  drug  the  mortal  anguish  that  never  for  one  moment  would  be 
still. 

He  never  noticed  the  rising  of  the  day,  he  never  saw  the  sun  grow  brighter 
and  higher  in  the  east;  he  knew  nothing;  his  eyes  only  fastened  with  a  look 
that  never  left  them  on  the  sea  and  the  woodland,  and  all  the  forest  beauty  that 
had  been  his  so  long,  that  never  now  would  be  his  own  again.  Couched  at  his 
feet  the  dog  Beau  Sire  lay,  stirless  through  the  day  and  night,  lifting  his  head 
now  and  then  with  a  low  moan;  the  brute  was  faithful  where  the  hand  he  had 
filled  with  gifts  and  benefits  numberless  as  the  sands  of  the  sea  had  turned 
against  him. 

All  was  very  still.  Trevenna  with  the  creditors  and  lawyers,  had  left  in  the 
past  night;  the  men  whom  they  placed  in  charge  had  been  enjoined  to  show 
the  strictest  respect  for  his  privacy.  The  household — among  them  old  people 
who  had  known  the  great  minister's  youth  and  had  idolized  his  heir  from  the 
cradle — were  dumb  and  paralyzed  with  amazement  and  with  grief;  none  of 
them  dared  venture  near  him.  Nothing  roused  him  from  his  stupor, — the 
stupor  in  which  the  brain,  the  more  finely  it  be  organized,  the  more  vividly 
it  imagines,  and  the  more  exquisitely  it  creates,  the  more  fatally  still  will  lose 
its  reason  and  perish  in  delirium  or  in  vacuity.  Ignatius  Mathias  was  not  in 
error  when  he  had  thought  that  his  taskmaster's  work  was  worse  than  murder. 
The  sharp  ringing  shot,  the  certain  mortal  stab,  of  the  assassin,  would  have  been 
mercy  to  it.  But  Trevenna  was  too  wise  and  too  ingenious  for  those;  he  slew 
more  slowly,  and  he  kept  within  the  law. 

As  the  noon  was  high,  and  the  sunlight  without  shadow  across  the  breadths 
of  grass-land  in  the  hush  in  which  the  song-birds  ceased,  and  even  the  busy 
wild  pigeons  rested  on  the  wing,  the  slow  sullen  tramp  of  the  steps  of  many 
men  came  on  the  stillness,  echoing  dully  on  the  road  of  the  western  avenue 
that  swept  round  by  the  western  wing  in  which  the  Greuze  room  was.  The 


224  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

solid  measured  beating  of  the  many  feet  did  not  awake  him  from  his  apathy  of 
drugged  unconsciousness;  the  noise  of  the  irregular  marching  of  varied  steps 
as  they  crushed  the  ground  beneath  the  woven  boughs  of  the  arched  aisles  of 
beech  and  chestnut  did  not  reach  his  ear.  The  men  came  on  to  pass  round 
the  castle  to  the  front;  they  were  men  of  all  ages  and  of  different  ranks,  but 
well  nigh  all  of  the  same  type,  the  type  of  the  two  classes  of  Old  England 
whom  she  never  hears  the  name  of  now, — the  yeomen  and  the  peasantry;  the 
fair,  florid,  blue-eyed,  broad-shouldered,  bulldog  type  of  what  were  once  her 
franklins  and  eorlmen,  that  now — here  and  there  fast  fading  out — are  still  her 
tenant-farmers  and  her  country  cotters,  still  reap  her  yellow  harvests,  and  still 
live  in  the  green  shadow  of  her  woods. 

They  came  on  very  slowly,  their  heads  bent,  their  heavy  steps  dragging 
with  a  weary,  melancholy  effort.  They  came  as  they  had  followed  the  bier  of 
Philip  Chandos,  as  they  would  have  followed  the  funeral  of  his  son. 

They  had  learned  that  a  worse  thing  than  death  had  fallen  on  Clarencieux. 
They  moved  with  a  certain  solemnity  and  dignity,  rough  and  various  as  the 
men  were  in  person  and  degree;  for  one  emotion  was  upon  them  all,  and  a  pro- 
found grief  lent  its  sanctity,  almost  its  majesty,  to  the  weather-beaten  faces  on 
which  the  warmth  of  the  early  summer  shone  down  through  the  leaves,  and  to 
the  stalwart  stature  and  the  bent  frames  which  were  side  by  side  as  age  and 
youth,  as  the  tenant  of  thousands  of  acres  and  the  peasant  who  lived  in  a  shiel- 
ing, advanced  together  in  a  long  line  up  the  double  avenue. 

At  their  head,  walking  alone,  was  a  very  old  man  of  more  than  eighty-five 
years;  his  form  gnarled  and  tough  as  one  of  the  oaks  of  the  deer-forest;  his 
white  hair  on  his  shoulders  like  one  of  the  patriarchs  of  Israel ;  his  face  tanned 
to  a  ruddy  brown,  that  no  near  approach  of  death  could  pale.  He  leaned 
heavily  on  an  elm  staff,  and  the  lines  in  his  still-comely  face  were  deep-set  as 
though  his  own  plough  had  riven  them. 

As  they  paced  near,  the  loud  swelling  noise  of  their  marching  smote  dully 
on  the  hushed  noontide.  At  last  it  reached  the  ear  of  Chandos;  he  raised  his 
head,  heavy  with  the  opium-fumes,  and  saw  them.  He  knew  them,  every  man 
of  them;  he  had  known  them  from  the  earliest  moment  when  every  creature 
on  the  broad  lands  of  Clarencieux  had  striven  with  all  the  loving  loyalty  of 
feudal  affection  to  do  their  best  to  please  and  to  amuse  the  golden-haired  young 
child  of  the  great  house  of  Clarencieux; 

The  sight  roused  him  in  an  instant,  breaking  away  the  mists,  dissipating  the 
lethargy  gradually  settling  on  his  brain. 

"  Oh,  my  God  !  "  he  moaned,  aloud;  "  and  they  must  suffer  too  !  " 
Not  alone  could  he  bear  his  burden;  not  alone  could  his  fate  strike  him;  it 
would  crush  others  in  his  fall,  remove  the  landmark  of  the  fatherless,  drive  out 
the  old  man  from  his  lifelong  hearth,  send  the  worn-out  peasant  from  the  cot- 


CHANDOS.  •  225 

tage-hearthstone  that  had  been  his  so  long,  and  fell  the  green,  glad  welcome  of 
the  forests  that  the  fathers'  fathers  of  the  most  aged  there  had  known  and 
loved  as  familiar  and  venerable  things. 

He  had  thought  of  them  before,  thought  often  of  all  who  must  suffer 
through  him;  of  the  retainers  made  homeless  in  their  old  age;  of  the  tenants 
given  over  to  hard  hands;  of  the  men  who  had  lived  on  those  lands  from  their 
birth,  like  their  fathers  before  them,  condemned  to  see  their  roof-trees  sold  be- 
fore their  sight,  and  to  be  driven  across  the  western  seas  to  seek  new  homes, 
when  they  had  had  no  other  wish  save  to  be  laid  in  peace  beside  their  people  in 
the  familiar  graves  beneath  their  village  spire.  He  had  thought  of  them;  no  pain 
could  make  him  selfish;  but  he  had  never  thought  of  them  as  he  thought  now 
when  the  three  hundred  south-countrymen  who  held  his  fiefs,  large  or  small, 
came  up  in  the  noontide  through  the  western  avenue.  Involuntarily  he  rose; 
they  saw  him,  and  paused  before  the  opened  casement  on  the  broad  stretch  of 
turf,  all  checkered  with  the  shadows  of  the  crossed  branches.  The  oriels 
reached  nearly  to  the  ground;  he  was  as  much  in  their  presence  as  though  they 
had  entered  the  building,  and  that  which  they  came  to  say  seemed  best  spoken 
under  the  summer  freedom  of  the  sky.  With  the  same  unanimous  movement 
as  his  creditors  they  uncovered  to  a  man,  standing  with  as  much  reverence  be- 
fore the  ruined  bankrupt  as  they  had  stood  before  the  Lord  of  Clarencieux. 
The  sun  shone  clear  upon  his  face,  and  at  what  they  read  there — the  change  so 
unutterable  that  a  few  days  had  sufficed  to  work — they  were  silenced  with  as 
unspeakable  a  horror.  They  knew  then  that  this  thing  of  which  they  had 
heard  was  true. 

The  old  man  who  stood  at  their  head  advanced  slightly.  He  was  their 
spokesman,  who  had  rented  and  farmed  the  greenest  lands  of  Clarencieux,  and 
had  lived  under  the  same  broad  thatch-roof  as  his  ancestors  had  dwelt  under 
since  days  beyond  their  memory,  when  the  Chandos  had  been  peers,  and  had 
marched  with  their  brother-barons  to  win  at  the  sword's  point  the  chartered 
liberties  of  England.  He  was  a  brave  and  staunch  old  patriarch,  holding  him- 
self proudly  as  any  Saxon  thane,  yet  loyal  to  the  house  he  loved,  as  the  Chandos 
had  been  loyal  to  their  Plantagenet  kinsmen  and  to  their  Stuart  kings. 

He — by  name  Harold  Gelart — stood  forward,  his  white  hair  floating  in  the 
soft  west  wind. 

"  My  lord  "  (the  owner  of  Clarencieux  had  been  their  lord  to  all  the  yeomen 
on  the  lands  since  that  unforgotten,  unforgiven  day-  when  the  Hanover  boor 
had  slaughtered  in  cold  blood  their  last  marquis),  "  my  lord,  is  this  thing  true  ?  " 

Harold  Gelart  could  not  have  put  into  clear  words  the  shame'  and  misery 
which  he  had  heard  had  come  to  Clarencieux. 

Chandos  bowed  his  head. 

The  dense  throng  gathered  under  the  leafy  shadow  of  the  elms  moved  with 

VOL.  III.— 8 


226 


QUID  AS     WORKS. 


a  shuddering,  swaying  motion.  Against  all  witness  they  had  disbelieved  it  till 
they  should  hear  its  utterance  from  his  own  lips.  Its  blow  to  him  was  scarcely 
less  than  was  its  blow  to  them. 

The  old  farmer  bent  over  his  elm  staff  as  though  the  shock  that  had  been 
so  deadly  to  him  in  the  past  night  smote  him  afresh. 
"  Will  the  lands  be  sold  ?  " 

His  voice  was  hoarse,  and  panted  slowly  out,  and  he  covered  his  face  as  he 
asked  it.  To  him  it  was  such  unutterable  shame,  such  insupportable  disgrace, 
to  speak  such  words  to  the  son  of  Philip  Chandos,  to  their  beloved  and  honored 
favorite,  who  had  been  with  them,  and  been  dear  to  them,  from  the  first  days  of 
his  bright  childhood. 

Chandos  bowed  his  assent  once  more. 

Speech  would  not  come  to  him,  and  none  was  needed  as  they  looked  upon 
his  face. 

They  were  strangely,  terribly  still, — that  mass  of  toil-worn,  air-freshened, 
stalwart  men,  whose  strength  could  have  wrecked  Clarencieux  from  terrace  to 
turret,  had  they  hated  its  beauty  with  Trevenna's  hate.  What  they  heard  might 
drive  any  or  all  of  them  out  to  new  homes,  might  consign  them  to  new  and 
pitiless  dealers,  might  level  the  homestead  they  cherished,  and  might  ruin  them 
in  many  fatal  and  unlooked-for  ways.  But  in  this  moment  it  was  not  of  them- 
selves they  thought;  it  was  for  the  great  house  that  had  fallen, — for  the  dis- 
possessed lord  who  stood  before  them. 

Harold  Gelart,  the  oldest  among  them,  and  elected  their  ambassador,  a  man 
of  few  words,  tough  in  his  mold  as  any  oak  that  stood  the  shock  of  the  sea- 
storms,  yet  tender  at  heart  as  any  sapling  fresh  in  its  first  green  leaf,  lifted  his 
head,  while  great  drops  welled  slowly  out  of  his  aged  eyes  and  down  the  sun- 
burnt furrows  of  his  face. 

"  If  it  had  pleased  the  Almighty  God  to  have  laid  me  in  my  grave  before 
this  day  !  " 

It  was  the  only  moan  that  escaped  the  brave  old  yeoman.  The  honor  of 
his  "  lords  "  had  been  his  honor,  their  fame  his  fame;  loyalty  to  them  had  been 
one,  in  his  simple  creed,  with  loyalty  to  his  God;  and  though  he  knew  not  but 
that  the  old  moated  ivy-hidden  grange,  where  he  and  his  had  dwelt  so  long  in 
peace,  might  be  sold  above  his  head  and  new  landlords  eject  him  to  find  a 
fresh  resting-place  in  his  last  years,  no  syllable  would  ever  have  escaped  him  to 
add  a  blow  to  the  misery  that  had  fallen  upon  Clarencieux. 

Chandosjooked  at  him,  and  at  the  crowd  that  gathered  so  mutely  under  the 
elms;  and  the  icy,  stony  rigidity,  the  almost  senseless  stupor,  which  had  been 
upon  his  features,  changed  and  softened  as  it  had  done  at  the  dead  duke's 
words.  He  had  known  those  furrowed,  bronzed  faces  ever  since  his  youngest 
years;  he  had  seen  them  gather  round  him  in  loyal  attachment  on  every  anni- 


CHANDOS.  227 

versary  of  his  birth,  at  every  return  to  his  home,  at  ever  Christmas-tide  that  he 
had  been  among  them.  They  were  familiar  to  him  as  the  venerable  trees 
beneath  which  they  stood;  and  he  knew  that  they  and  he  met  for  the  last  time. 

"  My  friends,"  he  said,  gently  (and  his  voice  had  the  composure  with  which 
he  had  addressed  throughout  his  creditors,  but  shook  slightly),  "  the  worst  that 
you  can  hear  is  true.  You  and  I  must  part, — forever.  I  hope  that  my  fate  may 
not  recoil  on  you;  but  it  is  too  likely  you  may  suffer  through  me.  I  have  been 
blind  and  mad.  Forgive  me  that  I  thought  too  little  of  all  I  owed  my  heritage." 

The  words  reached  the  farthest  that  stood  on  the  outskirts  of  the  throng, 
hollow  and  feeble  though  the  once  rich  music,  of  his  tones  was  now.  A  single 
sound,  like  one  deep,  vast  sob,  shook  the  crowd  as  they  heard.  They  loved 
him  well  for  his  own  sake,  for  his  father's  sake,  for  the  sake  of  his  great  name 
and  race,  that  had  been  part  and  share  of  their  own  honor  for  so  long. 

Harold  Gelart  lifted  his  white  head,  like  the  head  of  a  Saxon  franklin,  and 
spoke  with  the  broad,  marked  dialect  of  the  southern  seaboard  steeping  his 
words  in  its  accent. 

"  My  lord,  we  aren't  here  to  reproach  of  you;  you  have  done  what  you  will 
with  your  own.  We  are  come  to  tender  you  our  loyalty,  to  say  a  few  words  to 
you,  an  you  will." 

The  old  patriarch,  whose  life  was  spent  amidst  the  woods  and  fields,  whose 
rising  and  going  to  rest  were  with  the  larks  of  his  corn-lands,  found  words  with 
difficulty.  His  speech  was  ever  laconic,  and  little  above  a  peasant's;  and  the 
most  silver-tongued  orator  would  have  found  utterance  hard  under  such  grief 
as  that  he  choked  down  now. 

"  Speak  on,"  said  Chandos,  gently  still.  He  knew  that,  bitterly  as  they 
tortured  him,  they  came  there  out  of  love  for  him. 

"  My  lord,  it  is  just  this, — no  more,"  said  the  old  man;  while  the  broad 
provincialism  of  his  county-tone  gave  a  rough,  imploring  earnestness,  beyond 
all  oratory,  to  his  words.  "  You  tell  us  the  lands  must  go;  we  have  heard  yester- 
night that  a  sore  and  wicked  thing  have  befell  you:  it  don't  need  to  speak  on  it, 
it's  too  bitter  in  all  our  teeth;  and  them  as  has  wrought  it  on  you,  may  the 
vengeance  of  God  overtake  ! " 

Chandos  stayed  him  with  a  gesture. 

"  No  !  to  pray  that  were  to  call  a  curse  on  me.  I  but  reap  the  harvest  of 
my  own  utter  madness." 

Harold  Gelart's  eyes  flashed  with  a  fire  that  age  could  not  wholly  dim,  and 
he  struck  his  elm  staff  down  into  the  turf  with  mighty  force. 

"  Where  be  them  that  never  warned  you  ?  Where  be  them  that  feasted  at 
your  cost  ?  Where  be  them  that  knew  all  was  rotting  under  you,  and  never 
spoke  the  word  that  might  have  saved  you  in  good  time  ?  Where  be  them  ? 
Let  their  guilt  find  them  out  !  " 


2o8  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

There  was  a  rude  grandeur  in  the  passionate  imprecation,  as  the  old  man 
raised  his  head  and  looked  upward  at  Clarencieux,  where  the  colossal  walls 
towered  above  him,  as  though  marking  the  vengeance  of  the  great  dead  who 
had  reigned  there.  Then  he  turned  his  eyes  on  Chandos. 

"  I  ask  pardon,  my  lord;  I  feel  dazed-like  with  the  misery  !  What  we  come 
to  say  to  you  is  only  this.  We  hear  a  power  of  money  is  wanted:  if  the  money 
was  forthcoming  any  other  way,  the  lands  would  be  safe?  We  fancy  so:  we 
don't  know  much;  but  we  guess  that.  Now,  we  aren't  rich  men,  none  of  us; 
but,  put  together,  we're  worth  summat.  We've  saved  a  good  bit,  most  of  us; 
and,  clubbed  together,  it  will  make  a  bigger  sum  than  may-be  anybody'd  think. 
Now,  my  lord,  we  don't  mean  no  offence;  we've  lived  under  you  and  yours  all 
our  lives,  and  we  love  you  like  as  if  you  were  our  king.  Now,  will  you  let  us 
pay  the  money  ?  We'll  clear  the  lands,  anyhow;  we'll  clear  summat,  at  least  as 
far  as  it'll  go.  We'll  give  every  penny  we  can  scrape  together;  and  we'll  bless 
you  for  using  of  it,  as  we  used  to  bless  your  father's  name  when,  let  state  and 
grandeur  load  him  ever  so,  he  never  forgot  us.  Take  it  as  we  give  it,  right 
down  with  all  our  hearts;  there  a'n't  a  man  among  us  but  what  would  go  con- 
tent, and  feed  with  his  dogs,  and  fodder  with  his  cattle,  to  know  that  he'd 
been  of  ever  such  a  little  bit  of  help  in  saving  you  and  saving  Clarencieux  !  " 

Harold  Gelart  paused, — his  voice  shaken  and  stifled;  the  drops  streaming 
unbidden,  like  a  woman's,  down  his  withered  cheeks,  in  the  passionate  earnest- 
ness his  errand  lent  him.  Never,  in  all  the  years  of  his  tough,  sun-tanned, 
wind-beaten,  healthy,  vigorous  life  had  such  a  weakness  been  wrung  from  him. 

From  the  yeomen  and  peasant  throng  a  murmur  came  such  as  that  which 
the  speech  of  the  dealer  had  roused  in  the  porphyry  chamber,  but  louder, 
bolder,  rough,  and  honest,  with  the  simple  warmth  of  those  who  gave  it.  It 
was  the  ratification  by  every  man  present  of  the  words  and  of  the  offer  of  their 
spokesman.  Every  man  there  bent  his  head,  as  they  bent  it  entering  their 
woodland  church:  so,  silently,  they  registered  their  adhesion  to  his  promise. 

Chandos  stood  and  heard.  A  strange  alteration  passed  over  his  face;  all 
its  frozen  calm  changed;  for  the  first  time  since  the  night  that  he  had  learned 
his  doom,  the  blood  rushed  back  in  a  hot  flush  over  his  features;  he  quivered 
through  all  his  frame,  as  if  they  had  struck  him  some  heavy-weighted  physical 
blow.  He  was  silent. 

At  his  silence,  the  throng  stretching  far  away  under  the  elm-glades  before 
him  surged  nearer  by  one  impulse;  every  unit  of  that  swaying  mass  pressed 
forward  to  pledge  his  sincerity  and  the  willingness  of  his  gift,  and  from  their 
throats,  to  a  man,  one  shout  broke: — 

"  My  lord  !  take  it,— take  it,  and  buy  back  the  lands  !  What  is  ours  is 
your'n  ! " 

"Ay,  ay  !  "  swore  the  staunch  old  Gelart,  while  with  his  brown,  horny  hand 


CHANDOS.  229 

he  dashed  back  the  salt  from  his  lids.  "  And  only  just  reckoning,  too.  What 
was  your'n  have  been  ever  free  to  us  in  your  days  and  in  your  forefathers'; 
no  soul  was  ever  pressed,  no  soul  ever  hungered,  no  soul  ever  pined,  on  these 
lands.  What  is  ours  is  your'n." 

Chandos  was  silent  still.  The  change  on  his  face  grew  softer,  warmer, 
better,  with  each  moment;  the  vacant  lethargy  of  the  opiate  cleared  more  and 
more  away  from  his  senses;  but  his  head  was  sunk  upon  his  chest,  and  for  the 
first  time  since  his  ruin  had  been  known  to  him  tears  gathered  in  his  eyes  and 
fell  slowly  one  by  one.  The  loyalty  showed  to  him  moved  him  as  insult  and  as 
anguish  had  had  no  power  to  do;  the  rain  of  those  bitter  tears  saved  him  from 
madness. 

He  stood  back  in  the  shadow,  so  that  his  face  was  concealed  from  them; 
the  weakness  he  could  not  for  the  instant  control  wrung  his  pride  aud  rung  his 
heart;  with  the  warmer  gratitude  and  emotion  that  their  generous  fealty  brought 
him  was  blent  the  shameful  misery  that  he — the  last  Chandos  of  Clarencieux — 
should  ever  stand  thus  before  the  tenants  of  his  lands.  Their  love  touched 
him  with  an  intense  pain  that  he  should  ever  have  tried  and  proved  it  thus. 

They  mistook  his  silence,  and  the  movement  with  which  he  involuntary  drew 
back  into  the  gloom  of  the  Greuze  chamber,  for  offence;  and  their  spokesman, 
Gelart,  pressed  slightly  nearer,  laying  hold,  in  his  earnestness,  of  the  oak  frame- 
work of  the  oriel. 

"  My  lord,  it  sounds  bold  and  coarse,  may-be,  as  I  puts  it,  for  we  to  come 
bringing  our  money  to  you,  but  it  a'n't  meant  so;  we  come  out  o'  love  and 
loyalty  to  you, — just  out  o'  that.  Your  house  have  been  our  glory  and  our 
friend;  we  can't  a-bear  to  see  it  fall  and  not  to  heave  a  shoulder  to  its  prop. 
Leastways,  my  lord,  if  you'll  just  let  us  save  the  lands:  we  sha'n't  be  a-doingit 
for  you;  we  shall  only  be  let  to  save  ourselves  from  new  masters, — nothing 
more.  The  charity'll  be  to  us." 

The  old  yeomen  was  rude  in  speech  and  tough  in  fibre,  but  a  true  inherent 
delicacy  lived  in  him  for  all  that;  he  strove  as  far  as  his  powers  could  to  put 
the  services  they  came  to  render  in  the  guise  of  a  service  permitted  them  to  aid 
themselves. 

Chandos  came  forward,  and  took  the  old  man's  brown  hands  in  his,  and 
pressed  them  silently:  words  were  very  hard  to  him  to  utter  then. 

"  My  friends,"  he  said,  unsteadily,  while  his  voice  vibrated  on  the  quiet  of 
the  sunny  summer  day,  "thank  you  I  cannot;  such  service  as  you  would  render 
me  is  not  to  be  recompensed  by  any  gratitude.  If  I  could  take  a  debt  from 
any  man,  I  would  take  one  from  you.  But  were  I  to  stoop  so  low  as  to  rob  you 
of  your  earnings  to  arrest  my  ruin,  you  would  be  right  to  deny  that  I  could  ever 
be  the  son  of  Philip  Chandos." 

A  perplexed,  piteous  pain  cast  its  shadow  over  the  honest,  ruddy  faces  upon 


23o  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

which  he  looked:  some  perception  of  his  meaning,  some  sense  that  could  he 
take  their  offer  he  would  be  no  longer  what  the  men  of  his  race  had  been,  stole 
on  them.  They  would  have  given  their  lives  for  him  in  that  hour;  and  they 
had  some  faint  knowledge  that  he  was  right,— that  his  acceptance  of  what  they 
tendered,  in  all  the  cordial  singleness  of  their  hearts,  would  stain  the  man 
they  came  to  save  more  deeply  than  his  calamity. 

Old  Gelart  lifted  his  eyes. 

"  Master,  master,"  he  whispered  hoarsely,  "  it  would  be  to  save  his  name, 
his  lands.  I  think  he'd  'a'  let  us  do  it." 

The  yoeman  had  been  of  the  same  years  with  the  great  minister,  and  had 
loved  and  honored  him  with  all  a  vassal's  feudal  strength. 

Chandos  shivered  at  his  words. 

"  No,"  he  said  gently, — though  in  his  voice  there  was  an  accent  that  pierced 
the  hearts  of  the  listening  crowd.  "  I  have  dishonored  him  enough:  as  I  have 
sown,  so  I  reap:  it  must  be  so.  Yet,  because  I  refuse  you,  do  not  think  me 
dead  to  all  your  love, — senseless  to  all  your  fidelity.  We  shall  never  meet 
again;  but  to  my  dying  day  I  shall  never  forget  you, — never  cease  to  honor 
and  to  thank  you." 

A  mighty  sob,  like  the  wrung-out  moan  of  a  giant,  shook  the  whole  throng 
like  one  man.  They  had  heard  from  his  own  voice  the  fiat  of  farewell;  they 
had  learned  from  his  own  lips  that  the  doom  of  Clarencieux  was  sealed,  that 
they  and  the  race  they  honored  would  be  severed  for  evermore. 

They  looked  upon  his  face  in  as  eternal  a  parting  as  the  strong  bold  men 
who  had  dwelt  upon  his  lands  and  fought  under  his  standard  had  looked  upon 
the  face  of  the  last  marquis  when  he  had  ridden  forth  to  join  the  rallying, — 
ridden  foith  never  to  return. 

And  they  wept  sorely,  like  women. 

The  length  of  the  summer  hours  passed,  the  shadows  of  the  clouds  sweeping 
over  the  breezy  uplands,  the  swathes  of  scythed  grass,  the  golden  gorse  of  the 
moors  sloping  to  the  sea,  and  the  swelling  woods  of  the  deer  forests.  A  fairer 
day  had  never  dawned  and  closed  on  Clarencieux.  Far  in  the  distance  a  white 
sail  glided  in  the  offing;  the  stags  couched  slumbering  under  the  umbrageous 
shelter  of  the  green-wood  aisles;  the  brooks  murmured  their  incessant  song  of 
joy,  bubbling  through  the  maidenhair  and  beneath  the  wild-rose  boughs:  its 
beauty  had  never  been  more  beautiful. 

Like  the  youth  whom  the  ancient  Mexican  world  decked  with  roses,  and  led 
out  in  his  loveliness  in  the  light  of  the  sun,  ere  the  knife  of  the  priestly  slaugh- 
terer laid  his  dead  limbs  to  be  severed  on  the  altar  of  sacrifice,  the  lands 
stretched  smiling  in  the  warmth,  unshadowed  by  the  doom  that  would  dismem- 
ber and  distroy  them. 


CHANDOS.  231 

To  part  from  them  forever  ! — easier  to  lower  the  life  best  loved  within  the 
darkness  of  the  grave,  easier  to  lie  down  in  the  fulness  of  youth  and  die,  easier 
to  suffer  all  that  the  world  can  hold  of  suffering,  than  to  leave  the  birthright 
every  memory  has  hallowed,  every  thought  cherished,  every  childhood's  love 
endeared,  every  pride  and  honor  of  manhood  centred  in,  and  the  one  mad  ruin 
of  an  Esau's  barter  lost. 

The  night  was  down, — with  the  shine  of  the  stars  on  the  sea,  and  the  call  of 
the  deer  on  the  silence,  with  the  grand  woods  bathed  in  dew,  and  the  moorlands 
steeped  in  a  hushing  quiet;  and  with  the  night  he  must  pass  out  from  Claren- 
cieux  a  self-exiled  and  self-beggared  man.  All  through  the  day  he  had 
wandered  in  monotonous,  almost  unconscious  action  among  the  places  that  he 
loved;  by  the  waves  where  they  stretched  under  endless  crests  of  rock  and  below 
beetling  walls  of  pine-topped  granite;  over  the  heather,  blossoming  on  leagues 
on  leagues  of  brown  wet  sand,  where  the  grouse  nested  and  the  sea-swallow 
skimmed;  through  the  dark,  interminable  aisles  of  oaks  without  a  memory  that 
could  gauge  their  hoary  age;  through  the  rich,  wild  s-plendor  of  forest-growth, 
all  melodious  with  birds  and  with  the  noise  of  babbling  waters;  by  the  side  of 
lonely  lakes  belted  in  with  leafy  screens,  under  the  shelter  of  towering  head- 
lands, all  clothed  with  fern  and  pine,  and  with  the  fragrant  wealth  of  linden- 
flowers  and  the  clinging  luxuriance  of  summer  creepers;  through  them  he  wan- 
dered, almost  insensibly,  walking  on  mile  on  mile  without  a  sense  of  bodily 
fatigue,  wearing  out  physical  strength  without  a  knowledge  of  its  loss,  beaten, 
strung,  haggard,  wellnigh  lifeless,  yet  conscious  of  nothing  save  that  he  looked 
his  last  forever  on  the  place  of  his  birth  and  his  heritage. 

It  was  near  midnight  when  he  reached  his  home  in  sheer  exhaustion.  Of 
the  flight  of  time,  of  the  bodily  suffering  that  racked  his  limbs,  of  the  weakness 
upon  him  from  want  of  food,  he  knew  nothing,  he  only  knew  that  before  the 
next  day  dawned  he  must  leave  Clarencieux, — his  own  no  more,  but  given  over 
to  the  spoilers.  All  the  familiar  things  must  pass  from  him,  and  be  his  no  more. 
The  trees  that  had  shed  their  shade  over  his  childish  play  would  fall  under  the 
axe;  the  roof  under  which  kings  had  sought  covert  from  the  men  of  his  blood 
would  know  him  no  longer;  strangers  would  sit  by  the  hearth  to  which  hunted 
princes  had  fled  knowing  they  were  safer  trusting  in  the  honor  of  a  Chandos 
than  amidst  the  Guards  of  their  lost  throne-room.  In  the  banqueting-hall, 
where  his  ancestors  had  gathered  the  chiefs  of  the  nation,  curious  throngs 
would  rush  to  stare  and  barter;  the  very  marble  that  wore  his  father's  sem- 
blance would  be  sold  to  whoever  would  buy;  the  very  canvas  from  which  his 
mother's  eyes  smiled  on  him  would  pass  away  to  hang  on  dealers'  walls.  In 
the  place  that  had  been  sacred  to  his  race  none  would  pause  to  recall  his  name; 
in  the  heritage  where  his  sovereignty  had  been  absolute,  his  lightest  word  treas- 
ured, his  idlest  wish  fulfilled,  he  would  have  no  power  to  bid  a  dog  be  cared 


232  GUI  DA'S     WORKS. 

for,  no  right  to  arrest  a  hand  that  should  be  raised  to  tear  down  with  laugh  and 
jibe  the  records  and  the  symbols  of  the  honor  of  his  house. 

Through  the  years,  however  many,  that  his  life  should  stretch  to,  never  again 
could  he  lay  his  head  under  the  roof  that  had  sheltered  his  childhood's  sleep; 
never  again  could  his  eyes  look  upon  the  things  beloved  so  long:  never  again 
could  his  steps  come  here,  where  every  rood  was  hallowed  and  where  no  race 
but  his  race  had  ever  yet  reigned. 

In  that  hour  nothing  but  his  oath  to  the  man  who  had  bade  him  live  on  and 
meet  his  fate,  whatever  that  fate  should  be,  stood  between  him  and  a  self- 
sought  grave. 

Death  took  the  young,  the  fair,  the  well-beloved;  O  God  !  he  thought,  why 
would  it  pass  him  by  ?  why  would  it  leave  him  breath  on  his  lips,  strength  in 
his  limbs,  consciousness  in  his  brain,  when  all  that  was  worth  living  for  was 
dead,  when  every  pulse  of  existence  through  his  veins  was  but  a  fresh  pang  ? 
Death  !  he  had  known  its  worst  throes  a  thousand  times  with  every  familiar 
thing  on  which  his  eyes  had  looked  their  last;  he  had  passed  through  its  worst 
bitterness  without  a  voice  to  comfort,  without  a  hand  to  succor  him,  with  every 
farewell  gaze  at  all  the  living  things,  at  all  the  forest  haunts,  at  all  the  summer 
loveliness,  with  which  he  had  parted  as  the  dying  Raphael  parted  with  longing, 
yearning  love  from  the  glories  of  the  canvas  that  the  mists  of  dissolution 
blinded  from  his  sight.  Death  !  he  had  died  a  million  deaths  from  the  hour 
when  he  had  known  that  he  must  part  with  Clarencieux. 

It  was  long  past  midnight;  all  was  very  still.  Through  the  open  casements 
came  the  lulling  of  the  sea,  and  the  faint,  delicate  murmur  of  leaves  stirring  in 
a  windless  air,  moved  only  by  the  weight  of  their  clinging  dews  or  by  a  night- 
bird's  wing.  All  in  the  vast  building  slept;  all  who  loved  him  in  the  household 
(and  they  were  many)  had  looked  their  last  upon  his  face, — the  face  that  most 
of  them  had  known  since  the  laugh  of  its  childhood  had  been  on  it.  He  could 
have  no  eyes  upon  him  in  this  the  last  hour.  All  was-  quite  still;  the  moon- 
light streamed  in,  clear  and  white  and  cold,  through  the  unclosed  windows;  the 
whole  of  the  great  limitless  vista  of  chamber  opening  on  chamber  stretched  on 
and  on  in  the  spectral  silver  light;  the  hush  of  the  grave  rested  on  the  mighty 
halls  where  white-crossed  Crusaders  had  denied,  and  houseless  monarchs  had 
been  sheltered,  and  revellers  feasted  in  the  king's  name  through  many  a  night 
of  wassail,  and  his  own  life  of  careless,  cloudless  pleasure  spent  with  so  lavish 
a  hand  its  golden  moments.  The  quivering  ashy  gleam  of  the  star-rays  poured 
down  the  porphyry  chamber,  leaving  deep  breadths  of  gloom  between  the  aisles 
of  its  columns,  touching  with  a  mournful  light  the  drooping  standards  and  the 
lost  coronet  of  the  last  marquis,  shed  full  across  Philip  Chandos'  statue,  and 
leaving  in  its  darkest  shadow  the  motionless  form  of  the  exiled  and  beggared 
man  by  whose  madness  the  honor  had  departed  from  their  house. 


CHANDOS.  233 

Standing  there  before  them, — those  memorials  of  the  dead,— he  felt  as  though 
they  drove  him  out,  dishonored,  alien,  accursed  as  any  parricide.  Through 
him  had  gone  what  had  been  dearer  to  them  than  life;  through  him  had 
perished  what  they  had  trusted  to  him;  through  him  their  name  must  be 
tarnished  by  sneer,  by  scorn, — worse  yet,  by  pity;  through  him  their  might, 
their  fame,  their  stainless  heritage,  were  dragged  in  the  dust  and  parted  amidst 
thieves.  The  crime  of  Orestes  seemed  scarce  more  of  parricide  than  his  crime. 

Had  not  his  oath  held  him,  had  not  his  word,  pledged  to  one  who  now  lay 
in  his  fresh  grave,  bound  his  arm  powerless,  in  that  hour  he  would  have  fallen, 
killed  by  his  own  hand,  beneath  his  father's  statue,  where  the  moon  touched 
with  its  brightest  lustre  the  proud  brow  of  the  marble  that  stood  there  as 
though  to  bear  witness  against  the  wreck  and  shame  of  his  ruined  race,  the 
desolation  of  his  forsaken  hearth. 

The  stillness  of  the  after-midnight  was  unbroken;  once  the  distant  belling 
of  a  deer  echoed  over  the  park  without;  other  sound  there  was  none.  He 
seemed  alone  with  the  dead  he  had  dishonored, — with  the  great  dead  whose 
memories  he  had  shamed  and  whose  treasures  he  had  sold  into  bondage. 

He  looked  at  those  lifeless  symbols  as  though  they  were  his  judges  and 
accusers;  and  a  hoarse  shuddering  cry  broke  from  him  and  moaned  down  the 
silence  of  the  prophyry  hall. 

"  Oh,  God  ! — I  saved  our  honor  !  " 

He  felt  as  though  he  had  pleaded  before  their  judgment-seat, — as  though 
he  called  on  them  to  bear  with  him  in  his  agony,  to  be  merciful  to  him  in  his 
misery.  He  had  not  bartered  all  their  birthright:  he  had  not  given  up  his  honor 
into  slavery  ! 

The  hushed,  grave-like  calm  that  followed  on  the  echo  of  his  words  was  like 
the  calm  of  a  lone  cathedral;  it  cast  back  upon  his  heart  in  terrible  isolation 
the  sense  of  how  utterly  he,  who  had  loved  men  so  well  and  been  the  caressed 
of  so  many  voices,  stood  in  his  poverty  and  his  exile  alone. 

Slowly,  very  slowly,  he  looked  once  more  at  all  that  he  must  leave  forever, 
then  turned  to  pass  out  from  the  porphyry  chamber.  But  the  tension  of  his 
strength  gave  way;  weakened  by  little  food,  and  worn  out  by  exhaustion,  his 
limbs  shook,  his  frame  reeled;  he  swayed  aside  like  a  tree  under  the  blows  of 
an  axe,  and  fell  prone  across  the  threshold, — the  moonlight  bathing  him  where 
he  lay. 

For  hours  hours  he  was  stretched  senseless  there,  the  dog — the  one  friend 
faithful — couched  down  by  him  in  a  sleepless  guard.  The  night  passed  linger- 
ingly;  the  flicker  of  the  gentle  leaves,  or  the  soft  rush  of  an  owl's  wing,  the 
only  noise  that  stirred  in  it  without.  Now  and  then  there  was  the  sweeping 
beat  of  a  flight  of  deer  trooping  across  the  sward  that  echoed  from  afar;  once 
a  nightingale  sang  her  love-song  with  a  music  of  passsionate  pain.  There  was 


234  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

no  noise  of  life  in  the  great  forests  without;  there  was  none  here  in  the  moonlit 
banqueting-hall. 

The  wind  freshened  as  the  day  drew  near,  blowing  through  the  vastness  of 
the  forsaken  chambers  down  the  aisles  of  the  porphyry  columns;  its  cooler 
breath  breathed  on  him  and  revived  him;  he  stirred  with  a  shuddering  sigh. 
His  limbs  were  stiff  and  paralyzed;  his  blood  seemed  frozen;  the  warm  air 
around  felt  chill  as  a  tomb.  He  rose  with  difficulty,  and  dragged  himself,  like 
a  man  crippled  with  age,  across  the  threshold  that  his  steps  should  never 
repass.  The  faint  light  of  the  young  day  was  breaking,  and  shed  a  colder, 
grayer  hue  on  all  its  splendor,  from  which  the  white  majesty  of  the  sculpture 
rose,  like  a  spectre  keeping  silent  witness  over  the  abandoned  solitude. 

Thus,  with  his  head  bowed,  and  in  his  step  the  slow,  laborious,  feeble  effort 
of  bodily  prostration,  he  passed  onward, — onward  through  all  that  never  again 
could  his  eyes  look  upon,  save  in  such  remembrance  as  dreams  lend  to  sleep, 
to  mock  the  waking  of  despair, — onward  through  the  mighty  entrance-hall,  in 
which  the  silence  as  of  death  reigned,  where  the  steel  tramp  of  the  soldiers  of 
the  king  had  once  re-echoed  to  its  vaulted  roof. 

He  looked  back,  in  longing  as  agonized,  in  thirst  as  terrible,  in  yearning  as 
speechless  in  its  love  as  that  with  which  eyes  look  backward  to  the  bier  in  which 
all  that  made  life  worth  its  living  to  them  lies  sightless,  senseless,  and  forever 
lost.  He  looked  back  once, — in  such  a  gaze  as  men  upon  the  scaffold  give  to 
the  fairness  of  earth  and  the  brilliance  of  sunlight  that  they  shall  never  gaze 
upon  again.  Then  the  doors  closed  on  him  with  a  hollow,  sullen  sound;  he 
was  driven  out  to  exile,  and  his  place  would  know  him  no  more. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE   CROWD    IN    THE   COUR   DES   PRINCES. 

WITH  the  day  after  his  last  entertainment  the  ruin,  so  sudden  and  so  vast, 
had  been  rumored  on  the  town. 

Convulsed  with  amaze,  aghast  with  indignation,  indignant  in  incredulity,  the 
world  at  first  refused  to  believe  it;  persuaded  of  its  truth,  it  went  as  nearly  mad 
with  excitement  as  so  languid  and  polite  a  world  could. 

Well  as  he  had  entertained  the  world,  he  had  never,  on  the  whole,  so  richly 
banqueted  it  as  now,  when  it  could  surfeit  itself  upon  a  calamity  so  astounding. 
It  was  grateful  to  all,  which  no  good  news  could  ever  claim  to  be,— the  story 
was  so  utterly  undreamt  of,  so  perfectly  complete,  without  a  flaw  to  make  it  less 


CHAN  DOS.  235 

terrible,  a  loophole  to  make  it  less  dark.  It  was  a  boon  beyond  price  in  the 
hot  languid  days  of  a  waning  season;  it  only  needed  a  suspicion  of  crime  to  be 
as  refreshing  as  the  sudden  sweep  of  a  trainontana  through  the  sultry  dulness 
of  a  Neapolitan  noon.  Just  a  thread  of  "  something  wicked  "  woven  with  it 
would  have  made  it  the  cause  ce'lebre  of  fashionable  drawing-rooms.  As  it  was,  it 
was  convulsingly  amazing  enough  to  be  on  the  lips  of  every  creature  in  the  town; 
and  inimitably  coined  rumors,  turned  out  with  an  exquisite  promptness  and 
ingenuity  from  the  mint  of  slander,  soon  supplied  that  sole  deficiency  of  the 
scandalous  element  with  an  industry  and  adroitness  beyond  all  praise.  "  In 
the  misfortunes  of  our  friends  there  is  always  some  relish,"  says  the  Fronde 
philospher;  and  when  this  adversity  piques  the  palate,  amuses  the  ennui,  and 
soothes  the  vanity,  the  wretchedness  of  a  friend  and  brother  may  become  very 
singularly  acceptable. 

It  burst  upon  the  town  like  the  bursting  of  a  shell.  In  its  first  rumor  it  was 
utterly  discredited.  "  Absurd  !  Had  they  not  been  at  his  ball  last  night  ? 
Had  not  every  one  seen  him  at  the  new  opera  ?  Ruined  ? — preposterous  !  He 
could  never  be  ruined.  They  knew  better." 

Then,  when  the  truth  became  indisputable,  gossip-mongers  quarrelled  for  it 
as  a  flock  of  street-sparrows  quarrel  for  a  crumb  of  bread;  and  the  town  felt 
virtuous  and  outraged.  To  have  been  led  into  offering  such  clouds  of  incense, 
year  after  year,  to  a  man  who  all  the  while  was  on  the  eve  of  bankruptcy  ! — 
society  felt  morally  indignant  and  unjustifiably  treated.  Nothing  so  marvel- 
lous, nothing  so  incredible,  had  startled  his  order  for  many  a  long  year;  in  the 
clubs  and  the  drawing-rooms,  in  the  Rooms  and  the  Lobby,  in  the  lounge  of 
the  Park  and  the  t£te-a-tete  of  the  boudoirs,  there  was  but  one  theme, — his  dis- 
appearance and  his  ruin.  No  loss  could  have  been  so  irreparable  as  the  loss  of 
their  leader;  no  shock  could  have  been  so  intense  as  the  fall  of  their  idol;  no 
episode  could  have  been  so  thrilling  as  their  reception  by  him  the  very  night 
before  his  story  was  known.  Gourmets  were  in  despair, — there  would  be  no 
such  dinners  elsewhere;  and  club-wits  were  in  paradise, — there  could  be  no 
dearth  of  a  topic.  Ladies  fainted  with  grief,  and  revived  to  wonder  if  his  Li- 
moges ware  would  be  sold,  and  wept  their  bright  eyes  dim,  to  clear  them  again 
with  eager  speculation  as  to  the  fate  of  the  Clarencieux  diamonds;  divided 
interests  reigned  together  in  their  hearts:  it  was  agonizing,  it  was  terrible;  no 
one  would  ever  give  them  such  fetes,  but  it  was  possible — all  clouds  have  their 
silver  lining — that  the  Chandos  jewels  perhaps  might  come  into  the  market  ! 

The  Countess  de  la  Vivarol  set  her  delicate  teeth  as  she  heard  of  it,  and  felt 
her  cheek  grow  white,  rusee,  dazzling  young  diplomatist  as  she  was. 

"  I  hate  him;  I  have  my  vengeance.  I  ought  to  rejoice,"  she  thought;  "and 

yet "  And  yet  in  solitude  her  tears  fell.  "  II  est  si  beau  ?  "  she  sighed  to 

herself. 


236  O  UIDAS     WORKS. 

"  He  is  ruined  ?  Well,  I  have  helped  to  do  it,"  said  Flora  de  I'Orme,  with 
gay  self-accusation. 

"  What  a  pity  !  "  lamented  Claire  Rahel.  "  The  art  of  opera-suppers  will 
perish  with  him." 

"There  is  an  overruling  Providence,"  sighed  the  worldly-holies:  "  his  books 
are  not  fit  to  be  read.  Genius  ? — yes,  no  doubt;  but  what  is  genius  without 
principle  ?" 

"  Died  game,"  said  a  Guardsman.    "  By  George,  one  saw  nothing  last  night." 

"  Always  eccentric,"  hinted  a  club-lounger.  "  A  little  mad,  /think;  and, 
on  my  word,  it's  the  most  charitable  thing  to  suppose." 

"Deceived  us  shamefully;  acted  most  dishonorably,"  wept  Lady  Chester- 
ton, to  her  allies.  "  My  sister's  peace  is  ruined  forever;  indeed,  I  fear  for  her 
very  life.  But  we  may  be  thankful  perhaps  for  even  this  terrible  blow;  it  may 
have  saved  more.  What  happiness  could  she  have  looked  for  with  a  gambler, 
a  libertine,  a  free-thinker,  however  brilliant  his  career  ?  " 

Two  or  three  women — notably  one  beautiful  Roman  princess,  with  the 
splendor  of  Rome  in  her  eyes — suffered  passionately  in  their  solitude,  passively 
though  they  had  listened  to  the  world  on  the  subject,  and  thought,  wearily 
pushing  off  their  weighty  hair  from  their  brows,  "  /would  have  gone  with  him 
to  his  beggary." 

For  the  rest,  the  world  talked  itself  out  of  breath  over  its  lost  leader's  fall, 
and  picked  the  story  of  his  calamity  as  a  carrion  picks  the  bones  of  the  dead 
camel.  It  flavored  their  white  soups,  was  the  choicest  olives  to  their  wines, 
spared  them  silent  moments,  let  the  dull  seem  witty  if  he  brought  a  piquant 
addition  to  it,  and  gave  a  lulling  morphine  to  the  pangs  of  jealous  vanity.  The 
world  was  perfectly  certain,  of  course,  that  the  assertion  of  ignorance  was  merely 
a  blind,  and  that  they  had  been  wittingly  duped  many  years.  A  man  run 
through  a  fine  fortune  without  knowing  it  ? — ridiculous  !  And  the  world  began 
also,  as  Trevenna  prophesied,  to  find  out  that  "  Lucrece  "  was  very  immoral. 

Thus  the  babble  busied  itself  over  the  wreck  of  a  life,  denying  it  even  that 
sanctity  of  solitude  which  even  barbarians  have  conceded  to  calamity,  and  ex- 
posing it  far  and  wide  in  those  pillories  where  no  adversity  can  veil,  no  misery 
can  hallow,  no  dignity  beneath  misfortune  can  avail  to  shield  those  once  given 
over  to  the  mercy  of  insatiate  tongues. 

They  were  shocked,  grieved,  horrified;  most  compassionately  sympathetic,  of 
course ;  but  they  were  quite  of  opinion  that  the  idol  they  had  followed  had  been  ut- 
terly worthless,  and  began  to  discuss  with  unanimous  vivacity  the  chances  of  who 
would  be  most  likely  to  secure  the  prize  of  the  inimitable  genius  Dubosc.  It  was 
perhaps  regarded  as  almost  the  cruellest  stroke  of  the  whole  fearful  affair  when 
the  fact  oozed  out  that  the  celebrated  chef  alleged  his  spirit  to  be  broken,  and 
announced  his  intention  of  retiring  for  the  rest  of  his  days  to  a  villa  at  Auteuil, 


CHAN  DOS.  237 

there  to  devote  his  mind  primarily  to  uninterrupted  study  to  the  effects  that 
might  be  produced  by  certain  elements  unrevealed  on  the  red  mullet, — a  prob- 
lem which  had  long  pursued  him, — and  to  indite  a  work  which  should  annihil- 
ate Brillat-Savarin  and  become  the  eternal  Libro  d'Oro  of  gastronomists. 

The  world,  altogether,  was  harshly  treated.  There  was  no  scandal  or 
crime  in  the  story  of  ruin, — which  omission  rendered  it  curry  without  its 
cayenne;  and  the  great  coveted  master — Dubosc — was  lost  to  it.  It  could 
have  lived  without  its  late  idol  well  enough,  but  it  could  not  be  reconciled  to 
living  without  his  cook.  So  it  said  one  De  Profundis  over  the  virtually  dead 
man,  and  turned  to  his  sales  much  as  it  would  have  turned  from  his  tomb  to  his 
catalogues.  No  one  asked  where  he  had  gone;  what  did  it  matter  ?  Take 
what  route  he  would,  he  would  be  sure  to  go  to  Avernus. 

Men  there  were,  it  is  true,  who  took  it  strongly  to  heart  in  their  own  silent 
Quietist  fashion,  who  smoked  huge  cigars  over  it  in  gloomy  silence,  who  could 
not  forget,  try  as  they  would,  the  voice  that  had  always  spoken  them  a  gay 
welcome,  the  hand  that  had  been  always  stretched  out  to  aid  them,  the  eyes 
that  had  never  looked  harshly  on  any  living  thing.  There  were  men,  many  men, 
of  his  own  order,  who  loved  him,  who  could  not  think  of  him  without 
feeling  like  fools,  as  they  phrased  it;  and  there  were  others  not  of  his  set, 
young  men  of  talent  and  ambition,  who  had  found  an  Augustus  in  this  sparkling 
Catullus,  who  had  been  given  fashion  in  their  art  by  a  word  from  him,  and  who 
had  known  no  patron  so  sure,  so  generous,  so  omnipotent.  These  lamented 
him  sorely,  bewailed  him  bitterly  in  their  souls;  but  their  voices  could  not  be 
heard  amidst  the  veering  wind  of  the  condemning  breath  of  many  thousand 
lips;  and  the  world  in  general  fluttered  the  catalogue-leaves  with  raised  eye- 
brows, and  murmured  its  strictures  on  the  morality  of  "  Lucrece."  He  was 
ruined,  and  they  had  been  deceived;  it  was  frightfully  shocking,  of  course;  but 
meanwhile  the  virtuosi  felt  curious  about  the  Quercia  terra-cottas  and  the 
Fragonard  medallions;  Turf-men  could  not  but  congratulate  each  other  that 
the  famous  Clarencieux  strains  would  become  public  property;  dilettanti 
thought  of  the  superb  Titians  and  exquisite  Petits  Maitres  they  had  envied  so 
long:  Pall  Mall  loungers  rumored  on  his  cabinets  of  cigars,  and  epicures 
longed  to  read  the  catalogue  of  his  Comet,  his  Regency,  and  his  Imperial 
growth  wines;  whilst  ladies  comforted  themselves  for  their  darling's  loss  by 
projects  for  securing  his  Delia  Robbia  ware,  his  Evangeliarium  in  conical 
letters  enriched  with  crystals  en  cabochon,  his  Cellini  vases,  or  his  Pompadour 
cabinets.  He  had  amused  them,  no  doubt,  far  more  brilliantly  than  any  other 
ever  would  do;  but,  since  he  was  gone,  it  was  as  well  to  console  themselves 
with  his  collections.  Chandos  before  had  entertained  but  his  order;  now  he 
furnished  entertainment  for  all  the  world. 

When  the  palace-gates  were  opened  in  the  raw  gray  of  the  morning,  and  the 


238  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

Poissardes  rushed  in,  eager,  envious,  insatiate,  devouring,  filling  the  Cour  des 
Princes,  what  matter  to  them  that  the  privacy  of  Versailles  had  never  before 
been  broken  save  by  laughter  and  music  and  the  soft  fall  of  women's  steps  and 
the  glitter  of  a  throng  of  nobles  ? — what  matter  that  Calamity  held  the  throne- 
room,  that  the  mighty  adversity  had  set  its  seal  of  sanctity  upon  the  threshold  ? 
Like  the  Poissardes  in  the  Cour  des  Princes,  the  crowds  rushed  to  enjoy  the 
ruin  of  the  leader  of  fashion,  and  gave  not  one  thought  to  the  fate  of  the  dis- 
crowned. His  palaces  was  theirs  to  wreck  and  to  burn  as  they  would;  they 
pillaged  with  both  hands. 

Moreover,  as  Philippe  Egalite,  if  history  bewray  him  not  (which,  sooth  to 
say,  it  often  does),  took  a  latent  pleasure  in  that  rifling  of  his  house,  in  that  de- 
struction of  his  order,  and  went  up  to  see  the  crowd  thronging  through  the  dis- 
mantled palace-chambers  with  a  smile  on  his  lips,  and  his  little  cane  swinging 
lightly  between  his  fingers,  to  see  the  annihilation  of  the  Eldest-born,  to  see  the 
rooting  up  and  trampling  down  of  the  White  Lilies,  even,  like  Monseigneur 
d'Orleans,  some  there  were  of  his  own  relatives,  of  his  own  rank,  who  came  up 
to  watch  the  spoliation,  and  to  view  the  wreckers  among  the  household  treasures 
of  the  fallen  man,  with  a  certain  sense  of  gratification,  with  a  certain  self-con- 
gratulatory remembrance  that  he  had  most  inconveniently  outshone  them. 

The  comet  was  quenched  in  the  blackness  of  darkness.  Well,  on  the  whole, 
the  stars  felt  they  showed  better. 

And  the  mondes  sympathized  tenderly  with  the  gross  wrong  done  the  Lily 
Queen,  and  sajd  they  were  grieved  that  even  the  honor  of  his  great  father's 
name  could  not  keep  Chandos  from  such  extravagance  and  such  dissipations  as 
had  disgraced  him,  and  wondered  whether  those  famous  Titians  of  his  really 
were  genuine, — they  had  their  doubts, — and  murmured  to  each  other,  in  the 
fragrant  air  of  their  boudoirs,  that  there  was  a  terrible  story — very  terrible — of 
one  of  his  Eastern  girls,  hushed  up  and  lying  at  the  root  of  a  great  deal  of  this 
sudden  disappearance.  Then  the  papers,  too,  took  up  the  theme,  and  embel- 
lished it  in  leaders  and  notes  of  the  week;  and  the  Hypercritic  recanted,  and 
found  the  tone  of  "  Lucrece  "  most  unhealthy. 

"  Dieu  !  how  droll  an  end  to  his  royalty  !  It  is  horrible,  and  yet  it's  amus- 
ing," said  Flora  de  1'Orme,  casting  herself  down,  on  the  day  of  the  first  view, 
on  one  of  the  couches  in  his  own  room,  while  strangers  stared  up  at  the  painted 
ceiling,  tossed  over  his  portfolios,  appraised  the  bric-a-brac,  wondered  at  the 
Daphne,  and  talked  that  the  French  sovereign  had  bought  all  the  Old  Masters. 
What  Demi-Monde  said  openly,  a  higher  and  more  delicate  Monde  thought 
secretly,— a  point  of  coincidence  common  betwixt  the  two. 

The  world  found  it  amusing,  this  discrowning  and  disrobing  of  its  idol. 
His  treasures  were  scattered  far  and  wide;  his  favorite  gems  were  numbered  in 
lots;  his  pictures  were  borne  from  barren  walls  to  hang  under  other  roofs  and 


CHANDOS.  239 

in  other  lands;  the  Daphne  was  torn  from  her  rose-hued  shrine  to  pass  to  a 
Russian  palace;  the  Danaid  was  bought  by  an  American  fur-dealer  to  go  to  his 
mansion  in  the  Fifth  Avenue;  the  plate  was  bought  by  the  great  jewellers  to  be 
remelted;  the  Circassian  girls  were  hired  by  a  French  due;  the  Park  Lane 
house  was  let  to  strangers, — new  millionnaires  of  Melbourne-made  fortunes, — 
who  had  the  painted  ceiling  gilded  over,  the  winter-garden  changed  into  a  cov- 
ered glass  building  for  skittles,  and  the  studio  turned  into  a  lumber-closet. 

The  world  had  followed  him,  worshipped  him,  caressed,  quoted,  courted, 
adored  him;  but  when  his  catalogues  closed,  his  interest  for  it  had  passed 
away.  His  closest  friends  were  not  altogether  sorry  to  have  his  Titians  in 
their  galleries,  his  clarets  in  their  cellars,  the  Clarencieux  breed  in  their  racing- 
establishments,  and  to  feel  that  one  who  had  eclipsed  them  had  passed  out  of 
sight.  His  ruin  was  a  nine  days'  wonder;  then  a  peeress  ran  way  with  a  fa- 
mous Tenor,  and  usurped  the  attention  of  society.  Women  taught  themselves  a 
pretty  blush  when  the  shocking  work  "Lucrece"  was  spoken  of;  and  men  laid 
bets  at  evens  that  he  had  killed  himself. 

The  world  indeed  felt  that  such  an  end  for  the  tragedy  was  due  to  it, 
specially  as  it  had  been  acutely  disappointed  in  the  fate  of  Clarencieux. 


The  summer  days  found  Trevenna  at  the  place  that  was  lost  forever  to  the 
great  race  which  had  reigned  there  since  the  thrones  of  Rufus  and  Beauclerc. 
Ostensibly  he  was  there  in  a  self-imposed  devotion  to  his  ruined  friend's  in- 
terests, keeping  watch  and  ward  over  the  spoilers.  Indeed,  the  world  altogether 
gave  Trevenna  credit  for  behaving  very  admirably  in  the  matter, — for  showing 
an  excellent  spirit  throughout.  He  seemed  really  grieved  in  his  own  manner;  he 
confessed  himself  "  cut  up,"  lamented  that  Chandos  would  never  take  his  warn- 
ings, and  carried  himself  with  so  candid  a  contrition,  so  genuine  a  friendship, 
that  society — who  could  learn  more  to  satisfy  its  curiosity  through  him  than 
through  any  one — thought  very  well  of  him.  Society  naturally  could  not 
doubt  his  regret  for  a  man  with  whom  he  had  dined  almost  every  day  of  his  life, 
and  began  to  discover  that  he  was  a  very  sensible  and  very  entertaining  person: 
he  spoke  with  so  much  good  feeling,  and  yet  with  so  much  just  discrimination, 
of  his  friend's  self-destruction.  He  would  never  have  dissipated  so  royal  a 
property. 

It  was  thought,  too,  very  delicate  in  him  that,  after  the  first  shock  of  the 
town,  he  withdrew  himself  as  much  as  possible  to  Clarencieux,  to  avoid  hearing 
the  misfortune  discussed,  and  to  guard,  as  far  as  he  could,  the  conduct  of  the 
sales  from  dishonesty.  Of  course  he  had  no  power,  as  he  said;  still,  if  there 
were  any  residue,  he  should  too  gladly  save  it  for  his  lost  friend,  though  no 


240  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

one  knew  whither  that  friend  had  gone;  and,  at  all  events,  it  was  as  well  to  keep 
some  note  of  the  creditors'  proceedings.  In  truth,  in  all  his  life  Trevenna  had 
never  enjoyed  himself  so  thoroughly. 

To  lounge  through  the  porphyry  chamber,  with  a  bailiff  eating  his  luncheon 
under  the  coronet  of  the  last  marquis,  to  saunter  through  the  portrait-gallery 
and  hear  dealers  appraise  the  Lelys  and  Lawrences,  the  Vandykes  and  the 
Jamesones,  to  ride  through  the  forests  and  know  they  would  soon  be  felled  as  bare 
as  a  plateau,  to  feel  his  horse's  hoofs  sink  into  the  rose  and  lilac  heather-blooms 
and  think  how  building-lots  would  soon  crush  all  that  flower-fragrance  out  of 
sight,  to  look  across  from  the  deer-park  over  the  sea  and  muse  how  the  mighty 
herds  would  be  driven  out  and  dispersed,  while  scaffoldings  of  bathing-hotels 
would  rise  to  front  the  waters  where  now  no  step  stirred  the  ospreys  and  no 
sound  scared  the  silver-gulls, — this  was  Trevenna's  paradise, — the  paradise  he 
had  set  himself  to  gain  ever  since  the  oath  he  had  sworn  in  his  childish  ven- 
geance, standing  in  the  streets  of  Westminster.  Hannibal-like,  he  had  sworn 
in  his  boyhood  to  sack  the  citadel  of  his  foes;  more  fortunate  than  Hannibal, 
he  had  seen  his  Rome  fall. 

All  the  cruellest  traces  of  ruin  were  those  which  brought  him  most  closely 
home  the  unction  of  his  success:  the  Greuze  room,  with  the  writing-table  strewn 
just  as  the  pen  had  last  been  thrown  down;  the  studio,  with  the  unfinished 
picture  on  the  easel,  the  unused  colors  dried  upon  the  palette,  the  brushes 
scattered  as  they  had  been  laid  aside  by  a  careless  hand,  the  beautiful  heads  of 
women  and  the  delicate  grace  of  landscapes  that  never  now  would  be  completed 
by  the  fancy  which  had  created  them;  the  statues  with  their  snow-white  limbs 
smutched  by  the  dirty  fingers  of  appraisers;  the  treasures  which  had  been  the 
gift  of  monarchs  noted  down  at  their  net  value;  the  volumes  that  were  the 
collections  of  centuries  numbered  and  ticketed  in  lots;  the  rose-terraces,  with 
all  their  luxuriance  of  blossom,  their  perfect  sculpture,  their  summer  sunlight, 
filled  with  the  gathering  of  traders,  Jews,  and  brokers: — these  were  the  things 
that  brought  to  him  the  full  realization  of  his  uttermost  desires. 

"We  should  put  the  escutcheon  up,  and  paint  'Ichabod'  under  it:  the 
glory  has  gone  from  your  house,  my  superb  aristocrats  !  "  thought  he,  as  he 
lounged  down  the  fa?ade  of  the  building;  and,  but  that  it  would  have  looked 
a  strange  lament  for  his  ruined  friend,  he  could  have  enjoyed  doing  that  bit  of 
buffoonery  himself.  Like  many  men  of  strong  will  and  indomitable  endurance, 
—like  Cromwell,  and  Napoleon,  and  Frederick,— he  had  a  dash  of  the  broad 
jester  m  him,  a  love  of  comic,  farcical  bathos;  it  enters  largely  into  many  of 
the  most  powerful  characters.  For  sheer  schoolboy,  devil-may-care  love  and  zest 
in  the  devastation,  he  could  have  taken  a  brush  himself  and  painted  "  Sic  tran- 
sit" on  the  white  pedestal  of  the  minister's  statue;  for  he  was  very  human  in 
his  Mephistophelism,  and  jovial,  almost,  in  the  old  rich  Hellenic  sense  in  his 


CHANDOS.  241 

animal  spirits.  Besides,  he  had  worn  a  curb  so  long;  it  was  a  delicious  sensation 
to  be  utterly  free  and  utterly  victorious. 

A  good  many  of  those  into  whose  hands  Clarencieux  had  fallen  had  made 
their  camp  there  for  a  day  or  so,  whilst  the  valuation  was  being  made.  It  was 
given  over  to  many  masters;  it  had  none  in  especial.  Trevenna  took  his  quar- 
ters there  unmolested.  He  was,  of  course,  closely  allied  with  the  lawyers, 
familiar  for  years  with  the  agents;  and  he  had  a  pleasant  way  with  him  that 
made  him  welcome  even  to  those  whom  ostensibly  he  came  to  inspect  and 
control.  He  occupied  the  rooms  Chandos  had  himself  always  used, — that  suite 
of  the  Greuze  chambers  looking  out  on  the  deer-park;  and  as  he  stretched  his 
limbs  on  the  bed,  under  the  costly  canopy  of  silk  and  lace  and  golden  broid- 
eries, he  could  say  to  himself,  what  few  ever  can  say,  "  I  have  accomplished  the 
dreams  of  my  youth."  He  did  not  say  so,  so  poetically;  but  he  thought,  with 
a  laugh  of  self-congratulation, — 

"  My  brilliant  Chandos  !  which  of  us  is  the  victor  now  ?  " 

And  deeper  than  that  jesting  triumph,  more  bitter,  more  intense  in  exhulta- 
tion,  more  exhaustless  in  sovereign  supremacy,  was  the  sense  in  him  of  having 
struck  down  forever  the  aristocrat  he  had  hated,  and  of  having  alone,  unaided, 
sheerly  by  force  of  his  own  masterly  intelligence  and  his  own  matchless  wit, 
pioneered  himself  into  a  road  on  which  he  would  distance  the  patrician  he  had 
so  long  and  so  futilely  envied,  and  mount  higher  and  higher,  till  he  filled  the 
void  and  ascended  the  throne  from  which  he  had  flung  down  his  rival. 

Thought  of  remorse,  touch  of  self-condemnation,  there  were  none  in  him; 
he  had  hugged  what  he  deemed  his  own  wrong  till  he  had  learned  to  look  on 
treachery  as  a  legitimate  shield  and  on  chicanery  as  a  legitimate  weapon. 
Moreover,  he  was  of  a  bright,  world-wise,  unerring,  unscrupulous  strength  of 
nature,  that  never  succumbed  to  weakness  and  was  never  tainted  by  after-doubt. 

That  this  nature  was  also  one  that  no  benefit  could  soften,  no  gratitude 
warm,  was  the  most  damning  thing  in  the  close-wrought  steel  of  its  formation. 

The  third  day  of  his  stay  in  the  Greuze  suite,  he  sat  at  dinner  with  the  land- 
steward  and  one  of  the  late  lawyers  of  the  ruined  house.  He  was  popular  with 
business-men  of  every  class,  though  they  sometimes  shirked  his  pungent  knowl- 
edge of  them;  and,  now  that  he  was  a  Member,  they  in  especial  began  to  find 
out  how  racy  his  wit  was,  and  how  cordial  his  bonhomie. 

The  confusion  that  reigned  in  the  building  pleased  him;  he  would  have  liked 
to  have  seen  the  whole  stripped  and  gutted  by  fire,  if  he  could;  he  would  have 
watched  the  leaping  flames  devour  Clarencieux  as  the  Romans  watched  them 
devour  the  fair  palace-walls  of  the  city  of  the  Barca  blood.  The  old  servants 
who  came  to  him,  homeless,  with  tears  running  down  their  cheeks,  thinking 
little  of  their  own  fortunes,  but  begging  him  to  tell  them  if  he  knew  aught  of 
their  beloved  lord,  the  weary,  dejected  faces  of  the  keepers  and  the  tenants 


342  QUID  AS     WORKS 

when  he  met  them  in  the  shadowy  woods,  the  emotion  with  which  strong  men 
shook  like  women  as  they  spoke  of  the  master  they  had  lost, — all  these  touched 
him  not  a  whit.  They  angered  him,  because  there  was  one  throne  from  which 
he  could  not  oust  Chandos, — the  hearts  of  his  people;  but  they  touched  him 
not  a  second.  And  in  like  manner  the  desolation  and  confusion  of  the  house- 
hold pleased  him;  and  he  would  rather  have  seen  a  broker  cracking  a  bottle  of 
rum  at  the  ebony  tables  of  the  banqueting-room,  than  he  would  have  sat  there 
to  be  entertained  with  all  the  sovereigns  of  Christendom.  Therefore  his  dinner 
in  the  Greuze  cabinet  to-night,  though  a  hasty  and  ill-assorted  one,  had  more 
flavor  in  it  than  all  the  delicate  and  unsurpassed  tete-a-tete  banquets  which  he 
had  used  to  eat  there  with  the  owner  of  Clarencieux.  He  had  never  enjoyed 
himself  more  than  as  he  leaned  back  in  the  Louis  Quinze  arm-chair  that 
Chandos  had  used  to  occupy,  puffed  his  smoke  into  the  fair  eyes  of  the  French 
painter's  women,  and  ate  his  cutlet  off  the  gold  plate  with  the  arms  of  Claren 
cieux  raised  in  bas-relief  upon  it,  which  would  soon  pass  to  a  millionnaire's 
ormolu  buffet  or  be  melted  down  in  the  silversmith's  smelting-room. 

As  he  sat  there,  the  crash  of  wheels  driven  at  a  gallop  ground  the  avenue- 
road  beneath  the  windows;  a  carriage  swept  round  and  paused.  Silence  fol- 
lowed. "  Is  it  Esau  come  back  to  look  at  his  lost  land  ?  "  thought  Trevenna. 
Audacious,  bold  as  a  lion,  and  masucline  in  all  his  courage  and  his  powers 
as  he  was,  he  could  never  think  but  with  a  qualm  of  that  night  in  which  the  hand 
of  the  man  he  had  pursued  and  goaded  had  been  upon  his  throat,  forcing  him 
backward  out  of  his  presence.  It  was  bitter  to  his  manhood  that  sudden  sur- 
prise should  have  so  thrown  him  off  his  guard,  that  he  had  endured  the  indignity 
of  being  thrust  away  like  a  cur;  and  even  his  fearless  temper  felt  that  it  might 
be  possible  to  jibe  and  sting  and  taunt  a  man  made  mad  with  misery  one  step 
too  far.  And  yet  the  unsatisfied  hatred  in  him,  the  love  and  zest  in  his  con- 
quest, made  him  think,  despite  that, — 

"  I  wish  he  might  come  back, — just  come  back  to  see  us  here." 

As  the  thought  crossed  him,  the  door  of  the  Greuze  cabinet  was  flung  open, 
the  Due  d'Orvale  strode  in,  his  frank  face  flushed,  his  chestnut  hair — just  dashed 
with  a  white  thread  here  and  there — tossed  back  disordered,  his  hazel  eyes 
aflame. 

"Where  is  Chandos  ?  " 

His  mellow  voice  rang  out  almost  in  the  fierceness  of  a  challenge.  He 
entered  without  any  of  the  ceremony  customarily  shown  his  rank,  and  without 
any  of  the  formalities  of  greeting:  « U fou  d'Orvale"  as  his  world  called  him, 
disdained  both  ceremonies  and  formalities. 

Trevenna  rose  and  received  him  with  that  informal  indifference  with  which 
(it  was  his  best  and  highest  point)  he  received  a  prince,  as  unembarrassedly  as 
he  would  have  done  a  sweep.  Indeed,  there  was  something  grand  and  true  in 


CHAN  DOS.  243 

his  intense  democratic  scorn  for  titular  differences,  if  he  had  not  stifled  his 
democracy  when  it  was  expedient,  as  he  courted  his  hated  aristocrats  when  it 
was  lucrative. 

"  Where  is  Chandos  ? "  repeated  D'Orvale,  imperiously. 

"  Don't  know,  M.  le  Due,"  said  Trevenna;  "  perhaps  in  Hades." 

"  You  don't  know  ?  " 

The  eyes  of  Monseigneur  Philippe  began  to  sparkle  dangerously.  Sweet- 
tempered  to  a  fault,  and  wildly  reckless  of  himself,  he  loved  hotly,  and  hated 
hotly  too. 

"  Nobody  knows,  M.  le  Due,"  returned  Trevenna,  with  a  latent  irrepressible 
delight  at  standing  there  on  the  hearth  at  Clarencieux  and  saying  this  of  its 
dispossessed  and  exiled  lord.  "  I  suppose  you  will  have  heard — 

Philippe  d'Orvale  stopped  him  with  a  passionate  .Parisian  oath,  and  struck  his 
right  hand  on  the  console  by  which  he  stood,  till  the  room  rang  with  the 
echo. 

"  Heard  ?  Yes,  I  have  heard.  The  news  reached  me  in  Russia.  I  have 
travelled  night  and  day  since,  without  stopping, — though  till  I  reached  England 
I  believed  the  tale  the  blackest  falsehood  ever  spawned.  You  do  not  know 
where  he  is  gone  ?  " 

"  Nobody  does,  I  have  said,  M.  le  Due,"  rejoined  Trevenna,  a  little  impa- 
tiently. He  held  the  French  prince  in  profound  derision,  as  a  man  who,  having 
the  chance  to  rule  half  the  continent  had  he  chosen,  spent  all  his  substance  on 
cafe  singers  and  posture-dancers.  "  He  is  gone,  I  am  sorry  to  say;  and  the 
world  expects  him  to  send  in  a  sensational  suicide." 

The  brown  eyes  of  Due  Philippe,  so  kindly  and  so  full  of  gayety  and  mirth 
at  other  times,  grew  full  of  ominous  wrath;  his  colossal  strength  that  stood  un- 
impaired all  the  wild  excesses  of  his  life,  towered  in  the  light  against  the  violet 
hangings  of  the  cabinet;  he  faced  Trevenna  with  a  superb  disdain,  mingled 
with  the  impatient  grief  that  his  face,  mobile  as  a  woman's  and  transparent  as 
a  child's,  betrayed  without  disguise. 

"  What  !  what  !     Did  everyone  forsake  him  in  a  single  day  ?  " 

Trevenna  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"  Men  are  rats,  monseigneur, — scurry  towards  a  full  granary,  and  scamper 
away  from  a  rotting  house.  As  for  the  forsaking,  I  don't  know  about  that. 
He  gave  a  ball  one  night,  and  let  the  town  hear  next  day  he  was  all-but-bank- 
rupt; he  made  a  present  of  everything  to  his  creditors,  and  disappeared  another 
night,  God  knows  where.  Now  a  man  who  does  that  don't  please  society." 

If  Philippe  d'Orvale  had  doubted  the  fate  that  had  befallen  his  friend,  he 
could  have  doubted  no  longer  when  these  words  were  spoken  under  the  roof  of 
Clarencieux,  by  the  man  Chandos  had  protected,  befriended,  and  benefited. 

He  shook  with  .rage  as  he  heard;  the  reckless  and  dissolute  prince-Bohemian 


244  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

might  have  many  vices,  but  he  had  not  the  most  dastardly  vice  on  earth:  he 
had  no  desertion  for  the  fallen. 

"You  were  his  debtor,  sir;  of  course  you  are  but  a  time-server  !  "  he  said, 
with  the  haughty  contempt  of  the  Vieille  Cour  on  his  fine  lips,  the  noblesse 
spirit  waking  in  him,  utterly  as  it  was  accused  of  slumbering  whilst  he  drank 
with  buffo-singers,  laughed  with  polichinelle-showmen,  danced  the  mad  Rigol- 
boche  and  Cancan  at  the  Chateau  Rouge,  and  learned  their  argot  de  la  Halle 
oyster-feasting  with  blooming  Poissardes,  in  all  his  headlong  Paris  orgies. 
"  It  is  true,  then,  all  this  accursed  history  that  I  hear  in  every  mouth  ? " 

"  Only  too  true,"  said  Trevenna,  more  gravely.  He  would  have  rather  had 
any  eyes  on  him  than  those  of  this  devil-may-care  and  dauntless  noble,  this 
eccentric  and  hare-brained  original,  this  bon  enfant  of  the  Coulisses  and  the 
Chaumiere,  whom  Europe  had  pronounced  insane  for  inviting  Barbary  apes  to 
breakfast;  for  he  knew  how  Philippe  d'Orvale  loved  his  friend.  "  Only  too 
true,  M.  le  Due.  Chandos  has  -lost  everything,  and  gone  no  one  knows  whither; 
out  of  England,  no  doubt.  It  was  very  suddenly  that  the  crash  came  at  last, 
— though,  of  course,  the  extravagance  of  years  had  long  led  up  to  it." 

Philippe  d'Orvale  swung  from  him,  and  turned  to  the  other  men  with  the 
grand  disdain  with  which  he  would  have  turned  on  to  the  Marseillaise 
swarming  on  the  Terrasse  des  Feuillans,  had  he  lived  in  the  days  of  the 
Lilies. 

"  You  were  all  the  Creatures  of  his  bounty.  Can  you  serve  him  no  better 
way  than  by  sitting  drinking  his  wines  in  his  chambers  ?  Could  he  not  be  gone 
one  hour  before  you  carrion-crows  came  to  pick  your  feast  ?  Answer  me  in  a 
word.  What  has  been  done  to  save  him  ?  " 

"  To  save  him  ! "  echoed  Trevenna,  whose  imperturbable  nonchalance  and 
good  humor  alone  left  him  able  to  answer  the  sudden  attack  of  the  fiery 
Southern  noble,  which  had  paralyzed  his  companions.  "  Everything,  M.  le 
Due,  that  tact  and  good  sense  could  suggest.  But  you  cannot  dam  up  an 
avalanche  once  on  its  downward  road;  no  mortal  skill  could  arrest  his  ruin.  It 
was  far  too  vast,  too  complete." 

Philippe  d'Orvale  seemed  as  though  he  heard  nothing;  he  stood  there  in  his 
herculean  stature,  with  his  fiery  glance  flashing  on  the  men  before  him,  his  lips 
drawn  into  a  close  tight  line  under  the  chestnut  shower  of  his  beard.  So  only 
had  they  set  once  before,  when  he  had  seen  a  young  girl  struck  and  kicked  by 
her  owners  on  a  winter's  night  outside  the  guingette,  where  he  had  been  as  a 
Pierrot  to  a  barriere  ball  of  ouvriers  and  grisettes;  and  the  man  who  had  beaten 
her  till  she  moaned  where  she  lay  like  a  shot  fawn  had  been  felled  down  in  the 
snow  by  a  single  crashing  stroke  from  the  arm  in  whose  veins  ran  the  blood  of 
French  nobles  who  had  charged  with  Godefroi  de  Bouillon,  and  died  with 
Bayard,  and  fought  at  Ivry  under  the  White  Plume. 


CHANDOS.  245 

"  What  is  left  him  ?  "  he  asked,  curtly.  His  breath  came  short  and  sharply 
drawn. 

"  Nothing,  monseigneur." 

Trevenna  felt  his  hate  rising  against  this  haughty  roysterer,  this  sobered 
reveller,  who  came  to  challenge  the  hopelessness  and  the  completeness  of  the 
devastation  he  had  wrought.  He  could  not  resist  the  malicious  pleasure  of 
standing  there  face  to  face  with  the  aristocrat-ally,  the  titled  boon-companion, 
of  the  ruined  man,  and  dinning  in  his  ear  the  total  beggary  that  had  fallen  on 
his  favorite  and  his  friend. 

"  Nothing  !  Not  a  shilling  ?  "  he  repeated,  with  the  same  relish  with  which 
a  hound  turns  his  tongue  over  his  lips  after  a  savory,  thirsty  plunge  of  his 
fangs  into  the  blood  he  is  allowed  to  taste. 

"  '  Nothing  ! '     Is  this  place  gone  ?  " 

"  It  is  going  by  auction,  M.  le  Due." 

The  curt,  caustic  complacency  of  the  answer  was  not  to  be  restrained  for 
all  that  prudence  could  suggest. 

"  Good  God  !  what  he  has  suffered  !  " 

The  words  broke  unconsciously  from  D'Orvale's  lips:  he  knew  how  he  had 
suffered.  In  the  moment  he  almost  suffered  as  much.  Due  Philippe  was 
reckless,  wayward,  wasteful  of  the  goods  of  the  earth  and  the  gifts  of  his  brain, 
was  eccentric  to  the  verge  of  insanity,  and  fooled  away  his  mature  years  in  the 
follies  of  a  Rochester,  in  the  orgies  of  a  Sheridan;  but  he  had  a  generosity  as 
wide  and  a  heart  as  warm  as  the  stretch  of  his  Southern  lands,  as  the  light  of 
his  Southern  suns.  For  a  moment  the  grief  on  him  had  the  mastery;  then, 
shaking  his  hair  as  a  lion  shakes  its  tawny  mane,  he  dashed  his  hand  down 
again  on  the  marble  breadth  of  the  console. 

"  Sold  ?     By  the  heaven  above  us,  never  !  "  .   . 

Trevenna  bowed  with  a  tinge  of  ironic  insolence  of  which  he  was  scarcely 
aware  himself. 

"  It  would  be  happy  if  monsiegneur  could  make  his  words  good;  but,  un- 
fortunately, creditors  are  stubborn  things.  Clarencieux  is  no  longer  our  poor 
friend's,  but  belongs  to  his  claimants.  It  will  be  parcelled  out  by  the  auc- 
tioneer's hammer." 

"  Never  !  " 

Trevenna  bowed  again. 

"  With  every  respect,  M.  le  Due,  for  your  very  strong  negative,  I  fear  it  is 
quite  impossible  that  it  can  take  effect.  Clarencieux  is  doomed  !  " 

D'Orvale  flashed  his  glance  over  him  with  that  mute  scorn  which  his  grand- 
father had  given  to  Sanson  when  he  sauntered  up  the  steps  of  the  guillotine  as 
calmly  as  he  had  gone  through  a  minuet  with  Marie  Antoinette  or  Lamballe. 

"You  triumph  in  your  patron's  adversity,  sir  !     That  is  inevitable;  every 


246  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

jackal  is  content  when  the  lion  falls  !     By  the  God  above  us,  I  tell  you  Claren- 
cieux  shall  not  be  bartered  !  " 

Trevenna  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

«  With  every  deference,  M.  le  Due,  your  language,  though  you  are  a  prince, 
is  not  polite.  With  regard  to  Clarencieux— 

"  It  shall  be  mine." 

The  words  were  said  as  Philippe  d'Orvale  could  say  such  when  he  chose, 
with  a  dignity  that  none  could  have  surpassed,  with  a  sovereignty  that  sat  finely 
on  him  in  its  negligent  ease,  with  a  force  of  will  which  now  and  then  flashed 
out  of  his  mad  caprices  and  his  fantastic  vagaries,  and  showed  what  this  man 
might  have  been  had  he  so  willed  to  lead  the  world  instead  of  to  be  the  hero  of 
a  night's  wild  masking,  the  king  of  a  score  of  wine-cup  rioters. 

"  Yours  ?     Impossible  !  " 

Trevenna  was  startled  almost  into  self-betrayal  of  the  thirst  that  was  upon 
him  for  the  dispersion  and  destruction  of  the  lands  of  Clarencieux, — of  the 
terror  that  seized  him  lest  by  some  mischance  any  portion  of  the  bitterness  of 
his  fate  should  be  spared  to  Chandos,  any  fragment  of  the  home  he  had  been 
exiled  from  be  saved  from  ignominy  and  outrage. 

"  Impossible  ? "  echoed  Philippe  d'Orvale.  "  No  one  ever  says  the  word 
to  me  !  " 

There  was  all  the  superb  defiance  of  the  old  nobles  of  Versailles,  all  the 
disdainful  omnipotence  of  the  ancient  regime,  in  the  reply.  When  he  would, 
he  could  exert  his  command  as  imperiously,  as  intolerantly,  as  any  marshal  of 
Louis  Quinze. 

"  Indeed  !     I  fear  his  creditors  will  say  it." 

Trevenna  could  pause  neither  for  the  courtesies  of  custom  nor  the  cere- 
monies of  rank;  he  could  have  killed,  if  a  glance  would  have  slain,  this  loathed 
French  noble,  who,  with  his  seigneur's  sympathy  and  his  aristocrat's  loyalty  to 
his  order  and  his  friend,  came  to  arrest  the  consummation  of  that  unsurpassed 
edifice  of  vengeance  which  he  had  erected,  at  such  labor  and  with  such  genius, 
to  crush  the  might  of  Clarencieux  and  lie  heavy  above  a  suicide's  grave. 

A  fierce  oath,  passionate  as  a  tornado,  broke  from  under  the  sweeping  beard 
of  Due  Philippe  where  he  stood.  But  that  his  partrician  honor  forbade  him  to 
strike  a  man  whom  his  partrician  pride  could  not  have  met  and  satisfied  as  his 
equal,  he  could  have  dashed  Trevenna  down  on  the  hearth  he  insulted,  with  a 
single  blow  of  his  stalwart  right  hand. 

"Say  it  ?"  he  repeated.  "  By  God,  then,  they  shall  not.  What!  parcel  his 
lands  out  among  thieves  ?  let  a  broker  be  master  here  in  his  stead  ?  sell  his 
home  to  some  trader's  new  gold  ?  Never,  while  there  is  life  left  in  me  !  never, 
if  my  own  castles  are  mortgaged  over  my  head  to  get  the  money  they  ask  ! 
Where  is  your  country's  gratitude,  that  they  let  his  father's  memory  go  pawn  ? 


CHANDOS.  247 

Where  are  all  those  he  benefited,  that  there  is  not  a  voice  lifted  against 
such  shame  ?  " 

Trevenna  shrugged  his  shoulders.  That  this  man  was  a  prince  and  a  million- 
naire  whom  he  bearded  he  cared  not  two  straws:  he  only  remembered 
Philippe  d'Orvale  as  a  madman  with  whose  outrageous  follies  all  Europe  had 
rung;  he  only  remembered  him  as  one  who  clung  to  the  idol  the  world  had 
dethroned,  and  who  threatened  to  tear  down  the  topmast  laurel-wreath  with 
which  his  own  hand  had  crowned  his  labor  of  vengeance. 

"  Monseigneur  d'Orvale,"  he  said,  with  that  malicious  banter  which  Tre- 
venna could  no  more  hold  back  in  his  wrath  than  the  leopard  in  his  will  hold 
back  his  claws,  "  if  the  country  spent  its  money  on  every  great  man's  extrav- 
agant scions,  it  would  have  some  uncommonly  uncomfortable  legacies.  It 
don't  even  pay  its  own  debts;  deuce  take  me  if  I  can  see  why  it  should  pay 
Chandos'  because  his  father  once  was  First  Lord  of  its  Treasury  and  he  has 
seen  fit  to  squander  as  pretty  a  property  as  ever  was  made  ducks  and  drakes 
of  for  pictures  and  dinners  and  women.  As  for  those  he  benefited, — granted 
they're  a  good  many;  but  if  a  lot  of  artists,  and  singers,  and  dancers,  and  shabby 
boys  who  think  themselves  Shakspeares,  and  bearded  Bohemians  who  swig  beer 
while  they  boast  themselves  Raphaels,  were  all  to  club  together  to  help  him 
with  a  shilling  subscription,  I  don't  suppose  they'd  manage  to  buy  back  much 
more  than  a  shelf  of  his  yellow  French  novels.  I'm  as  sorry  for  him  as  you 
can  be  (you  can't  doubt  my  sincerity,  I  shall  never  get  such  good  dinners);  but 
I  candidly  confess  T  don't  see,  and  can't  see,  why,  just  because  he  has  been  a 
fool  and  a  spendthrift,  a  whole  nation  of  sane  people  are  bound  to  rush  to  his 
rescue  with  their  purses  wide  open.  As  he  sowed,  so  he  reaps;  nobody  can 
complain  of  that." 

Due  Philippe  shook  in  all  his  mighty  limbs;  and  as  he  looked  at  the  speaker 
planted  there  lightly,  firmly,  with  his  feet  apart  and  the.  insolence  of  triumph 
irrepressibly  spoken  in  his  face  and  his  attitude,  he  could  have  leaped  forward 
like  a  staghound  and  shaken  all  the  life  out  of  him  with  a  single  gripe.  It  was 
with  a  mighty  effort  that  he  kept  the  longing  in.  •'•", 

"  If  you  reap  as  you  sow,  M.  Trevenna,  you  will  have  a  fine  harvest  of  woven 
hemp  !  "  he  said,  curtly,  in  the  depths  of  his  brown  beard,  as  he  swung  with  an 
undisguised  loathing  from  him,  and  turned  towards  the  other  men,  who,  mute 
with  astonishment,  and  out  of  deference  for  the  rank  of  the  mad  noble  who  had 
broken  in  on  them  thus,  stood  passive.  "You  are  his  men  of  business,  are 
you  not? — wreckers  enriched  by  the  flotsam  and  jetsam  you  save  out  of 
his  shipwreck  ?  Listen  to  me,  then.  Whoever  they  be,  or  however  his  creditors 
hold  this  place,  it  shall  be  mine.  Whatever  price  they  ask,  whatever  liabilities 
be  on  it,  I  will  give  them  and  I  will  discharge.  Let  them  name  the  most  ex- 
travagant their  extortion  can  grasp  at,  it  shall  not  be  checked;  I  will  meet  it. 


248  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

I  will  buy  Clarencieux  as  it  is,  from  its  turrets  to  its  moorlands;  do  you  hear  ? 
Not  a  tree  shall  be  touched,  not  a  picture  be  moved,  not  a  stone  be  displaced. 
It  shall  be  mine.  And,  hark  you  here;  I  offer  them  their  own  terms,— all  their 
greed  can  crave  or  fancy;  but  tell  them  this,  on  the  word  of  Philippe  d'Orvale, 
that  if  they  do  not  part  with  it  peaceably,  if  they  do  not  send  their  hell-dogs 
out  of  its  places  and  take  the  bidding  I  give  them,  I  will  so  blast  their  names 
through  Europe  that  their  trade  and  their  credit  shall  be  gone  forever,  and  they 
shall  perish  in  worse  beggary  than  this  that  they  have  caused.  Tell  them  that, 
Europe  can  let  them  know  in  what  fashion  I  keep  my  oaths, — and  with  to- 
morrow make  Clarencieux  mine." 

The  passionate  words  quivered  out  on  the  silence  of  the  painted  chamber, 
furious  as  a  hound's  bay,  firm  and  ringing  as  an  army's  sound  to  assault.  Then, 
without  another  syllable,  Philippe  d'Orvale  swung  round  and  strode  out  of  the 
cabinet,  his  lion  eyes  alight  with  a  terrible  menace,  his  lion's  mane  of  hair 
tossed  back.  He  had  said  enough.  When  once  he  roused  from  his  wild  mas- 
querades and  his  headlong  Bohemianism  to  use  his  leonine  might  and  to  vindi- 
cate his  princely  blood,  there  was  not  a  man  in  all  the  breadth  of  the  nations 
that  ever  dared  say  nay  to  the  "  mad  duke." 

He  saved  Clarencieux, — saved  it  from  being  sundered  in  a  thousand  pieces 
and  given  over  to  the  spoilers,  though  he  could  not  save  the  honor  of  its  house, 
the  ruin  of  its  race.  The  world  was  bitterly  aggrieved, — it  was  deprived  of 
so  absorbing  a  theme,  of  so  precious  a  prize;  and  Trevenna  could  have 
killed  him. 

The  pyramid  of  his  vengeance  had  risen  so  perfectly,  step  by  step,  without 
a  flaw;  it  was  unbearable  to  him  that  the  one  stone  for  its  apex  should  be  want- 
ing, the  one  last  line  of  the  record  of  the  triumphs  engraved  on  it  should  be 
missing.  He  had  swept  all  the  herds  away,  leaving  not  one;  it  was  unendura- 
ble to  him  that  the  last  coveted  ewe-lamb  should  alone  have  escaped  him.  He 
had  destroyed  Chandos  utterly,  hopelessly,  body  and  soul,  as  he  believed, — 
slain  honor  and  genius  and  life  in  him,  without  a  pause  in  his  success.  It  was 
intolerable  to  him  that  the  last  drop  should  not  crown  the  cup,  that  the 
green  diadem  of  the  Clarencieux  woods  should  wreathe  its  castle  untouched, 
that  the  royalties  of  the  exiled  race  should  be  left  in  sanctified  solitude,  in  lieu 
of  being  flung  out  to  the  crowds  and  parcelled  among  the  Marseillaise  in  the 
desolated  courts  of  the  princes. 

He  had  longed  to  see,  had  it  been  possible,  the  plough  pass  over  the  lands 
and  the  harrow  rake  out  every  trace  of  the  banished  race;  he  had  longed  to 
see,  if  he  could,  the  flame  of  the  culturer  licking  up  all  the  beautiful,  wild,  use- 
less wealth  of  heather  and  fern  and  forests  lilies;  he  had  longed  to  hear  the 
hammers  clang  among  the  woodland  stillness,  to  watch  the  oaks  crash  down 
under  the  axe,  to  behold  the  beauty  crushed  out  under  the  iron  roll  and  the 


CHAN  DOS.  249 

timber  scaffolding  of  the  new  speculators, — to  know  that  the  very  place  and 
name  and  relics  of  the  exiled  lord  were  effaced  and  forgotten.  Through 
Philippe  d'Orvale  this  last  crowning  luxury  was  denied. 

Clarencieux,  though  he  had  driven  from  it  the  last  of  its  race,  escaped  him, 
— escaped  the  indignity,  the  oblivion,  the  desecration,  he  had  planned  to  heap  on 
it;  he  had  made  its  hearths  desolate,  but  his  arm  was  held  back  from  the  final 
blow  with  which  he  had  planned  to  make  them  also  dishonored  and  to  raze 
their  stones  as  though  no  fires  had  ever  burned  there, — till  sheep  should  have 
grazed  where  kings  had  feasted,  and  wheat  have  waved  where  its  dead  rulers 
had  their  graves. 

Through  Philippe  d'Orvale  it  was  denied  him. 

Thus,  some  were  faithful  to  the  fallen  idol:  the  sun-browned  men  who 
toiled  from  dawn  to  evening  among  the  seas  of  seeding  grass  and  the  yellow 
oceans  of  the  swelling  corn;  the  crippled  dreamer  whom  his  fellows  thought  an 
idiot  that  a  child  might  lead;  the  reckless  voluptuary,  the  prince-Bohemian, 
whom  the  world  called  a  madman  and  vested  with  every  vice  that  libertines 
can  frame;  the  dog  whom  human  reason  disdains  as  a  brute  without  speech: — 
those  were  faithful, — those  only.  But  they  were  many,  as  the  world  stands. 

The  two  who  were  deadliest  against  him,  and  chiefest  without  pity  or  mercy 
in  his  fall,  were  the  man  he  had  succored  with  his  friendship  and  his  gold,  and 
the  woman  he  had  loved  and  honored. 


250  QUID  AS     WORKS. 


1  Delexi  justitiam  et  odivi  iniquitatem,  propterea  morior  in  exilio." 

HlLDEBRAND. 

"  Is  not  the  bread  thou  eat'st,  the  rope  thou  wear'st, 
Thy  wealth,  and  honors,  all  the  pure  indulgence 
Of  him  thou  would'st  destroy  ? 
Why,  then,  no  bond  is  left  on  human  kind." 

DRYDEN. 


CHAPTER  I. 

"  FACILIS  DESCENSUS   AVERNI." 

IT  was  far  past  midnight  in  Paris;  a  chilly,  bitter  winter's  night,  in  the  turn 
of  the  going  year;  a  night  without  stars,  in  which  the  snow  drifted  slowly  down, 
and  the  homeless  crouched  down  shivering  into  a  traitorous  sleep, — a  merciful 
sleep,  from  which  they  would  wake  no  more, — an  endless  sleep,  to  be  yearned 
for  passionately  when  there  can  be  no  bread  for  the  parching  lips,  if  breath 
linger  in  them,  no  peace  for  the  aching  eyes,  if  they  wake  again  to  a  world  of 
want. 

It  was  long  past  midnight  in  one  of  the  gambling-dens  which  mock  the  law 
in  the  hidden  darkness  of  their  secret  haunts, — the  dens  which  no  code  will 
ever  suppress,  which  no  legislature  will  ever  prevent.  Where  any  vice  is  de- 
manded, there  will  be  the  supply;  let  every  shape  of  forbiddance  be  exercised 
as  it  may,  in  vain.  Wherever  men  be  hungered  for  their  own  ruin,  there  will 
be  also  those  who  bring  their  ruin  to  them. 

This  was  one  of  the  worst  hells  in  Paris, — the  worst  in  Europe.  Men  who 
dared  venture  nowhere  else  came  here;  men  on  whom  the  grasp  of  the  law 
would  be  laid,  were  they  seeii,  came  here;  men  who,  having  exhausted  every 
form  of  riot  and  debauchery,  had  nothing  left  except  the  gamester's  excitation, 
came  here;  it  embraced  them  all,  and  finished  the  wreck  that  other  ruin  had 
begun.  Other  places  allured  with  color,  with  glitter,  with  enticing  temptations: 
this  had  none  of  these;  it  allured  with  its  own  deadly  charm  alone,  it  made  its 
trade  terribly  naked  and  avowed;  it  let  men  come  and  stake  their  lives,  and 


CHAN  DOS.  251 

raked  the  stake  in,  and  went  on  without  a  pause;  it  was  a  pandemoniac  paradise 
only  for  those  already  cursed.  It  was  hidden  away  in  one  of  the  foulest  and 
most  secret  nests  in  Paris;  its  haunt  was  known  to  none  save  its  frequenters, 
and  none. so  frequented  it  save  those  whom  some  criminal  brand  or  some  des- 
perate doom  already  had  marked  or  claimed.  Close  at  hand  to  it,  in  an  outer 
chamber,  were  the  hot  drinks,  the  acrid  wines,  the  absinthe,  and  the  opiates 
that  were  drunk  down  by  ashen  lips  and  burning  throats  as  though  they  were 
water;  these  alone  broke  the  ceaseless  tenor  of  the  gambling;  these  alone  shared 
with  it  the  days  and  nights  of  those  who  plunged  into  the  abyss  it  opened  for 
them.  Often  all  on  through  the  dawn,  and  the  noon,  and  the  day,  the  flaring 
gas-jets  of  its  burners  would  be  kept  alight:  the  crowd  that  filled  its  room  would 
know  nothing  of  time, — not  know  even  that  the  sun  had  risen.  The  gay 
tumult  of  the  summer  life  in  Paris  would  be  waking  and  shining  on  all  around 
it  in  the  clear  life  of  the  fresh  hours;  and  still  here  where  the  sullen  doors  barred 
out  all  comers  the  gamesters  would  play  on,  play  on,  till  they  dropped  down 
dead-drunk,  or  reeled  insensible  with  want  of  food  and  drugs  or  nicotines.  The 
Morgue  had  never  owed  so  many  visitants  to  any  place  as  it  had  owed  to  this; 
the  Bagne  had  never  rceived  so  many  desperadoes  as  it  had  received  from 
here;  the  walls  of  Bicetre  had  never  been  so  filled  with  raving  brainless  lives  as 
it  had  been  filled  with  by  the  haunters  of  this  den  hidden  in  the  midst  of  curl- 
ing crooked  streets  and  crowding  roofs,  like  a  viper's  nest  under  the  swathes 
of  grass. 

Those  who  owned  it  were  never  known;  the  longest  frequenter  of  its  room 
never  knew  who  the  bank  was;  it  was  a  secret  profound,  impenetrable, — guarded 
as  closely  as  its  own  existence  was  guarded  from  the  million  eyes  of  the  clair- 
voyant law.  No  one  knew  that  in  one  or  two  superb  hotels,  with  fine  carriages, 
fine  dinners,  fine  linen,  with  fashionable  wives  and  blameless  reputations,  with 
a  high  name  on  the  Bourse  and  a  reception  at  the  Tuileries,  dwelt,  in  peace  and 
plenty — the  proprietors. 

Does  the  world  ever  guess  how  a  millionth  part  of  the  money  that  fills  it 
is  made  ?  The  world  at  large,  never  ! 

It  was  far  past  midnight  in  the  hell:  the  gas-glare  fell  on  the  painted  faces 
of  unsexed  women  and  on  the  haggard  brows  of  men  who  had  played  on  here 
all  through  the  day  and  played  on  all  through  the  night.  The  croupiers  were 
relieved  at  intervals:  the  gamblers  never  moved;  they  hung  there  till  the 
sheer  physical  powers  of  life  gave  way,  and  famine  forced  them  from  the  tables; 
stirless  and  breathless,  only  at  long  intervals  rending  themselves  from  it  to 
take  the  drugs  and  the  stimulants  that  soddened  their  senses,  they  were 
riveted  there  by  one  universal,  irresistible  fascination.  Features  of  every 
varied  kind  were  seen  in  the  gaudy  flare  of  the  gas;  but  they  all  wore  the  same 
look, — the  thirsty,  sleepless,  intense  look  of  ravenous  excitement.  It  was  not 


252  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

the  polished  serenity  of  fashionable  kursaals,  the  impassive  languor  of  aristo- 
cratic gaming-tables,  the  self-destruction,  taken  with  a  light  word,  of  the  salles 
of  Baden,  of  Homburg,  of  Monaco;  it  was  gambling  in  all  its  unreined  fever,  in 
all  its  naked  excitation,  in  all  its  headlong  delirium,  in  all  "  its  arid  quest  for 
wealth  midst  ruin." 

There  is  a  vast  error  in  which  the  world  believes, — that  gamesters  are  moved 
by  the  lust  of  gain  only,  by  the  desire  of  greed,  by  the  longings  of  avarice.  It 
is  not  so;  the  money  won,  they  toss  it  back  without  an  instant's  pause,  to  risk 
its  loss  at  venture.  Avarice  is  no  part  of  the  delirium  which  allures  them  with 
so  exhaustless  a  fascination;  the  spell  that  binds  them  is  the  hazard.  Give 
a  gamester  thousands,  he  cares  for  the  gold  only  to  purchase  with  it  that 
delicious,  feverish,  intoxicating  charm  of  chance.  There  is  a  delight  in  its 
agony,  a  sweetness  in  its  insanity,  a  drunken,  glorious  intensity  of  sensation 
in  its  limitless  swing  between  a  prince's  treasures  and  a  beggar's  death,  which 
lends  life  a  sense  never  known  before, — rarely,  indeed,  once  tasted,  ever 
abandoned. 

There  was  scarcely  even  a  sound  in  the  fatal  place.  Once  now  and  then  an 
oath,  a  blasphemy,  or  a  shuddering  gasping  breath  broke  the  charmed  stillness, 
in  which  the  click  of  the  roulette-ball,  the  rattle  of  the  dice,  or  the  rapid  mon- 
otone of  the  croupiers  reigned  otherwise  alone.  The  room  was  crowded.  Men 
who  had  grown  old  and  gray  and  palsied  waiting  on  the  caprices  of  the  color, — 
men  who  had  wasted  on  the  framing  of  cabals,  intellects  that  might  have 
rivalled  Newton's  or  Descartes', — men  who  had  consumed  their  youth  in  this 
madness,  and,  young  yet,  looked  for  nothing  save  a  death  in  a  hospital  and  a 
pauper's  unowned  grave, — men  who  had  flung  away  high  birth,  high  gifts,  high 
chances,  and  came  here  to  wear  out  the  last  few  hours  of  dishonored  lives, — 
men  with  eyes  in  which  the  wasted  genius  of  a  mighty  mind  looked  wistfully 
out  through  the  bloodshot  mists  of  a  drunkard's  sight, — men  who  had  the 
trackers  of  turf-law  or  of  social  law  in  their  trail,  and,  hiding  for  very  life, 
knew  no  nest  surer  than  this  foul  one, — all  these  were  here  in  the  tawdry  glitter 
of  the  flaring  gas-jets.  And  there  were  women,  too, — some  young,  some  fear- 
fully young, — loveless  and  rouged,  and  hacking  bitter  coughs,  or  laughing 
ghastly  laughs,  playing,  playing,  playing  insatiate,  with  the  thirsty,  eager, 
devilish  glare  aching  in  their  painted  eyes. 

Among  them  stood  Chandos. 

The  look  which  had  set  on  his  face  the  night  that  he  had  left  Clarencieux 
had  never  left  it;  its  glorious  beauty  survived  the  ravages  of  misery,  the  gaunt 
sleeplessness  of  a  gamester's  days,  the  wreck  of  all  greater,  all  better,  higher 
things  in  him.  Nothing  could  stamp  it  out  utterly;  but  it  had  something  more 
fearful  than  any  one  of  the  other  faces  crowded  round  them,  though  they  would 
have  furnished  a  painter  with  a  thousand  dreams  for  the  Purgatorio,  though 


CHANDOS.  253 

they  would  have  given  an  artist  a  throng  of  hope-forgotten,  devil-tortured 
wretches  fettered  in  the  bottomless  circle  of  Dante's  Antenora.  It  survived  to 
show  all  that  he  had  been, — to  mark  more  utterly  all  he  had  become. 

For  he  had  fallen  very  low. 

To  meet  his  ruin,  he  had  risen  with  the  haughty  pride,  the  reckless  courage, 
of  his  race, — risen  to  front  it  with  a  calmness  and  a  force  that  none  had  looked 
for  in  him.  He  had  met  calamity  greatly;  he  had  been  tempted  to  sell  his 
honor  for  passion's  sake,  and  he  had  repulsed  the  temptation;  he  had  been  al- 
lured to  evade  justice,  and  secure  comparative  peace,  by  acting  a  lie  to  the 
world;  he  had  refused,  and  had  given  up  all,  to  remain  with  a  stainless  honesty 
and  a  conscience  uncondemned.  He  had  done  these  things  with  a  sudden 
power  of  will,  a  sudden  steel-knit  strength  of  resolve,  that  had  sprung  in  the 
instant  of  their  need,  giants  full-armed,  from  the  voluptuous  unheeding  indo- 
lence and  indulgence  of  his  life.  But  characters  cannot  change  in  a  day;  en- 
durance may  be  forged  hard  in  the  flame  of  adversity,  but  it  will  give  way 
many  a  time  first,  and  melt  and  writhe  and  bend  and  break  at  last.  When  all 
had  been  done,  all  ended,  all  sacrificed,  all  lost,  the  force  which  had  sustained 
him  had  broken  down,  the  utter  reaction  followed. 

The  habits  of  his  life  had  left  him  with  no  shield,  the  temper  of  his  creeds 
had  left  him  with  no  shelter,  against  the  storm  that  had  burst  over  him.  His 
only  knowledge  had  been  how  to  enjoy;  none  had  ever  taught  him  how  to 
suffer.  A  limitless  indulgence  had  been  the  master  of  his  existence;  he  had  no 
comprehension  of  calamity.  With  latent  greatness,  he  had  dominant  weakness; 
as  the  limbs  that  lie  ever  on  the  couches  of  down  are  enervated  and  sinewless, 
so  his  nature,  that  had  basked  ever  in  the  warmth  and  the  light  of  enjoyment, 
had  no  stamina  to  bear  the  crushing  desolation  that  struck  all  from  his  hands 
at  one  blow.  In  the  moment  of  emergence,  of  temptation,  he  had  risen  equal 
to  it,  risen  above  it,  and  been  great;  in  the  darkness  that  followed,  in  the  dark- 
ness in  which  he  was  driven  out  into  exile,  stripped,  mocked,  abandoned,  left  in 
beggared  solitude,  to  drift  to  his  grave  as  he  would,  he  sank  under  the  burden 
that  he  bore.  A  strong  man  might  have  gone  down  powerless  under  the  accu- 
mulated anguish,  the  blasted  devastation,  of  such  a  fate.  He  who  had  known 
nothing  but  the  caress  of  fortune  from  his  birth,  he  who  had  all  the  loathing  of 
pain  and  of  deformity  of  the  Achaean  nature,  he  who  had  never  felt  a  desire  un- 
fulfilled, a  command  unaccomplished,  he  who  had  been  pliant  to  frailty, 
yielding  to  effeminacy,  could  have  no  sustaining  force  to  enable  him  to  face 
and  to  contend  with  the  destruction  that  smote  him  to  the  earth.  All  who  had 
kissed  his  feet  forsook  him  as  though  he  were  plague-stricken;  there  was  little 
marvel  that  he  forsook  himself. 

He  seemed  to  walk  like  a  blind  man  through  a  starless  night;  he  had  neither 
sight  nor  knowledge:  all  that  was  left  to  him  was  the  consciousness  of  misery, 


254  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

the  power  to  suffer;  the  power  to  endure  was  dead.  He  drifted  senselessly  on, 
far  on  evil  roads,  far  towards  the  murder  in  him  of  all  that  he  had  once  been. 
He  lived  in  infinite  wretchedness,  and  the  very  memory  of  all  better  things 
died  out  in  him.  There  is  no  arrest  in  a  downward  road.  In  the  way  of 
honor  and  honesty,  and  every  holier  thought  and  loftier  effort,  life  piles  obsta- 
cles breast  high;  but  in  descent  there  is  no  barrier,  down  the  ice-slope  there  is 
no  pause,  till  the  broken  limbs  are  dashed  to  pieces  in  the  black  crevasse  below. 
When  his  last  step  had  passed  the  threshold  of  his  home,  he  had  left  all 
likeness  of  what  he  once  had  been.  There  the  proud  blood  of  his  race  had 
taken  the  simulance  of  strength,  and  had  upheld  in  him  some  likeness  of  their 
honor,  of  their  power,  of  their  grandeur,  even  beneath  the  strokes  of  his  ad- 
versity; but  once  passed  forever  from  Clarencieux,  the  only  influence  that  had 
sustained  him  was  gone;  he  fell  without  an  effort.  His  foe  might  have  been 
consoled  for  the  one  failure  which  had  saved  the  woods  and  stones  of  his 
hatred  from  destruction,  had  he  seen  how  courage  and  reason  and  genius  and 
manhood  were  perishing  with  the  body  and  soul  of  the  man  he  had  betrayed. 
In  the  sheer  instinct  for  covert  in  which  the  hunted  animal  unconsciously 
finds  his  lair,  he  had  made  his  way  to  the  safe  solitude  and  secrecy  of  a  great 
city.  He  shunned  every  sign,  every  sight,  that  could  recall  the  world  he  had 
left  to  him,  or  him  to  it.  The  place  of  his  refuge  was  known  to  none;  it  was 
hidden  among  the  innumerable  roofs  of  a  close  quarter;  it  was  quitted  only  at 
night  or  in  the  earliest  gray  of  the  morning,  and  quitted  then  only  for  the 
gambling-dens.  There  was  not  a  creature  with  him  or  near  him  that  he  had 
known  or  loved,  save  his  dog.  The  animal  never  left  him;  he  would  lie  at  his 
feet  in  the  gaming-hells,  or  would  wait  all  day  and  all  night  outside  the  doors; 
he  would  crouch  down  by  him  on  the  cold  and  cheerless  bed  of  some  wretched 
lodging,  as  he  had  done  under  the  silken  hangings  of  a  palace;  he  would  watch 
with  ever-wakeful  eyes  by  his  side  where  he  was  stretched  in  the  stupor  of  an 
opiate  or  the  heaviness  of  brandy-lulled  sleep.  The  love  even  of  the  dog  was 
precious  to  Chandos  in  his  desolation;  as  far  as  he  noted  or  felt  anything,  he 
was  grateful  for  it.  But  he  noted  little.  A  burning  fever  consumed  him  at 
times;  at  all  others  he  was  sunk  in  a  lethargy  more  dangerous  for  his  reason 
than  even  the  oblivion  of  opium-dreams.  The  loss  of  lands,  of  wealth,  of 
power,  he  would  have  met  with  the  courage  of  race  and  of  manhood;  it  was  the 
desertion  of  every  creature  he  had  aided,  of  every  life  he  had  loved,  it  was  the 
Judas-betrayal  of  all  he  had  trusted,  that  had  killed  all  strength  and  all  life 
in  him. 

He  lived  in  intense  wretchedness;  the  little  gold  he  had  on  his  person  was 
not  so  much  as  he  had  spent  on  a  woman's  bracelet,  on  an  hour's  entertain- 
ment. The  absolute  fangs  of  want  might  be  upon  him  in  a  single  day.  He 
who  had  feasted  emperors  more  brilliantly  than  they  reigned  in  their  own  courts, 


CHANDOS.  255 

and  who  had  only  spoken  a  wish  to  have  it  fulfilled  as  by  an  enchantment, 
might  any  day  actually  want  bread.  Everything  around  him,  everything  touched 
or  seen  or  heard,  was  such  as  would  have  been  loathsome  and  unendurable  to 
his  voluptuous  and  fastidious  habits  a  few  short  weeks  before:  yet  these  he  was 
barely  conscious  of;  he  was  lost  in  the  stupefaction  of  a  misery  too  great  to  have 
any  other  sense  awake  in  it.  Now  and  then  he  would  glance  with  a  shudder 
round  the  places  to  which  he  wandered;  now  and  then  he  would  turn  sickening 
from  the  food  offered  him;  more  often  all  things  passed  him  unnoted,  and  in 
his  eyes  there  came  gradually  the  lustreless  dreamy  vacancy  which  presages 
the  rupture  of  the  reason,  the  dulling  of  the  brain.  For  hours  he  would  lie 
prostrated.  When  he  rose,  it  would  only  be  to  drag  his  limbs  wearily  out  into 
the  night  and  go  to  the  gaming-hells,  where  intoxication  as  sure,  and  even  yet 
more  deadly,  was  to  be  found,  where  alone  he  gained  such  gold  as  sufficed  to 
keep  life  in  him,  and  to  give  him  a  stake  to  cast  again. 

Strangely  enough,  the  temptress  favored  him.  Hazard  often  allures  her 
prey  with  that  merciless  mercy,  and  fills  his  hands  only  to  hold  him  closer  in 
her  coils.  He  won  enough  to  keep  life  in  him, — such  as  life  was  now. 

This  was  the  issue  to  which  his  career  had  come;  this  was  the  fate  to  which 
he,  who  in  his  bright  visionary  childhood  had  vowed  to  rival  in  his  nation's 
story  the  chivalrous  honor  of  an  Arthur's  fame,  had  come;  his  pride  trampled 
out,  his  genius  drowned  in  drugs,  his  waking  hours  consumed  in  the  gambler's 
delirium,  almost  all  manhood  slain  in  him.  The  Hebrew's  thought  was  right; 
his  enemy's  work  on  him  was  worse  than  murder.  It  was  a  terrible  abasement, 
a  terrible  surrender;  it  was  frailty,  cowardice,  suicide;  but  the  storm  had 
beaten  down  on  his  once  proud  head  till  it  hung  in  a  slave's  shame.  Existence 
had  grown  so  hideous  to  him  that  he  sunk  beneath  its  ceaseless  torture,  longing 
alone  for  death. 

Those  who  have  from  early  years  been  tired  in  the  fires  of  affliction  may 
grow  the  sterner,  firmer,  more  highly  tempered  for  it,  like  the  wrought  steel; 
but  those  to  whom  it  has  been  wholly  unknown  in  the  soft  sensuousness  of  a 
joyous  life,  stagger  and  fall  swooning  at  the  first  intolerable  breath  of  its  blast- 
ing furnace.  When  a  mortal  is  bound  to  the  agony  of  Prometheus,  the  man 
may  well  succumb  where  the  god  could  scarce  endure. 

Chandos  stood  now  amidst  the  crowd  about  the  play-tables,  in  companion- 
ship with  much  of  all  that  was  worst  and  most  desperate  in  Paris.  He  did  not 
know  them;  he  scarcely  knew  how  vile  the  character  of  many  round  him  was. 
In  the  brilliance  and  aristocratic  exclusion  of  the  life  he  had  until  now  lived, 
he  had  been  as  ignorant  of  the  world  without  his  charmed  circle,  he  had  been 
as  ignorant  of  all  depravity  that  was  unrefined,  of  all  vices  that  were  hidden 
away  with  poverty  and  criminality,  as  any  one  of  the  fair  patrician  women  of 
the  courts.  His  license  had  been  the  license  of  a  graceful  Catullus;  his  sins  had 


256 


QUID  AS     WORKS. 


been  the  soft  sins  of  an  elegant  Sardanapalus;  he  knew  nothing  of  the  ignominy 
of  great  cities;  he  knew  nothing  of  the  coarse  criminality  of  such  as  those  who 
harbored  and  gambled  here.  He  had  strayed  to  its  haunt  by  chance;  he  re- 
turned again  and  again  for  the  sake  of  its  secrecy,  its  opium-drugged  wines,  its 
reckless  play.  He  had  no  knowledge  of  the  companions  with  whom  he  was 
thrown;  he  was  too  utterly  lost  in  his  own  misery  to  note  or  to  loathe  them, 
whilst  they  looked  on,  half  awed,  half  curious,  at  one  whom  all  Pans  knew  by 
name  and  sight,  whose  history  all  knew  also,  as  he  came  among  them  day  after 
day,  night  after  night,  with  that  deathless  beauty,  that  inextinguishable  grace 
left  in  him,  as  they  were  left  in  the  slaughtered  body  of  Alcibiades,  to  show  how 
royal  a  blood  had  run  in  his  veins,  how  mighty,  how  majestic,  how  hopeless  a 
wreck  was  there. 

Once  one  of  them  touched  his  arm, — a  young  girl,  not  twenty,  but  with  long 
years  of  age  and  crime  and  shameless  shame  under  the  scarlet  rogue  that  glowed 
her  cheek,  on  the  sallow,  aching,  burning  brow  from  which  her  gold-hued,  flower- 
decked  hajr  was  pushed. 

"  Why  are  you  here  !  You  are  as  beautiful  as  a  god  !  You  are  not  like  us 
— yet." 

He  looked  at  her  with  a  dull  vacancy,  and  answered  nothing  as  he  filled  a 
glass  with  brandy.     She  thrust  the  opiate  he  had  mixed  with  it  back  to  his  hand. 
"  Drink  enough  to  kill  yourself  at  once.     Don't  live  to  be  what  you  will  be. 
Such  as  you  go  to  a  madhouse." 

Her  words  dreamily  pierced  through  the  semi-insensibility  of  his  brain:  he 
set  the  opiate  down  undrunk, — for  that  once.  He  thought  of  the  dead  man 
who  had  bade  him  meet  his  fate,  whatever  his  fate  became;  but  the  next  moment 
he  was  again  at  the  gaming-table,  the  next  moment  only  its  mad  tempting  was 
remembered. 

He  never  heeded  what  he  won,  what  he  lost,  though  he  knew  that  the  very 
food  of  the  next  day  hung  in  the  hazard;  he  would  have  blessed  the  famine 
that  should  have  killed  him.  But  he  had  the  gamester's  instinct  in  him;  the 
gamester's  peril  alone  gave  him  an  oblivious  intoxication;  he  never  left  it,  except 
when  he  wandered  out  to  some  sleeping-place  and  flung  himself  down  to  sleep, 
wellnigh  as  lifelessly  as  the  dead  sleep,  hours,  perhaps  days  through. 

So  months  had  gone  with  him.  The  splendid  strength  and  stamina  of  his 
frame  resisted  the  ravages  that  were  consuming  them;  but  what  was  worse  than 
the  body  perished:  the  mind  decayed,  swiftly,  surely. 

Months  went  by;  he  thought  time  would  never  end.  The  golden  summer, 
the  ruddy  autumn,  the  bitterness  of  early  winter,  had  passed ;  he  noted  no 
change  of  seasons ;  night  and  day  were  alike  to  him;  he  only  dully  wondered 
how  long  life  would  curse  him  by  leaving  its  throb  in  his  heart,  the  breath  in 
his  lips. 


CHANDOS,  257 

He  had  played  thirty  six  hours  now  at  a  stretch,  among  the  painted  women 
and  the  haggard  men  who  filled  this  pandemonium.  He  had  played  on  till  he 
had  lost  all, — the  only  time  that  he  had  ever  done  so;  the  last  franc  was 
staked  and  swept  away.  He  stood  blankly  gazing  down  at  the  tables;  he  felt 
that  the  means  of  gaining  the  one  intoxication  that  was  precious  to  him  was 
gone,  he  had  no  remembrance  that  it  turned  him  on  the  streets  a  beggar.  The 
eager  throngs,  seeing  the  card  pass  without  his  stake  being  laid  on,  pushed 
fiercely,  ravenously,  to  get  his  nearer  place.  He  let  them  take  it,  moving  as  a 
somnambulist,  and  made  his  way  down  the  staircase  and  through  the  low, 
masked  side  door  that  alone  lent  admittance  to  the  gambling-rooms:  the  face 
of  the  house  was  merely  a  fruiterer's  and  a  tobacconist's  shops.  He  went  out 
mechanically;  he  knew  he  must  get  more  gold  or  go  without  this,  which  had 
become  the  single  craving  necessity  of  life.  Where  ?  He  who  had  owned  the 
aristocracies  of  whole  nations  as  his  friends,  and  had  given  to  all  who  had 
asked,  as  though  the  world  were  his,  had  not  a  shilling  now  to  get  him  bread. 

He  walked  on  aimlessly,  unheeding  the  snow  which  poured  down  on  his 
bare  head,  the  cutting  north  wind  that  blew  like  an  ice-blast.  It  was  between 
three  and  four  in  the  morning;  there  was  scarce  a  soul  abroad.  In  the  quarter 
where  he  was  few  carriages  ever  rolled,  and  the  thieves  and  revellers  who  filled 
it  were  mostly  housed  in  some  den  or  another  in  the  inclement  weather.  The 
dog  followed  him  closely;  otherwise  he  was  almost  alone  in  the  tortuous,  end- 
less streets,  whose  windings  he  took  without  knowing  whither  they  took  him. 
The  bitter  rush  of  the  wind  lifted  the  masses  of  his  hair,  the  sleet  drove  in  his 
eyes,  the  cold  chilled  him  to  the  bone;  he  was  adrift  in  the  streets  of  Paris, 
without  a  sou  to  get  him  food  or  bed, — he  who  a  few  months  before  had  reigned 
there  in  a  splendor  passing  the  splendor  of  princes  ! 

He  longed  for  death, — longed  as  man  never  yet  longed  for  life.  The  un- 
speakable physical  misery  alone  passed  his  strength;  to  the  nerves  that  had 
shrunk  from  pain,  to  the  senses  that  had  been  steeped  in  every  pleasure,  to  the 
tastes  that  had  loathed  unsightliness  as  a  torture,  to  the  habits  that  had  been  ener- 
vated in  all  the  richness  of  enjoyment  the  wretchedness  that  was  now  his  portion 
was  horrible  beyond  the  utterance.  He  who  had  never  known  what  an  hour's 
suffering,  what  a  moment's  denial,  were,  now  endured  cold,  and  exposure,  and 
need  of  food,  and  all  the  racking  pangs  of  want  and  fever,  like  any  houseless 
beggar  starving  in  the  night. 

He  wandered  on  and  on, — still  always  in  the  same  quarter,  still  always  keep- 
ing, by  sheer  instinct,  far  from  all  that  he  had  once  known, — far  from  all  that 
had  so  lately  seen  him  in  the  magnificence  of  his  reign.  He  wandered  on,  un- 
der the  lowering  walls  of  pent-up  dwellings,  through  the  driving  of  the  slowly- 
falling  snow,  against  the  cutting  breath  of  the  ice-chill  air.  A  strange  faintness 
stole  on  him,  a  strange  numbness  seized  his  limbs;  he  began  to  lose  all  sense 

VOL.  in.— 9 


258  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

of  the  keen  blasts  that  blew  against  him;  the  intensity  of  the  cold  began  to 
yield  place  to  a  dreamy  exhaustion  and  prostration,  half  weary,  half  soothing: 
he  felt  sleep  stealing  on  him, — deep  as  death.  He  had  no  wish  to  resist,  no 
power  to  overcome  it;  the  languor  stole  over  all  his  frame,  his  limbs  failed  him; 
he  sank  down  and  stretched  himself  out  as  on  some  welcome  bed,  with  a  heavy 
sigh,  lying  there  on  the  snow  covered  ground,  with  the  snow  falling  on  his  closed 
eyes  and  the  wind  winding  among  his  hair.  The  dog  couched  down  and  pressed 
its  silky  warmth  against  his  breast;  profound  rest  stole  on  him:  he  knew  no  more. 


CHAPTER  II. 
"WHERE  ALL  LIFE  DIES,  DEATH  LIVES." 

THERE  was  intense  solitude  in  the  dark,  cheerless  night;  the  snow  drifted 
noiseless  down;  now  and  then  the  wild  winds  broke  and  howled  with  a  hollow 
moan:  all  else  was  very  still, — still  as  the  starless,  ink-black  skies  that  bent 
above.  One  shadow  alone  moved  through  the  gloom  that  a  yellow  lamp-light 
here  and  there  only  served  to  make  more  impenetrable, — a  shadow  frail,  bent, 
delicate  as  a  woman's,  feeble  as  that  of  age, — the  shadow  of  a  cripple. 

He  dragged  himself  along  with  slow  and  painful  effort;  when  he  passed 
under  one  of  the  lamps,  its  glare  shone  on  a  face  fair  and  spiritual,  with  great 
dark  dreaming  eyes,  that  looked  out  at  the  snow-flakes  wearily, — the  face  of 
Guido  Lulli.  The  fragile,  helpless,  pain-worn  Proven£al,  who  shuddered  from 
cold  as  a  young  fawn  will  shudder  in  it,  and  who  had  barely  till  now  quitted 
the  chamber  where  he  wove  his  melodious  fancies  and  forgot  a  world  with 
which  he  could  have  no  share,  was  out  in  the  bitterness  of  the  winter's  night, 
on  a  quest  that  his  fidelity  had  never  slackened  in  through  many  months  of 
vain  toil  and  fruitless  search.  The  search  was  ended  now. 

His  foot  touched  the  outflung  arm  of  the  form  that  lay  prostrate,  half  on 
the  stone  of  the  steps  on  which  it  had  sunk,  half  on  the  road  to  which  the 
limbs  had  been  stretched  in  the  strange  peace  and  languor  which  had  come 
with  the  slumber  of  cold  and  fasting. 

The  snow  had  fallen  faster  and  heavily  in  the  last  few  moments ;  it  covered 
the  hands,  and  was  shed  white  and  thick  upon  the  uncovered  hair  and  upturned 
brow.  A  lamp  burned  just  above;  its  flicker,  glowing  dully  through  the  raw 
gray  mist,  shone  on  the  death-like  calm  of  the  features  in  the  breathless  rest 
of  sleep  from  which  few  ever  waken.  Lulli  stooped  and  looked,  then,  with  a 
great  cry,  sank  down  on  his  knees  beside  the  senseless  form.  He  knew  it  in  a 
glance,  all  changed  though  it  was:  his  search  was  over. 


CHANDOS.  259 

The  dog  lifted  his  head  and  gave  a  moaning  recognition,  half  of  joy,  half 
of  entreaty;  but  he  would  not  stir  from  where  he  crouched  on  his  master's 
breast,  lending  with  his  warm  breath  and  his  curly  hair  and  his  massive  strength 
such  aid  and  protection  as  he  could  against  the  blasts  of  the  storm  and  the 
chills  of  the  night.  If  any  life  lingered,  he  had  saved  it. 

"  My  master  !  Found  at  last,  and  found — O  God  ! — too  late  ! "  cried 
Lulli,  as  he  strove,  all  weak  and  feeble  as  he  was,  to  raise  the  prostrate  form 
in  his  arms,  to  draw  the  limbs  from  the  road,  to  rest  the  head  against  his 
bosom,  to  dash  the  snow  from  the  wet  hair,  and  to  chafe  the  stagnant  chillness 
of  the  frozen  hands. 

"  Monseigneur,  monseigneur  !  is  it  thus  with  thee  ? "  murmured  the  Pro- 
vencal, in  the  loving  sweetness  of  his  Southern  tongue,  while  the  great  tears 
coursed  down  his  cheeks  and  fell  fast  as  the  snow-flakes  on  the  brow  and  eyes 
of  Chandos, — the  brow  that  was  contracted  even  in  senselessness  as  with  an 
unbearable  pain,  the  eyes  that  were  closed  so  heavily,  so  wearily,  the  long 
thick  lashes  lying  on  the  cheek  white  as  the  snow-covered  stone  on  which  it 
had  been  resting. 

The  musician  loved  him  with  a  tenderness  intense  and  enduring;  and  there 
was  something  that  might  have  moved  a  heart  far  less  warm  than  the  lonely 
cripple's  in  the  sight  of  the  magnificent  limbs  stretched  lifeless  as  a  corpse,  of 
the  drooped  head  that  hung  like  the  head  of  the  dead,  of  the  hair,  that  women 
had  loved  to  toy  with,  dank  and  dogged  with  moisture,  and  of  the  features, 
only  of  late  so  brilliant  with  genius  and  with  life,  haggard,  colorless,  and 
drawn  as  by  death,  in  the  tawny  flickering  glare  of  the  swinging  lamp  above. 

Lulli  laid  his  hand  upon  the  heart;  it  beat  dully,  faintly;  and  the  dog's 
nestling  body  had  preserved  existence  where  otherwise  in  the  bitter  cold  and 
dangerous  sleep  the  pulse  of  the  blood  must  have  ceased.  Lulli  looked  round 
wildly,  and  raised  his  voice  in  a  shout  for  aid;  helpless  and  weak  as  he  was  in 
all  actions  for  himself,  loyalty  and  gratitude  gave  him  the  strength  of  giants  to 
save  the  man  who  in  his  own  extremity  had  saved  him. 

There  was  no  answer  to  his  call.  He  was  alone  in  the  bleakness  and  the 
darkness  of  the  wintry  dawn,  with  one  whom  he  firmly  believed  to  be  dying, — 
dying  of  cold,  of  exposure,  and  of  want;  the  man  whom  but  a  year  before  he 
had  known  in  every  luxury  and  every  pleasure  that  the  world  could  give, — the 
man  who  had  come  to  him  in  the  summer-heats  of  Spain  as  the  savior  of  his 
life  and  art,  who  had  seemed  to  him  the  very  incarnation  of  beauty,  of  joy,  of 
splendid  manhood,  of  proud,  rejoicing,  perfect  strength. 

In  his  desperation  he  found  the  force  that  nature  had  denied  his  limbs  and 
nerves;  he  raised  the  insensible  form  up  from  the  snow  in  which  it  sank  half 
buried:  he  stripped  himself  of  the  furs  he  wore  and  covered  Chandos' chest 
with  them;  he  chafed  his  hands  and  pressed  them  against  his  own  lips  to  give 


260  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

them  warmth;  he  shouted  for  help  till  his  voice  rang  down  the  deserted  street, 
waking  all  its  hollow  echoes,  and  died  away  unanswered. 

The  roll  of  a  carriage  coming  slowly,  and  muffled  on  the  whitened  roads, 
smote^on  his  ear  at  last;  he  raised  a  louder  cry,  with  all  the  power  he  could 
gather.  He  heard  a  women's  voice  from  the  interior  bid  the  coachman  stop 
and  wait.  In  the  dull  gleam  of  the  lamp  he  could  see  the  glitter  of  jewels  flash 
as  she  leaned  out;  her  words  came  strangely  clear  to  him  through  the  frosty 
darkness,  as  she  asked,  in  French, — 

"  What  is  it  ? " 

"  One  dying, — and  from  cold  ! "  he  answered  her,  his  voice  thick  and 
tremulous  with  the  sobs  that  shook  him  like  a  child. 

"  Dying  !  Wait  while  I  see,"  said  the  voice  he  had  heard,  as  the  form  he 
could  dimly  perceive  through  the  gloom  swayed  from  the  carriage-steps  and 
came  towards  him;  a  woman  who  had  been,  who  indeed  was  still,  very  lovely; 
a  woman  whose  youth  was  waning,  but  who  still  was  young;  a  woman  in  rich 
costly  draperies  that  the  yellow  light  glittered  on,  and  with  the  blue  gleam  of 
sapphires  above  her  brow.  She  was  the  lionne,  Beatrix  Lennox. 

A  moment,  and  she  stood  besides  Lulli,  disregarding  the  snow-flakes  that 
drove  against  her,  and  the  icy  wind  that  blew  through  her  scarlet  cashmeres. 
She  was  a  woman  of  swift  impulse,  of  warm  pity. 

"  Is  he  dying,  you  say  ? "  she  asked  with  an  infinite  gentleness  in  her  voice, 
while  she  stooped  to  look  at  the  prostrate  form.  She  started  with  a  loud  cry. 

"  Chandos  ! — merciful  Heaven  ! " 

Her  lips  turned  very  pale, — not  her  cheek,  for  that  was  warm  with  a  bright 
delicate  bloom  of  rouge, — and  into  her  eyes  the  tears  sprang  salt  and  full.  Her 
voice  trembled. 

"  Oh,  Heaven,  what  a  wreck  !    I  have  seen  so  many,  yet  never  one  like  this  !  " 

She  was  silent  a  moment,  gazing  down  at  the  senseless  features,  and  softly 
touching,  with  a  caressing  hand,  the  dead  gold  of  the  hair,  all  wet  and  whitened 
by  the  driving  of  the  snow.  Then  she  turned  with  a  nervous  energy;  she  was 
impetuous  and  rapid,  and  firm  in  act. 

"  He  is  not  dead,"  she  said,  impatiently;  "  but  he  will  die  if  he  stays  there. 
Lift  him  into  my  carriage,  quick  !  We  must  get  him  warmth  and  stimulants; 
my  house  is  so  far  off,  and  there  is  no  fit  place  here " 

"  My  lodging  is  not  distant.  Let  him  come  there,"  pleaded  Lulli,  piteously, 
while  he  drew  the  inanimate  hands  closer  into  his  own,  as  though  afraid  he 
should  be  robbed  again  of  the  one  so  long  lost,  so  terribly  found. 

"Yes,  yes;  anywhere  that  is  near  !  "  she  answered,  rapidly,  while  she  flung 
the  scarlet  down-lined  draperies  she  wore  about  the  half-dead  limbs,  and  stood, 
regardless  .of  the  blasts  that  howled,  and  of  the  heavy  icy  mists  that  descended 
on  the  earth  like  sheets  of  solid  water,  as  her  servants,  at  her  bidding,  raised 


CHANDOS.  261 

him  and  laid  him  gently  down  upon  the  cushions  of  her  carriage.  She  felt 
nothing  of  the  searching  wind,  nothing  of  the  drenching  storm,  nothing  of  the 
flakes  that  were  driven  against  her  delicate  skin  and  her  masked-ball  dress. 
Her  eyes  were  dim  with  tears;  her  lips  shook;  her  heart  ached. 

"  How  many  fallen  I  have  seen!"  her  thoughts  ran;  "yet  never  such  a 
fall  as  his." 

When  life  and  sense  returned  to  Chandos,  he  was  stretched  before  a  wood 
fire,  that  shed  its  ruddy,  uncertain  light  over  a  darkened  room;  the  dog  was 
licking  his  hands  and  murmuring  its  love  over  him  where  he  lay;  and  beside 
him,  watching  him,  were  the  musician  and  the  richly-hued  and  delicate  form  of 
the  famous  Bohemian,  Beatrix  Lennox. 

He  looked  up  with  a  weary  sigh;  he  knew  neither  of  them;  his  mind  was 
dull,  and  wandering  far  in  the  past. 

"  Clarencieux  ? "  he  muttered,  dreamily.  It  was  the  one  loss  ever  at  his 
heart,  the  one  name  ever  in  his  thoughts. 

It  struck  those  who  had  heard  it  with  a  pang;  they  knew  how  endless  must 
be  this  longing,  how  endless  this  loss. 

Lulli  stooped  over  him,  his  voice  very  broken. 

"  Monseigneur,  do  you  not  know  me  ? " 

Chandos  looked  at  him  dreamily,  blindly.  His  head  fell  back  with  a  sigh 
of  weariness. 

"  No,  no;  if  you  had  been  merciful,  you  would  have  let  me  die." 

The  words  told  his  listeners  more  mournfully,  more  utterly,  than  any  others 
could  have  done,  how  bitter  to  him  had  become  the  burden  of  the  life  once  so 
rich  and  gracious. 

Beatrix  Lennox,  albeit  a  woman  who  had  known  the  world  in  phases  that 
harden  and  chill  and  fill  with  an  ironic  mockery  for  most  emotions  those  who 
do  so  know  it,  looked  on  at  him,  where  he  lay,  with  eyes  of  pathetic  pain,  dim 
and  aching  with  unshed  tears.  She  had  seen  him  but  so  late  in  all  the  glory 
of  his  kingly  manhood,  of  his  unshadowed  youth  !  She  thought,  in  that  strange 
blending  of  assimilation  and  of  incongruity  which  not  seldom  accompanies 
hours  of  profound  suffering,  of  the  old  words  of  the  Romaunt  de  Duguesclin: — 

N'a  filairesse  en  France  qui  sache  fil  filer 
Qui  me  gagnait  ain§ois  ma  finance  &  filer. 

"  There  is  not  the  woman  living,"  she  thought,  "  who  could  look  on  him  now 
and  not  give  her  all  to  gain  him  ransom  from  his  misery,  if  she  could." 

Lulli,  his  voice  broken  with  the  weeping  that  shook  him  like  a  young  child, 
stooped  over  him  in  the  same  entreaty,  passionately  praying  for  his  recogni- 
tion. 


262 


OL7  IDA'S     WORKS. 


"  Monseigneur !   my   master,    my   friend,  my   savior!    look   at   me;    you 

know  me  ? " 

The  long-familiar  tones  reached  the  brain,  dulled  by  cold  and  want  of  food. 
Chandos  raised  himself  and  looked  at  him,  vacantly  yet  wonderingly,  but  with 
a  half-smile  that  passed  over  his  face  a  moment  to  fade  the  next.  "  Is  it  you  ? " 
he  said,  faintly.  "  Where  am  I  ?  What  has  happened  ? " 

Lulli  could  not  answer  him:  the  musician  had  been  strong  to  save  him 
while  danger  nerved  and  emergency  compelled  him;  but  now  the  reaction  told 
on  him,  his  old  weakness  returned,  he  wept,  trembling  sorely  like  a  woman. 
The  affections  and  the  feebleness  of  his  nature  were  both  very  feminine;  and 
it  was  an  anguish  beyond  his  strength  to  see  stretched  before  him  in  that  sense- 
less wretchedness,  the  man  to  whom  he  owed  all,  and  whom  he  had  last  beheld 
the  idol  of  a  brilliant  world,  the  darling  of  a  throng  of  friends,  the  caressed 
sovereign  of  a  limitless  homage. 

Chandos  lifted  his  eyelids,  laden  still  with  the  sleep  that  had  been  so  nearly 
the  sleep  of  death,  and  saw  Beatrix  Lennox.  He  remembered  them  both  then, 
and,  in  the  old  instincts  of  his  marked  courtesy  to  women,  strove  to  rise. 
With  an  effort  he  staggered  to  his  feet,  and  leaned  heavily  against  the  high 
slate  shelf  above  the  warm  wood-piled  blazing  hearth.  He  could  not  speak; 
the  sight  of  these  two  faces  so  well  known  in  his  past — that  past  which  seemed 
severed  from  him  as  by  the  gulf  of  a  lifetime — brought  back  with  a  flood  of 
memories  on  his  slowly  waking  thoughts  what  he  had  been,  what  he  was. 
They,  looking  on  him  and  seeing  the  ruin  a  few  months  had  wrought,  did 
not  know  how  vast,  how  terrible  the  change  was  in  him  more  utterly  than  he 
himself. 

His  eyes  closed  involuntarily  with  a  shudder.  He  had  buried  his  life  in  the 
dens  of  the  populous  city  to  escape  all  sight  of  those  once  familiar  to  and  with 
him.  That  any  of  those  should  meet  him  now  was  torture  almost  unbearable 
to  the  pride  which  survived  in  him  above  all  that  had  sought  to  shame  and 
stay  it. 

"  How  do  I  come  here  ? "  he  said,  feebly,  while  his  gaze  wandered  towards 
them  with  the  pathetic  glance  of  a  man  paralyzed,  whose  eyes  alone  can 
speak. 

"  The  cold  had  struck  you,  and  you  had  fallen,"  answered  Beatrix  Lennox, 
in  her  voice  that  fell  on  him  like  soothing  music.  "  My  carriage  was  near;  we 
brought  you  to  M.  Lulli's  room.  You  are  weak  still ;  the  night  was  so  bitter. 
Wait  and  rest  before  you  speak." 

She  restrained  the  tears  that  choked  her  utterance;  for,  with  the  tact  that 
nature  gave  her,  she  divined  how  terrible  must  be  to  him  the  knowledge  that 
they  had  found  him  in  his  destitution  and  his  suffering,— they,  who  had  been 
the  companions  of  his  glittering  prosperity,  the  one  the  recipient  of  his  widest 


CHANDOS.  263 

charity,  the  other  the  guest  of  his  gayest  hours.  She  sought  to  hide  her  own 
knowledge  of  it  as  she  could. 

Lulli,  the  impressionable,  transparent,  childlike  Southern,  could  exercise  no 
such  self-restraint;  he  knelt  at  Chandos'  feet,  his  head  bowed  in  his  hands,  his 
heart  half  broken. 

"  Oh,  monseigneur,"  he  murmured,  passionately,  piteously,  "  how  have  I 
searched  for  you  !  how  have  I  grieved  for  you  !  I  sought  you  night  and  day, 
— sought  you  living  or  dead.  Could  you  not  have  trusted  me?  Could  you  not 
have  let  me  go  out  with  you  to  your  exile  ? " 

Chandos  looked  down  on  him,  and  a  sigh,  quivering  as  a  sob,  broke  from 
him  unconsciously. 

"  Forgive  me,  Lulli,"  he  said,  gently;  "  I  was  selfish;  I  forgot  you;  I  forgot 
you  would  be  faithful." 

"  You  never  forgot  !  "  cried  the  musician,  lifting  his  head  eagerly,  while  he 
flung  back  the  silky  masses  of  his  dark  hair  off  his  eyes.  "  You  never  forgot 
me;  you  only  forgot  yourself  !  You  remembered  my  needs,  you  remembered 
my  helplessness,  you  remembered  to  save  me  and  serve  me  to  the  last:  all  you 
forgot  was  how  I  loved  you  !  " 

Chandos  stretched  out  his  hand  to  him  with  his  old  gesture;  he  could  not 
answer,  the  Provencal's  fidelity  moved  him  too  deeply,  stirred  him  too  bitterly, 
in  its  contrast  with  the  abandonment  of  wellnigh  every  other. 

Beatrix  Lennox  drew  nearer,  and  laid  her  hand  softly  on  his  arm. 

"  You  were  very  near  death  an  hour  ago.  Rest  now,  and  take  what  I 
bring  you." 

With  the  skill  and  speed  of  her  sex, — though  some  there  were  who  said  the 
lionne  had  left  far  behind  in  other  years  the  softness  of  her  sex, — she  brought 
him  with  her  own  hands  some  delicate  food  and  some  warm  and  fragrant  coffee, 
standing  there  in  her  masquerade-dress  all  glittering  with  Venetian  gems  and 
Venetian  grace,  with  the  ruddy  wood-fire  light  upon  her,  as  she  had  stood  in 
the  driving  down-pour  of  the  snow-storm.  The  hand  that  held  him  the  food  so 
tenderly  had  but  just  laid  aside  the  black  coquette  Venetian  mask  of  her  opera- 
ball;  but  of  a  surety  the  ministration  was  not  less  gentle,  the  heart  that 
prompted  it  not  less  full  of  divine  charity,  than  if  it  had  just  cast  aside  the  gray 
serge  of  a  religious  recluse. 

It  was  the  first  food  for  months  from  which  he  had  not  turned  in  loathing; 
he  took  it  with  a  gratitude  that,  though  his  eyes  alone  spoke,  sank  into  her 
memory  forever.  She  saw,  what  Lulli  did  not  see,  that  it  was  the  first  he  had 
taken  for  many  hours,  and  that  long  fasting  had  done  its  work  on  him  not  less 
surely  than  the  winter  night. 

"  Can  he  want  bread  ?  "  she  thought,  with  a  quiver  of  horror.  Heartless 
though  the  world  called  her,  this  reine  gaillarde  of  a  lawless  court,  she  would 


264  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

have  gone  and  sold  her  jewels  and  her  cashmeres  to  bring  him  gold,  had  she 
not  known  by  instinct  that,  though  he  might  die  of  hunger,  he  would  never 
take  an  alms. 

"  I  owe  you  a  great  debt,  Mrs.  Lennox,"  he  said,  simply,  as  his  eyes  rested 
on  her,  all  the  light  dead  in  them,  a  heavy  languor  weighing  down  their  lids, 
and  a  haggard  darkness  circling  them,  but  with  their  weariness  a  look  of  infinite 
thankfulness  to  her  and  to  the  one  man  who  alone  had  never  forsaken  and 
reviled  his  memory. 

"  You  owe  me  none."  The  words  were  very  low,  as  she  stood  swaying  to 
and  fro  the  gold  strings  of  her  Vene.tian  mask.  "  Chandos,  I  owed  you  some 
time  ago  a  far  greater  one." 

"  Owed  me  ?  " 

His  senses  and  his  memory  were  still  dim;  warmth  and,  with  warmth,  life 
were  fast  flowing  back  into  his  veins,  but  he  felt  as  one  in  a  dream;  the  faces 
he  looked  on  were  so  familiar,  the  place  was  so  strange,  he  could  not  disen- 
tangle fact  from  fantasy. 

"  Yes  ! " 

She  came  closer  towards  him,  standing  there  in  the  reflection  of  the  blazing 
wood,  with  the  scarlet  and  black  folds  of  her  masquerade-dress  sweeping  down- 
ward in  the  glow,  and  her  haughty,  handsome  face  turned  to  him  with  an  inex- 
pressible sweetness  and  tenderness  tremulous  upon  it.  The  thought  woke  in 
him  vaguely,  even  in  that  moment,  Had  this  woman  loved  him  ?  She,  swift  to 
read  unspoken  thoughts,  guessed  it. 

"  Do  not  think  that,"  she  said,  with  a  smile  of  infinite  sadness.  "  I  never 
loved  you;  it  is  very  long  since  my  heart  beat.  But  I  would  serve  you  any- 
how,— anywhere, — if  I  could.  Do  you  remember  being  with  me  at  an  opera- 
supper  at  the  Maison  Dore"e,  years  and  years  ago  ?  No  !  how  should  you  ? 
It  was  only  memorable  to  me.  Some  German  prince  gave  the  supper, — who  I 
forget  now;  but  there  were  women  present  with  whom  even  I  abhorred  associa- 
tion. The  jests  were  very  free,  the  license  very  unchecked,  and  I — I  had  for- 
feited the  right  to  resent.  You  alone  noticed  it, — you  alone  pitied  me;  you 
went  and  spoke  in  a  whisper  to  the  prince.  He  laughed  aloud.  '  The  Lennox, 

who  is  she  to '  You  silenced  him.  '  She  was  at  least  the  daughter  of  a 

gallant  gentleman;  that  should  not  be  forgotten.'  Then  you  came  to  me  with 
your  gentle  courtesy,  and  offered  to  take  me  to  my  carriage.  Ah  !  I  was 
wrong  to  say  I  never  loved  you.  I  loved  you  then  /  I  never  forgot  it, — I 
never  shall." 

Chandos  looked  at  her  with  a  great  gratitude,  and  yet  a  pain  wellnigh  as 
great;  tenderness  shown  him  subdued  and  touched  him  as  it  subdues  and 
touches  a  woman. 

/'God  knows  it  was  trifle  enough.     If  others  remembered  as  you  do " 


CHANDOS.  265 

He  paused;  no  words  ever  escaped  him  that  could  sound  like  a  lament  for 
the  ingratitude  that  had  forsaken  him  on  every  side. 

"  Ah,"  she  said,  passionately,  "  it  was  no  trifle  to  me.  If  ever  I  can  repay 
it, — if  it  be  twenty  years  hence, — I  will,  let  the  payment  cost  what  it  may." 

The  promise  was  very  hurried  and  broken  in  its  utterance  for  the  most 
fluent  and  most  eloquent  woman  of  her  time;  she  took  his  hands  in  hers,  and 
bent  over  them. 

"  If  you  could  let  me  serve  you  !  "  she  murmured,  as  softly  as  his  mother 
could  have  breathed  him  her  farewell;  then,  with  a  long,  loving  gaze,  she  left 
him,  the  black  and  scarlet  hues  of  her  draperies  lost  in  the  gloom  of  the  fire- 
shadows.  She  could  have  stayed  with  him,  stayed  with  him  willingly,  to  aid, 
to  tend  on,  to  assist  him  with  every  ministry  that  love  with  which  no  touch  of 
passion  blent  could  give;  but  she  knew  him  to  be  very  proud;  she  saw  that 
pride  was  not  dead,  but  lived  in  passionate  pain  beneath  calamity;  she  felt  that 
the  fewer  eyes  there  were  upon  him  now,  the  better  could  he  bear  the  knowl- 
edge that  they  had  found  him,  a  homeless  wanderer,  dying  in  the  streets  of 
Paris.  So,  true  to  her  unselfish  instinct,  and  guided  by  a  tenderness  higher 
than  compassion,  she  left  him, — she  whom  the  world  called  an  adventuress 
without  pity  and  without  conscience. 

As  she  passed  from  the  chamber,  he  sank  down  wearily  and  faintly,  his 
head  bowed  on  his  breast,  his  limbs  stretched  out  in  racking  misery  from  cold 
and  stiffness  in  the  heat  of  the  leaping  flames.  He,  who  in  his  superb  complete- 
ness of  strength  and  of  health  had  never  known  what  the  illness  of  a  day  was, 
suffered  now  every  ill  of  mind  and  body, — suffered  almost  more  in  this  moment, 
when  the  reviving  warmth  and  the  stimulant  of  the  choicer  food  gave  him  the 
power  of  vivid  consciousness,  than  he  had  done  in  the  stupor  of  his  opium- 
drugged  senses.  Yet  no  word,  scarcely  any  sign,  escaped  him  of  what  he 
suffered;  there  was  too  proud  an  instinct  in  him  still.  Lulli  watched  him 
silently;  the  dog  nestled  close  in  the  light  of  the  hearth.  For  many  moments 
there  was  not  a  sound  in  the  chamber;  sheer  physical  aching  pain  wore  Chandos 
down,  seeming  to  load  him  with  the  weight  of  iron  chains,  to  burn  him  with 
the  scorch  of  fire.  He  wished — he  wished  to  God — that  they  had  left  him  in 
that  dreamless  slumber  upon  the  snow  to  die,  with  no  more  knowledge  of  the 
life  he  quitted  than  the  frozen  stag  that  stretches  out  its  stiffened  limbs  upon 
some  desolate  moor-side. 

Gradually,  slowly,  bodily  exhaustion  conquered;  the  pangs  that  racked  his 
frame  were  soothed  to  comparative  peace  by  the  after-action  of  the  opiates  he 
had  so  long" taken;  the  warmth  of  the  hearth  lulled  him  to  rest;  his  eyes  closed, 
his  breathing  grew  gentler  and  more  even;  he  stretched  himself  out  with  a 
weary  sigh,  as  he  had  done  in  the  darkness  of  the  streets,  and  he  slept  at  last 
as  he  had  never  slept  since  the  night  he  learned  the  story  of  his  ruin, — slept 


266  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

for  hour  on  hour,  with  scare  a  breath  that  stirred  the  stillness  of  his  repose  or 
could  be  heard  upon  the  silence.  That  sleep  saved  him  from  the  fate  which 
the  girl  in  the  gambling  den  had  foreseen  for  him  if  he  lived. 

When  he  awoke,  the  sun  was  high  in  the  western  skies;  it  was  far  after 
noon.  Lulli  sat  beside  him,  watching  with  a  patience  no  length  of  vigil  could 
exhaust;  the  dog  lay  asleep;  the  ruddy  glow  of  the  great  fire  on  the  hearth  was 
dying  down,  though  its  intense  heat  still  filled  the  chamber.  His  eyes,  as  they 
unclosed,  met  Lulli's  resting  on  him  with  that  unwearied  spaniel  look  which 
had  scarce  ever  relaxed  its  watch  over  that  repose  which  so  re'sembled  death. 

"  Is  it  you,  Guido  ?  "  he  asked  faintly.  "  Ah,  yes,  I  remember.  And  you 
have  been  waiting  by  me  there  so  many  hours  !  " 

The  Provencal  strove  to  smile,  though  the  tears  stood  thick  in  his  eyes. 

"  Monseigneur,  I  would  never  weary  of  that." 

"  I  know.     There  are  few  like  you." 

"  Monseigneur,  if  all  those  whom  you  once  served  were  like  me,  there  would 
be  many  throngs." 

Chandos  answered  nothing;  he  raised  himself  on  his  left  arm,  and  lay  on 
the  hearth,  gazing  at  the  flicker  of  the  crimson  flame,  at  the  fall  of  the  gray 
noiseless  ash. 

The  deadliest  pang  to  Richard  Plantagenet,  in  all  the  bitterness  of  his  dis- 
crowned fortunes,  was  when  his  hound,  who  loved  him,  who  caressed  him,  who 
had  been  fed  from  his  hand  and  had  slept  by  his  pillow,  went  from  him  to  fawn 
on  Bolingbroke.  "  //  vous  suivra,  il  m'Jloignera"  said  the  forsaken  king, — a 
whole  history  of  infidelity  in  the  brief  pathetic  words.  The  deadliest  pang  of 
his  lost  royalties  to  Chandos  lay  in  the  abandonment  of  all,  save  this  poor 
cripple,  whom  he  had  loved  and  saved,  and  who  had  caressed  him  in  the  days 
of  his  purple  and  his  power. 

"  You  can  tell  me,"  he  said,  suddenly, — his  voice  was  very  hushed,  and 
came  with  effort  through  his  lips, — "  what  is  the  fate  of — of " 

His  lips  could  not  phrase,  but  his  listener  divined,  the  word. 

"  Clarencieux  ? "  asked  Lulli. 

He  bent  his  head. 

The  musician  looked  at  him  eagerly. 

"Did  you  not  know?     Monseigneur  d'Orvale  has  bought  the  whole  ?  " 

Chandos  looked  up,  a  flush  of  breathless  gratitude,  of  incredulous  relief, 
banishing  for  the  moment  all  the  broken,  aged,  colorless  pain  from  his  face. 

"  Is  it  true  ?  Philippe  d'Orvale^?  "  he  panted,  with  a  thirsty  anguish  that 
told  how  more  at  his  heart  than  any  other  thing  had  lain  the  weight  of  his 
home's  loss. 

"  Would  I  cheat  you  ?  True  as  that  we  live.  He  forced  them  to  surrender 
it  to  him, — bought  it  untouched,  undespoiled." 


CHANDOS.  267 

"  Thank  God  ! " 

He  covered  his  face  with  his  hands,  and  for  the  only  time  in  all  his  adver- 
sity, save  the  moment  when  old  Harold  Gelart  had  spoken  under  the  elms  of 
the  western  terrace,  great  storm-drops  forced  themselves  through  his  closed 
lids  and  his  clenched  fingers,  and  fell  one  by  one,  like  the  rain  before  a  tempest. 

Far  more  to  him  than  any  mercy ^to  himself  was  the  mercy  which  had  saved 
Clarencieux  from  sacrilege  and  barter  and  destruction. 

"  Monseigneur  d'Orvale  has  it,"  pursued  the  swift  sweet  voice  of  the  Prov- 
encal, "  Not  a  tree  will  be  touched,  not  a  thing  be  displaced.  He  sent  for  me, 
and  bade  me  live  there;  but  I  could  not:  it  would  have  broken  my  heart.  He 
has  sought  for  you  everywhere;  he  has  longed  to  find  you;  he  would  have  you 
return  to  it  as  though  it  were  your  own  still." 

Chandos  shivered  were  he  sat. 

"  //     I  am  dead  to  it  forever." 

He  could  not  have  borne  to  look  upon  the  purple  distance  of  its  woods,  he 
could  not  have  borne  to  stand  beside  the  far-off  course  of  the  mere  river  that 
flowed  towards  it, — he  who  had  forfeited  his  birthright. 

Lulli  was  silent;  his  eyes  watched  ever,  with  a  dog-like  love,  the  form  of 
Chandos,  where  he  lay  at  length  in  the  dying  glow  of  the  flames,  his  face  hid- 
den, his  frame  shaken  now  and  then  with  an  irrepressible  shudder.  An  unutter- 
able thanksgiving  was  in  his  heart  for  the  fate  which  had  spared  his  home  and 
the  lands  from  the  shame  and  the  ruin  of  dissolution;  yet  the  knowledge  that 
another  dwelt  there,  that  another  had  bought  his  heritage  forever,  brought  in 
him,  as  it  had  never  come  before,  the  full  realization  of  his  own  eternal  exile. 

He  raised  his  head  after  many  moments,  and  strove  to  steady  his 
voice. 

"Thank  him  from  me;  he  will  know  how  I  thank  him.  I  used  to  feel  how 
true,  how  generous,  his  heart  was,  now  noble  a  friend  he  would  ever  be.  Tell 
him  he  is  merciful  beyond  men's  mercy " 

"  You  will  tell  him?"  asked  Lulli,  softly;  "you  will  see  him?  He  loves 
you  so  well." 

Chandos  gave  an  irrepressible  gesture  of  pain. 

"Not  yet;  not  yet,"  he  said,  hurriedly.     "I  doubt  if  ever " 

The  words  were  unfinished;  in  his  own  soul  he  felt  as  though  never  could 
he  force  himself  to  look  on  the  friends  and  companions  of  that  lost  life  which 
seemed  to  lie  so  far  behind  him  in  a  limitless  distance,  dead  and  past  forever. 
Nor  in  himself  did  he  think  that  he  would  long  live, — long  bear  this  burden  of 
hopeless  wretchedness, — long  endure  this  existence  which  was  unceasingly  up- 
on the  verge  of  madness  or  of  death. 

What  had  he  now  ?  The  food  that  he  ate  here  might  be  the  last  ever  to  pass 
his  lips.  He  had  not  a  farthing  wherewith  to  buy  bread  even  for  his  dog. 


268  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

Lulli  looked  at  him  wistfully,  and  stooped  forward  nearer,  a  kindling  light 

on  his  face. 

"  Monseigneur,  hear  me  !  "  he  said,  very  low,  with  a  fervent,  touching  en- 
treaty in  his  whispered  Southern  tongue.  "  When  I  was  dying,  you  saved  me; 
when  I  was  in  beggary,  you  gave  me  food  and  shelter;  when  I  was  poor  and 
friendless  and  alone,  you  were  the  world  to  me.  You  found  me  in  misery,  and 
pitied  me,  and  for  the  art  that  is  my  life  and  my  soul  you  gained  me  hearing 
and  you  gave  me  fame.  Through  you  I  am  no  more  poor;  they  talk  of  me; 
my  Ariadtif  has  been  heard  through  all  the  width  of  Europe,  and  they  have 
paid  her  beauty  with  their  gold,  though  that  was  never  my  thought  with  her. 
Listen  !  Pay  my  debt  to  you  I  never  can;  I  love  to  owe  it  and  to  cherish  it. 
But  in  some  little  sense  I  may  serve  you;  in  some  degree  you  can  make  me 
happy  by  letting  me  ask  you  to  remember  it.  Stay  with  me;  let  me  toil  for 
you,  labor  for  you,  wait  on  you,  gather  the  gold  they  offer  me  for  you.  It  will 
be  such  joy  to  me  !  Without  the  sound  of  your  voice,  I  am  like  a  blind  man 
lost  in  this  wide  world;  if  you  will  only  wait  with  me,  you  can  give  me  back 
strength,  power,  ambition,  everything,  and  I  shall  love  the  coins  that  I  hate 
now,  if  you  will  let  me  glean  them  all  for  you,  let  me  do  for  you  in  some  little 
kind  all  that  you  did  for  me  when  I  was  a  homeless  cripple,  dying,  with  all  the 
music  that  was  in  me  killed  and  silenced  by  my  hunger  and  my  poverty." 

His  voice  rose  in  his  impassioned  entreaty,  till  it  thrilled  through  the  still 
chamber  like  one  of  his  own  melodies;  he  would  have  slaved,  have  starved, 
have  killed  himself,  to  have  saved  or  served  the  man  who  had  had  pity  on  his 
youth. 

Chandos  heard,  and  the  words  moved  him  deeply  as  the  words  of  the  old 
yeoman  had  done.  He  never  lifted  his  head,  but  he  stretched  out  his  right 
hand  silently,  and  grasped  the  frail,  nervous,  transparent  hand  of  the  musician 
in  a  close  clasp. 

"  What  you  wish  cannot  be,"  he  said,  huskily.  "  I  should  be  lost  to  shame 
indeed  !  But  from  my  heart  I  bless  you  for  your  fidelity, — for  your  love." 

"  Cannot  be  ?  Why  not  ?  In  my  need  you  aided  me  ? "  pleaded  Lulli,  his 
wistful  eyes  pleading  more  fervently  than  his  words.  He  knew  too  little  of  the 
world  to  know  why,  in  his  own  sight,  Chandos  would  have  felt  himself  shamed 
beyond  all  humiliation  had  he  listened  to  his  prayer. 

The  blood  flushed  his  listener's  forehead  with  a  pang  of  the  old  pride  of  his 
proud  race;  he  could  not  tell  this  guileless,  generous,  devoted  creature  that  he 
would  sooner  die  like  a  dog,  die  of  famine,  in  the  streets,  than  live  on  upon  the 
alms  of  his  debtor. 

"  It  cannot  be,"  he  said,  gently.  «  Do  not  ask  it,  Lulli.  If  you  have 
fame  and  comfort,  I  am  more  than  rewarded  by  you." 

The  Proven?al's  face  darkened  mournfully;  the  whole  of  many  months  had 


CHAN  DOS.  269 

been  passed  in  a  vain  quest  for  his  lost  master,  in  an  unwearied  though,  as  it 
had  seemed,  hopeless  search,  through  which  his  sole  sustaining  thought  had 
been  to  find  his  solitary  friend  and  to  repay  in  some  faint  measure  all  the  gifts 
he  owed. 

Chandos  rose  slowly  from  where  he  leaned  upon  the  hearth;  his  limbs  were 
still  stiff  and  weak,  though  the  profound  repose  of  long-unbroken  sleep  had 
restored  him  something  of  strength,  and  the  life-giving  warmth  in  which  he  had 
rested  had  lessened  the  pain  in  his  brow  and  eyes  and  the  oppressive  weight  on 
his  lungs. 

"You  are  not  going  ?  you  will  not  leave  me  ?  "  cried  Lulli,  with  an  accent 
almost  piteous.  He  had  ever  before  his  thoughts  the  senseless  form  on  which 
by  so  hazardous  a  chance  his  search  had  led  him  in  the  snow-storm  of 
the  past  night;  he  could  not  bear  to  let  him  go  from  his  sight  to  risk  the  same 
fate  in  loneliness  and  misery  again. 

Chandos  looked  at  him  with  something  bewildered  in  his  glance;  the  ques- 
tion brought  back  on  him  the  full  sense  of  his  own  aimless  and  hopeless  life. 
Where  should  he  go  ?  what  should  he  do  ?  In  the  desert  of  the  world  he  stood 
alone;  he  had  not  enough  to  get  him  bread. 

"  Stay  with  me  !  oh,  for  pity's  sake,  stay  with  me,"  pleaded  Lulli,  passion- 
ately. So  willingly  would  he  have  given  up  everything  on  earth  to  be  allowed 
to  starve  for  the  only  living  creature  who  had  ever  pitied  him. 

Chandos  gave  a  faint  sign  of  dissent;  he  knew  not  what  he  should  do,  he 
knew  not  whether  in  the  next  day  and  night  he  might  not  perish  of  the  same 
exposure  and  want  he  had  been  now  rescued  from;  but  his  highest  instincts 
were  not  dead  in  him;  he  would  not  linger  here,  though  for  one  moment  phy- 
sical weakness  and  all  the  long  habit  of  physical  indulgence  came  upon  him 
with  a  fearful  longing  to  lie  down  and  rest  without  effort  in  the  soothing  heat 
of  the  hearth,  to  stay  in  the  lulling  peace  and  shelter  of  the  quiet  chamber. 

Serious  illness  was  on  him,  as  well  as  the  inertia  of  fever  and  of  languor. 
For  the  moment  he  felt  it  beyond  his  strength  to  pass  out  into  the  bleak  biting 
wind,  to  face  the  homeless  night,  to  accept  the  fate  that  drove  him  out  into  the 
wilderness  of  the  great  city,  with  none  to  give  him  rest,  with  nothing  to  buy  him 
food.  He  longed  to  turn  back,  and  lie  down  and  die  in  the  dreamy  comfort  of 
that  calming  fire-glow. 

But  he  moved  away,  only  pausing  one  moment  to  droop  his  head  to  Lulli's 
ear  with  a  single  question  more: — 

"  Tell  me,  before  I  go,  what  of  her  ?  " 

The  musician  knew  that  he  meant  the  woman  he  had  loved ;  he  was  silent, 
and  turned  shuddering  away. 

"  Do  not  ask  me  !  do  not  ask  me  !  "  he  murmured,  passionately. 

Chandos  staggered  slightly;  he  was  very  weak. 


270  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

"  Is  she  dead  ?  " 

"  Would  to  heaven  she  were  !  "  said  Lulli,  with  a  force  that  thrilled  for  the 
moment  wtih  the  fierce  vengeance  of  the  South.  The  gentle  dreamer,  who 
would  have  pardoned  the  cruellest  wrongs  done  to  himself,  could  hate  and 
could  avenge  where  those  he  loved  were  wronged. 

"  Hush  !  I  have  loved  her,"  said  Chandos,  faintly.  "  What  of  her  ?  I  can 
bear  all  now." 

"  She  is  Lord  Clydesmore's  wife." 

The  answer  was  ground  out  between  Lulli's  teeth;  he  loathed,  as  he  had 
loathed  the  unknown  lover  of  Valeria,  the  woman  who  had  abandoned  and  the 
man  who  had  supplanted  Chandos. 

Chandos  swayed  forward  as  though  about  to  fall. 

"  Oh  God  !  his  wife  !  " 

The  words  broke  from  him  like  a  wrung-out  cry;  in  that  moment  he  re- 
membered nothing  save  the  passion  wherewith  he  had  loved  her,  save  the 
beauty  which  was  given  to  another.  He  made  his  way  with  a  blind  swaying 
movement  towards  the  door;  he  had  no  sense  now  except  that  he  must  be 
alone, — alone  to  bear  this  crowning  bitterness  which  had  befallen  him. 

"  Wait  ! — wait ! "  cried  Lulli,  imploringly.  "  Oh,  Heaven  !  why  would  you 
have  me  tell  you  ?  Wait  !  You  will  come  back  to  me  ?  " 

Chandos  put  him  aside  gently,  though  he  had  no  consciousness  of  what 
he  did. 

"  Yes,  I  will  come  back,"  he  answered,  mechanically,  without  the  sense  of 
what  he  promised,  as  he  made  his  way  out  once  more  into  the  bitter  winter  air. 
He  had  forgotten  all,  except  that  the  one  who  should  now  have  lain  in  his 
arms — his  wife — had  gone,  so  soon,  to  the  love  and  the  embrace  of  his  rival  ! 


CHAPTER   III. 

IN    THE   NET   OF   THE    RETIARIUS. 

LULLI  looked  for  him  in  vain.  He  never  returned.  It  was  not  that  he 
broke  wittingly  his  promise;  he  never  knew  that  he  had  made  it. 

He  dragged  his  limbs,  how  he  could  not  have  remembered,  to  the  only 
home  he  owned  now, — a  home  he  had  not  coins  enough  on  him  to  keep  another 
night, — a  pent,  dark,  dreary  chamber  in  one  of  the  million  houses  of  the 
crowded  streets,  with  only  one  better  thing  in  it,  that  it  was  so  high,  so  near  the 
clouds,  that  a  clear  space  of  the  winter  skies  looked  down  on  it,  and  the  cold 
serene  radiance  of  a  few  stars  could  be  seen  from  it  above  the  jagged  peaked 


CHAN  DOS.  271 

roofs.  There  the  illness  on  him  flung  him  down;  he  lay  prostrate  many  days, 
many  nights,  with  no  watcher  beside  him  save  the  dog,  except  once  in  several 
hours,  when  the  woman  of  the  house  came  and  filled  afresh  the  flagon  of  water 
that  he  drank  from  eagerly,  and  looked  at  him  with  a  pitying  wonder,  rather 
for  his  beauty  than  for  his  danger,  and  went  away  and  left  him;  for  she  only 
knew  him  as  a  beggared  gamester,  and  would  have  turned  him,  half  lifeless, 
wholly  senseless,  into  the  streets,  had  it  not  been  that,  woman-like,  she  was 
moved  to  compassion  by  the  physical  graces  that  no  ruin  could  kill  in  him,  and 
that  touched  her  to  pity  as  he  lay  unconscious  there. 

"  As  handsome  as  a  fallen  angel  !  "  she  would  mutter  to  herself,  while, 
though  but  an  old,  bent,  savage,  avaricious  crone,  she  would  just  touch  softly 
with  her  yellow  horny  hand  the  gold  locks  that  women  had  used  to  crown  with 
roses.  "  An  aristocrat  !  an  aristocrat  !  Mort  de  Dieu  !  how  many  of  them 
I  have  seen  die  off  like  murrained  cattle  from  their  gaming-hells!  " 

So,  just  for  the  sake  of  his  fair  hair  and  his  beautiful  mouth,  like  the  mouth 
of  a  Greek  god,  she  tended  him  enough  to  keep  life  in  him  like  a  flickering 
flame;  for  the  rest,  he  lay  alone  in  the  midst  of  the  peopled  city  where  he  had 
once  reigned  supreme,  dying  in  his  solitude  for  aught  that  any  knew  or  cared. 
The  winter  stars  shone  clear  through  frosty  nights,  and  looked  in  on  him 
prostrate  there,  with  his  head  fallen  back,  and  his  eyes  without  light  or  sense, 
and  his  chest  rising  heavily  and  wearily  with  anguish  in  every  breath  the 
inflamed  lungs  drew;  while  the  dog  watched  beside  him,  moaning  now  and 
again  its  piteous  wail,  or  covering  with  its  caresses  the  clenched  hands  and  the 
contracted  brow.  Winter  dawns  broke  chill  and  gray;  winter  days  rolled 
darkly  on;  winter  nights  passed  with  riotous  storm  or  frost  so  crystal  clear, 
through  which  the  cold  moon  shone  like  a  shield  of  steel;  he  lay  there  in  his 
loneliness  as  though  in  his  grave,  forgotten,  and  without  a  friend  in  the  midst 
of  thousands  who  had  feasted  at  his  tables,  in  the  heart  of  palaces  where  his 
word  had  been  as  law.  Yet  the  life  in  him  would  not  die. 

It  survived  through  all;  it  recovered  without  aid,  without  succor,  without 
other  comfort  than  was  given  him  by  the  warmth  of  the  animal's  nestling  body 
and  the  cooling  draught  of  the  icy  water.  Whilst  he  lay  there,  one  only, 
beside  the  old  brown  withered  crone  who  tended  his  wants  in  the  few  intervals 
of  her  daily  toil,  came  and  watched  him.  One  only  of  all  those  who  had 
known  him  and  been  succored  by  him  discovered  the  wretchedness  of  that  last 
retreat  and  stood  beside  the  bed  where  he  was  stretched.  Hate  is  swifter  of 
foot  and  surer  of  chase  than  love,  and  will  remember  and  search,  untiring, 
when  love  has  grown  weary  and  laggard. 

One  only  came  and  mounted  the  narrow,  dark,  rickety  stairs,  and  entered 
the  room  where  there  was  no  single  thing  of  solace  or  of  mercy  except  when  the 
clear  pale  light  of  the  stars  shone  down  from  above  the  endless  roofs;  one  only 


OVID  AS    WO&RS. 

stood  beside  the  pallet  where  the  man  whom  all  Europe  had  caressed  and 
honored  had  no  watcher  but  a  starving  dog.  Trevenna  stood  there  looking  on 
his  work,  and  was  content  with  it.  Philippe  d'Orvale  had  baffled  him  of  his 
vengeance  on  the  senseless  stones  of  Clarencieux,  but  none  could  take  from  him 
his  vengeance  on  the  living  man  whom  his  patient  hate  had  slain  more  merci- 
lessly than  by  a  swift  and  single  death-stab. 

All  the  long  years  of  subtle  dissimulation,  of  carking  envy,  of  longing  thirst 
to  destroy  the  peace  and  the  brilliance  of  the  life  he  pursued,  of  gifts  accepted 
with  greed  because  they  were  the  means  of  conquest,  but  loathed  and  cursed 
and  adding  by  each  one  a  stone  to  the  load  of  his  hatred, — all  these  were  over 
and  over  recompensed  now,  here,  in  this  darkened,  poverty-bared  garret  in  the 
city  of  Paris,  where  his  prey,  in  torture  and  in  famine,  lay  insensible  beneath 
his  gaze. 

Of  all  the  women  who  had  listened  to  Chandos'  love-words  and  toyed  with 
the  brightness  of  his  hair,  there  was  not  one  who  now  held  a  stoup  of  water  to 
his  lips.  Of  all  the  hands  that  he  had  filled  with  gold,  there  was  not  one  now 
to  touch  with  pitying  caress  the  brow  all  bent  and  dark  with  pain.  Of  all  the 
mouths  to  which  he  had  given  food,  there  was  not  one  now  to  murmur  a  gentle 
word  over  his  misery.  Of  all  the  throngs  whom  he  had  bidden  beneath  his  roof, 
of  all  the  lives  he  had  made  prosperous  and  joyous,  of  all  the  friends  who  had 
laughed  with  him  through  the  long  luxuriant  summer  day  of  his  existence,  there 
was  not  one  now  who  asked  whether  he  were  living  or  dead.  There  was  but 
his  enemy,  who  looked  on  him  and  rejoiced. 

Every  unconscious  sigh  that  broke  from  him,  every  movement  of  his  fevered 
aching  limbs,  every  breath  drawn  through  his  agonized  lungs,  every  contraction 
that  knit  his  burning  forehead  in  his  suffering,  every  look  of  dull  sightless 
suffering  from  the  blind  and  sleepless  eyes,  his  foe  watched,  and  was  content. 

Quand  j'6miettais  mon  pain  &  1'oiseau  du  rivage, 
L'onde  semblait  me  dire,  "  Espfere  !  aux  mauvais  jours, 
Dieu  te  rendra  ton  pain."     Dieu  me  le  doit  toujours  ! 

wrote  the  poet  Moreau,  dying  in  his  youth  of  lack  of  the  food  dogs  rejected. 
Chandos  had  thrown  his  bread  on  many  waters,  giving  to  all  who  asked,  to  all 
who  were  heavy-laden,  to  all  who  lived  in  darkness  and  in  want.  It  was  un- 
recompensed  and  owing  to  him  still.  He  needed  it  now,  but  none  repaid  it. 
There  only  remained  with  him  his  foe,  who  brought  him  the  hyssop  and  the 
aloe  when  he  died  for  a  drop  of  the  clear  living  rivers  of  the  land  he  had 
left. 

"  Water  ! — water  ! "  he  murmured,  unceasingly,  where  he  was  stretched  in 
his  delirious  stupor.  Trevenna  poured  some  absinthe,  and  touched  his  lips 
with  it.  He  shuddered,  all  unconscious  as  he  was,  and  turned  with  a  heavy 


CHANDOS.  273 

gasping  sigh  from  the  loathsome  drink,  so  bitter,  so  abhorrent  to  the  fever- 
burnt,  dry  lips  that  longed  to  steep  themselves  forever  in  the  cool  flow  of  sweet, 
fresh  waters.  Trevenna  smiled. 

"  Beau  seigneur  ! "  he  said,  softly,  to  himself,  "  I  have  drunk  bitterness 
long;  it  is  your  turn  now." 

He  lay  insensible,  defenceless;  the  width  of  his  chest  was  bare,  and  the 
loud  panting,  inflamed  beatings  of  his  heart  could  be  seen  where  it  throbbed 
like  the  passionate  aching  heart  of  a  mured  eagle.  Trevenna  laid  his  hand  on 
it,  and  his  eye  glanced  to  a  knife  that  lay  on  the  deal  board  on  which  his 
pitcher  of  drink  was  set. 

"How  easy  !  "  he  thought.  "  But  I  have  done  better.  I  have  killed  him; 
but  I  have  never  broken  a  law.  A  stab  there  would  be  mercy  to  him;  he  shall 
never  get  it  from  me." 

Chandos'  arm  moved  where  it  hung  over  the  bed,  seeking  instinctively,  all 
dead  to  what  passed  or  what  looked  on  him  though  he  was,  the  place  whence 
he  was  used  to  take  the  cup  of  water  which  the  woman  of  the  house  set  by  him. 
For  the  sake  of  his  beauty,  she  had  been  pitiful  in  the  last  hour,  and  had 
sliced  in  it  a  few  cuts  of  orange  to  cool  the  thirst  that  devoured  him.  His  hand 
wandered  in  a  pathetic  uncertainty,  seeking,  as  a  blind  man's  seeks,  the  only 
thing  he  had  life  left  in  him  to  long  for.  Trevenna  moved  the  table  from  his 
reach,  and  emptied  out  upon  the  floor  the  orange-water.  Had  he  written  the 
"  Purgatorio  "  and  the  "Inferno,"  he  would  have  invented  more  devilish  tor- 
tures than  Dante  framed  in  the  Caina,  Ptolomea,  and  Antenora. 

The  thirst,  parched  and  delirious  as  the  thirst  of  men  in  the  desert,  consumed 
his  victim  with  an  intolerable  torment;  the  mouth  was  white  and  dry  as  dust, 
his  forehead  red  with  the  heated  blood,  his  eyes  wide  open  with  a  terrible, 
senseless  stare:  thrown  back  there,  with  his  bare  chest  grand  as  the  chest  of  a 
Torso,  and  the  luxuriance  of  his  hair  tangled  and  tossed  and  lustreless,  yet  re- 
taining the  beauty  with  which  nature  had  created  him  deathless  to  the  last,  he 
lay  like  a  young  gladiator  flung  down  in  the  sand  of  the  arena  by  the  clinging 
serpentine  coils  of  the  Retiarius.  Indistinct,  disconnected  words  broke  now 
and  then  from  his  lips,  in  the  wanderings  of  thoughts  that  in  the  misery  of  that 
thirst  stretched  far  away  into  dim  memories  of  his  past, — to  the  forest  freshness 
of  English  brooks,  to  the  deep  still  blue  of  Austrian  lakes,  to  the  sweet  music 
of  waters  falling  through  innumerable  leaves  down  the  steep  height  of  many- 
colored  stone,  of  the  grand  breadth  of  Euphrates  rolling  beneath  its  palms,  of 
the  silver-sheeted  Danube  lying  in  the  deep  shadows  of  its  woods,  of  the  stilly 
mummur  of  winding  waters  in  the  Italian  spring-tide  leaf,  flowing  lazily  and  soft- 
ly beneath  the  green  wild  arums,  and  the  tawny  bed  of  osiers,  and  the  wreath- 
ing boughs  of  Banksia  roses,  and  the  gentle  fragrance  of  the  young  vine's 
flower-buds.  They  were  on  his  lips  ever,  in  longing,  fugitive,  broken  memories, 


274  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

those  scenes  and  hours  of  his  past,  those  thoughts  of  the  earth's  fair  freshness 

that  was  dead  and  lost  to  him. 

Trevenna  stood  still  and  listened  to  the  unconscious,  unbidden  suffering  that 
longed  for  all  that  it  was  exiled  from,  that  spoke  in  those  broken  words  of  all 
the  glories  of  remembered  hours,  all  the  freedom  of  the  forests  and  the  seas, 
while  life  was  wrung  and  death  embittered  by  that  one  poor  piteous  want, — one 
draught  of  the  water  that  beggars  might  drink  from  every  brook  that  bubbled. 
He  listened;  he  could  have  listened  forever. 

He  thought  of  the  night  when  he  had  ground  the  Paris  sweetmeats  into  the 
mud  of  the  gutter,  and  registered  his  childish  vow;  he  had  kept  it  to  the  letter. 
Happier  than  Shylock,  he  had  cut  the  piece  of  his  vengeance  from  the  living 
heart  of  his  victim,  with  none  to  stay  his  hand. 

The  gray  chilly  twilight  of  a  winter's  day  filled  the  attic;  the  light  of  the 
first  faint  moon-ray  glistened  on  the  bare  walls  and  the  naked  floor;  the  noise, 
the  stench,  the  noxious  reeking  air  of  the  alley  below  could  reach  but  little 
here;  only  an  oath,  or  a  laugh  more  ghastly  than  the  oath,  pierced  the  stillness 
of  this  chamber  in  the  roof,  while  through  its  broken  casement  the  tide  of  the 
icy  night-wind  poured  bitterly  in  on  the  uncovered  chest,  on  the  fevered  limbs, 
on  the  darkened  aching  brow. 

There  was  no  pang  of  conscience  in  the  watcher  there, — no  memory  of  the 
friendship  that  had  trusted,  of  the  loyalty  that  had  saved  him, — no  thought  of 
his  own  fraud,  of  his  own  baseness.  He  only  remembered  what  this  man  had 
been  in  the  splendor  of  his  promise,  in  the  gladness  of  his  youth,  in  the  brill- 
iance of  his  renown;  and  looked  at  him  lying  thus,  and  was  content.  When  the 
net  had  wound  its  coils,  and  the  strangled  limbs  were  powerless,  and  the 
strength  reeled  and  fell  under  its  twisting,  writhing  meshes  down  into  the  sand, 
the  Retiarius  had  no  pity,  but  he  looked  upward  to  where  the  shouts  of  "  Euge  !  " 
and  the  turned-down  hands  decreed  with  him  no  mercy  to  the  vanquished,  and 
he  plunged  in  again  and  again  the  fangs  of  his  trident,  seeking  the  last  life- 
blood.  So  it  was  now  with  Trevenna.  His  net  had  been  deftly  flung,  and  had 
brought  his  adversary  down,  blinded  and  paralyzed;  but  he  would  never  have 
wearied  of  stabbing  again  and  again,  while  there  was  life  to  feel. 

He  turned  reluctantly  away:  he  could  have  lingered  there  whilst  there  was 
a  pang  to  watch,  a  sigh  to  count.  He  heard  the  footfall  of  the  old  Auvergnat 
woman  heavily  treading  over  the  bare  boards.  She  touched  his  arm, — a 
hideous,  brown,  wrinkled,  shrivelled  being  of  nigh  eighty  years,  with  avarice  in 
her  blank  glance,  and  a  horrible  old  age  upon  her. 

"  You  know  him  ?  "  she  asked. 

I  know  a  little  of  him,"  he  answered,  indifferently.     "  You  had  better  not 
keep  him  here  longer  than  you  can  help;  he  may  get  you  into  trouble." 

He   roused  her  fears  and  her  selfishness,  that  even  this  miserable  hand 


CHAN  DOS.  275 

might  be  withheld  from  easing  the  suffering  they  looked  on.  The  Auvergnat 
looked  at  him  in  terror. 

"  With  the  police  ?  " 

Trevenna  nodded  and  shrugged  his  shoulders.  The  old  creature,  steeped 
in  Paris  vice  and  devoured  with  Paris  avarice,  set  her  teeth  hard. 

"  By  the  Mother  of  God  !  I  would  have  turned  him  in  the  streets  days  ago 
if  he  were  not  as  beautiful  as  a  marble  Christ." 

Trevenna  laughed, — a  loud,  coarse,  jeering  laugh. 

"  His  beauty  ! — You  old  crone,  what  can  that  be  to  you  ?  If  you  were 
twenty,  now " 

She  turned  on  him  her  darkling  and  evil  glance. 

"  Women  are  fools  to  their  tombs.  I  cannot  hurt  him;  I  should  see  his 
face  forever." 

Trevenna  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"  If  you  wish  to  serve  him,  get  him  let  into  some  pauper  madhouse.  It  is 
the  only  thing  you  can  do  for  him." 

She  shuddered  a  dissent. 

"  They  would  shear  all  that  in  a  madhouse  ! "  she  said,  drawing  through  her 
hard  withered  hands  the  silken  fairness  of  his  hair.  "  When  I  was  young,  I 
would  have  given  my  life  to  kiss  that  gold, — when  I  was  young  !  " 

The  words  muttered  half  sullenly,  half  longingly,  on  her  lips;  the  memory 
made  her  touch  gently,  almost  tenderly,  the  locks  that  lay  in  her  horny  palm. 
She  felt  for  him, — almost,  in  a  way,  she  loved  him, — this  battered,  evil,  savage 
old  creature  of  Paris;  but  she  would  strip  the  linen  from  his  limbs  to  thieve 
and  sell,  for  all  that. 

"  Send  him  there  all  the  same,"  said  Trevenna.  "  It  is  the  only  place  that 
will  shelter  him  now;  except  one,  to  be  sure, — the  Morgue  ! " 

And  with  these  words  to  rankle  and  fester,  and  ripen  if  they  should,  in  the 
soul  of  the  old  beldam  who  had  all  to  lose,  nothing  to  gain,  by  the  life  of  one 
whom  she  had  robbed  of  everything,  Trevenna  went  lightly  down  the  high 
crazy  staircase  that  passed  through  so  many  stories  to  the  basement;  there 
was  a  more  intensely  victorious  glance  in  his  eyes,  a  smile  of  tenfold  success 
on  his  mouth. 

"  My  brilliant  Chandos  !  my  brilliant  Chandos  !  "  he  said,  half  aloud,  "  how 
is  it  with  you  now  ?  " 

And  he  went  out  into  the  night,  leaving  the  man  who  had  rescued  him 
from  his  prison  to  perish  of  thirst,  or  of  famine,  or  of  fever, — to  die  in  the 
streets  or  to  live  like  a  chained  beast  in  a  madhouse, — whichever  should  chance 
to  be  the  fruit  and  the  end  of  his  history. 

Trevenna  never  laughed  more  merrily  at  the  vaudeville  of  the  Bouffes,  never 
ate  his  salad  with  keener  relish  at  the  cafe  Riche,  never  looked  on  at  Mabillewith 


276  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

more  good-tempered  indulgence  for  the  follies  which  had  no  attraction  for  him- 
self, than  he  did  that  night.  Once  he  laughed  aloud,  so  gayly,  so  long,  that  a 
friend  near  asked  what  the  jest  was.  He  laughed  again. 

"I  am  thinking  of  Belisarius  begging  an  obole;  and  of  Henry  IV.  hunted 
and  naked,  and  dead  of  starvation,  at  Spires  ! " 

His  friend  stared,  and  thought  the  wine  was  in  his  head.  But  it  was  not;  he 
was  only  drunk  with  success. 

The  doom  of  his  prey,  however,  than  at  least,  was  not  the  madhouse  or  the 
grave.  He  rose  from  his  bed  at  length,  the  superb  frame  with  which  nature  had 
dowered  him  resisting  all  the  stress  and  peril  that  had  sought  to  under- 
mine it.  He  wondered  wearily  why  he  could  not  die. 

The  woman  who  had  brought  him  drink  and  tended  him  now  and  then,  for 
the  sake  of  those  lips  like  the  Sun-God's,  of  those  limbs  like  the  Antique,  had 
robbed  him  of  the  little  he  had  left  while  he  lay  insensible, — of  the  diamond 
links  in  his  sleeves,  of  the  gold  buttons  in  his  shirts,  of  the  fine  cambric  of  his 
linen,  of  the  few  traces  left  to  him  of  the  old  luxuries  of  his  usage.  She  said, 
when  he  could  hear,  that  she  had  been  at  great  cost  for  his  illness:  he  believed 
her;  he  could  not  tell  that  her  pitcher  of  water  had  been  the  sole  thing  set 
by  his  side. 

Having  lost  what  he  had  lost,  moreover,  what  could  the  few  things  stolen 
now  be  to  him  ? 

Thus,  when  he  rose  at  last  and  staggered  out  from  the  wretched  dwelling 
where  he  had  not  a  coin  left  to  keep  even  its  roof  above  his  head,  he  was  liter- 
ally beggared, — beggared  almost  as  utterly  as  any  unknown  corpse  that  lay 
waiting  burial  in  the  dead-house  by  the  Seine. 

Since  the  far-gone  German  days  when  an  emperor  vainly  begged  bread  at 
the  monastery  he  had  endowed,  and  dragged  himself  to  a  vault  to  die  unsepul- 
chred,  there  had  hardly  been  a  fall  more  vast,  more  sudden,  from  the  height  of 
power  to  the  depths  of  poverty. 

He  went  feebly  out  into  the  early  night,  that  by  a  chance  was  clear,  starlit, 
and  mild.  Beau  Sire  looked  up  at  him  and  moaned;  a  piteous  hunger  gazed 
out  from  the  dog's  eyes,  he  was  famished;  he  had  wellnigh  starved  through  all 
the  days  and  nights  that  he  had  kept  guard  by  his  master.  He  had  not  a  sou 
left  him  to  buy  the  animal  food. 

He  shuddered  as  he  met  the  wistful,  uncomplaining,  hungry  eyes, — he  who 
had  never  beheld  pain  save  to  relieve  or  to  release  it !  He  stood  alone  in  the 
busy,  rapid,  lighted,  heedless  tide  of  life  in  a  Paris  night,  and  had  not  wherewith 
to  buy  a  crust  to  keep  the  brute  that  loved  him  from  starvation.  He  thought 
with  a  longing  agony  of  his  promise  to  the  dead  man  who  had  bade  him  live  to 
meet  his  fate;  the  oath  was  a  bitter  one  to  keep. 

He  almost  reeled  through  the  first  street  that  his  steps  turned  into;  illness 


CHAN  DOS.  277 

had  mortally  weakened  him,  and  his  head  swam  with  the  booming  noise  of  the 
traffic,  and  with  the  stench  of  the  crowds.  The  retriever  followed  him  feebly: 
famine  was  telling  on  its  strength;  and,  like  its  master,  used  to  all  luxury  and 
to  all  delicacies  for  so  long,  it  was  untrained  to  want:  its  eyes  were  growing 
dim  and  ravenous. 

Chandos  felt  his  limbs  fail  him;  the  exhaustion  of  severe  illness  was  on  him 
with  nothing  of  shelter,  of  stimulant,  of  repose,  to  support  him  under  it.  He 
sank  down  almost  unconsciously  on  some  stone  steps  of  the  narrow  thorough- 
fare he  had  wandered  into,  and  drew  the  dog  to  him  with  its  fond  head  nestled 
in  his  breast;  he  could  not  bear  the  mute  appeal  of  those  longing,  piteous  eyes. 
The  crowds  swept  past  him, — rich  and  poor,  chiefly  the  latter,  for  it  was  in  a 
densely  peopled  and  ancient  quarter,  but  all  bent  fast  on  their  own  errands. 
Two  or  three  turned  their  heads  back  over  their  shoulders  to  look  at  him,  with 
his  arm  resting  on  the  shoulders  of  the  animal  that  pressed  so  closely  to  him; 
none  did  more.  They  were  the  hurried  pleasure-seekers  and  the  toiling  laborers 
of  a  great  city;  they  could  have  no  heed  of  one  misery  amidst  so  vast  a  canker 
of  universal  want  and  greed. 

The  throngs  passed  him  like  a  throng  of  phantoms;  he  thought,  as  he  sat 
there,  of  the  thousand  nights  when  he  had  driven  through  Paris  with  all  the 
rank,  with  all  the  brilliance,  of  the  Court  of  St.  Cloud  around  him,  with  no 
name  more  famous,  with  no  presence  more  courted,  at  Tuileries  or  Faubourg, 
than  his  own. 

Now  he  must  let  his  dog  hunger  for  a  broken  loaf  ! 

Where  he  sat,  the  lamp-light  flashed  on  the  collar  the  retriever  wore, — a 
handsome  toy  of  silver,  with  his  arms  embossed  upon  it, — a  relic  of  his  long- 
lost  life.  The  collar  was  of  value;  and  the  woman  who  had  robbed  him  of 
every  other  trifle  would  have  robbed  him  even  of  that,  had  not  Beau  Sire  kept 
her  off  it  through  his  passionate  menace  of  her  with  his  mighty  fangs.  His 
hand  wandered  to  the  padlock  fastening  it:  how  many  hours  it  recalled  to  him, 
that  burnished  glittering  ornament  where  it  gleamed  under  the  dog's  black 
curls  ! — hours  of  fresh  autumn  mornings  among  the  woods  of  Clarencieux,  with 
the  whirr  of  a  pheasant's  wing  through  the  reddening  gold  of  the  leaves;  of 
breezy  Scottish  days,  with  the  splash  of  the  cool  brown  water,  and  the  flush  of 
a  snow-white  swan,  and  the  balmy  honey-smell  of  the  heather,  while  the  grouse 
gave  her  note  of  warning  to  the  thoughtless  grazing  deer;  of  glowing  deep-hued 
Eastern  sunsets,  where  the  reeds  of  the  Nile  trembled  in  the  after-glow,  or  the 
curling  flight  of  the  desert-hawk  soared  upward  above  the  ruins  of  the  temples 
of  Jupiter  Ammon; — hours  when  the  days  and  the  nights  were  all  too  brief  for 
the  glad  luxuriance  of  the  "  life  he  was  gifted  and  filled  with." 

The  great  tears  gathered  in  his  eyes  and  fell  down,  wrung  slowly,  one  by 
one,  upon  the  shining  metal;  then  he  unfastened  the  collar,  and  rose  and 


278  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

crossed  the  street  to  a  small  dark  house  where  he  saw  that  things  were  pawned, 
—a  minor,  obscure  Mont  de  Piete.  He  entered  and  laid  the  toy  down. 

"Take  it,"  he  said,  faintly,  yet  with  a  new,  strange  fierceness  in  the  words, 

the  fierceness  that  comes  with  the  gnawing  of  want;  "  take  it,  and  give  me 

food  for  the  dog." 

The  owner  of  the  wretched  place  stared  at  him,  and  balanced  the  collar 
thoughtfully  in  his  hands,  amazed  at  the  richness  and  the  workmanship  of  the 
thing  offered  him.  He  gave  one  glance,  suspicious,  curious,  leering;  but  the 
look  soon  passed;  he  saw  his  first  thought  of  theft  was  wrong;  he  saw,  as  the 
old  crone  had  seen,  "  an  aristocrat  "  in  the  man  who  craved  food  from  him  for 
that  costly  ornament. 

"  It  is  of  value, — of  great  value,"  he  muttered,  in  the  surprise  of  the  mo- 
ment, balancing  still  with  critical  wonder  the  silver  links  and  plates,  and  peer- 
ing through  his  test-glass  at  the  graven  crest  and  shield. 

"  Give  me  food  for  him,  and  take  it." 

The  words  were  very  low,  but  there  was  something  of  menace  in  them. 
The  man,  old  and,  though  avaricious,  not  dishonest,  for  his  trade,  glanced  half 
frightened  at  their  speaker,  and,  keeping  the  collar  in  his  hand,  stooped  under 
his  dirty  counter,  and  drew  out  a  plate  of  his  own  supper, — good  food  enough 
though  course,  and  heaped  up  in  abundance.  The  retriever  devoured  it  as 
only  starvation  can  devour. 

The  pawnbroker  watched  him  with  a  half-stupid  wonder,  then  took  three 
napoleons  from  his  desk  and  pushed  them  towards  Chandos. 

"  Your  silver  thing  is  worth  more  than  your  dog's  meat.     Take  those." 

The  collar  was  worth  thirty,  as  he  knew  well ;  he  voluntarily  gave  three. 
He  thought  himself  stupendously  honest:  so  he  was,  as  the  world  goes. 

A  deep  flush  came  for  the  moment  in  Chandos'  face;  he  drew  back  with 
an  involuntary  gesture  of  repulsion.  Want  had  not  killed  in  him  yet  the  partri- 
cian  impulses  of  his  blood:  then,  as  the  color  faded,  leaving  him  deadly  pale, 
he  stretched  out  his  hand  and  took  it.  It  would  keep  life  in  him  for  another 
week. 

"  I  thank  you,"  he  said,  simply,  as  he  bowed  with  his  old  courtly  grace  to 
the  man  who  with  wide-open  eyes  watched  him  with  a  fascinated  amaze. 

"  Mon  Dieu  !  "  murmured  the  pawnbroker,  as  he  turned  to  leave  the  place, 
-"  mon  Dieu  !  how  strange  a  man  !  He  wants  food  for  a  dog,  and  he  bows 
like  a  king.  Well.  I  gave  him  three,  I  gave  him  three;  I  almost  wish  I  had 
given  him  more."  Still,  even  as  it  was,  he  felt  by  that  voluntary  gift  of  three  he 
had  been  virtuous  enough  to  deserve  the  Prix  de  Montholon.  There  are  many 
in  higher  trades  than  his  who  consider  that  to  abstain  for  a  little  part  from  all 
the  cheating  they  have  it  in  their  power  to  do  is  to  attain  a  high  degree  of 
social  and  commercial  honesty. 


CHANDOS.  279 

Chandos,  with  the  retriever  leaping  and  fawning  on  him  in  gratitude  and 
pleasure,  turned  to  pass  from  the  place.  In  the  entrance  stood  Trevenna. 

Well  clothed  in  dark  warm  seal-skins  that  hung  lightly  on  him,  with  a 
Russia-leather  case  in  his  hand,  from  which  he  had  just  paused  to  take  a  cigar, 
with  his  ruddy  color  brighter,  his  white  teeth  whiter,  and  his  keen,  frank  eyes 
bluer  in  the  winter  air  and  glancing  gaslight,  he  stood  in  an  easy  comfort,  in  a 
traveller's  carelessness;  and  on  his  mouth  was  a  lurking  smile, — a  smile  of  irre- 
pressible amusement,  of  ironic  triumph.  He  had  watched  Chandos  many  a 
time  in  the  gambling-hell,  in  the  midnight  streets,  in  the  opium-drunkenness, 
before  he  had  stood  and  looked  at  him  on  what  seemed  his  death-bed.  He  had 
seldom  lost  sight  of  him;  he  had  been  the  only  one  who  remembered  him;  for 
hate  is  more  enduring  than  any  love.  But  now  only  for  the  first  time  Chandos 
knew  that  his  gaze  was  on  him, — now  when  the  hazard  of  accident  had  made 
his  bitterest  enemy  pause  at  the  door  of  the  pawnshop  and  look  on  at  the  barter 
of  the  silver  toy. 

And  not  in  the  first  instant  when  Chandos  turned  and  saw  him  could  he  wholly 
hide  the  caustic  mockery,  the  victorious  success,  with  which  he  had  watched 
this  last  depth  of  hopeless  misery  into  which  the  man  he  had  pursued  had 
fallen;  not  in  that  moment  of  supreme  domination  over  his  fallen  friend  could 
he  resist  the  impulse  that  beset  the  single  weakness  lurking  in  his  bright,  bold 
nature, — the  weakness  of  an  insatiable  and  woman-like  avidity  of  hate. 

He  stretched  out  his  hand  with  his  old  ready,  pleasant  smile;  the  palm  was 
filled  with  some  ten  or  a  dozen  sovereigns  and  a  few  crisp  bank-notes  just  won 
at  the  whist-tables  of  the  Jockey  Club. 

"  Tres-cher !  when  we  last  met,  you  used  me  rather  roughly  because  I 
offended  you  with  a  bit  of  common  sense;  the  direst  insult  to  you  men  of 
genius.  But  let  bygones  be  bygones.  Take  what  you  want,  Chandos;  you  did 
the  same  for  me  once.  Take  'em  all:  do,  now.  You  won't  believe  how,  from 
my  soul,  I  pity  you.  Pawned  the  dog's  collar — oh,  the  deuce  !  Is  it  so  bad  as 
that  ?  You  look  as  if  you  wanted  food  yourself:  why  didn't  you  write  to  me  ? 
I'm  a  poor  man,  as  you  know;  but  still  a  five-pound  note " 

He  knew  so  well  how  to  pierce  with  the  cruellest  strokes  the  most  sensi- 
tive nerves  of  the  nature  he  had  studied  so  long  and  so  minutely.  The 
words  might  have  passed  on  a  stranger's  ear  as  kindly  meant,  though  coarsely 
phrashed;  he  knew  how  more  bitter  than  all  taunts,  more  unbearable  than  all 
outrage,  would  they  be  to  the  man  who  stood  before  him. 

He  was  not  prepared  for  their  effect. 

Chandos  looked  at  him  a  moment  in  silence,  then  dashed  his  hand  down 
with  his  own  clenched  fist  in  a  sudden  blow  that  shattered  in  the  mud  the  coins 
and  notes. 

"  Take  care  !  or  you  shall  have  the  same  on  your  jibing  lips." 


280  OUIDA'S     WORKS. 

The  menace  was  low-breathed,  but  it  thrilled  with  a  fierce  intensity  of 
suppressed  passion.  Trevenna  had  not  calculated  or  remembered  the  change 
that  wretchedness  and  desperation  work  in  the  gentlest  natures;  he  had  never 
thought  how  the  softest  and  most  pliant  temper,  goaded  by  indignity  and 
altered  by  circumstance,  will  turn  at  last  ferocious  like  a  wild  boar  at  bay. 

He  stooped,  amazed  and  for  the  instant  speechless,  and  picked  up  the 
scattered  money  from  the  doorstep  and  the  street  (Trevenna  never  wasted 
anything;  it  was  one  of  the  secrets  of  his  success);  then  he  looked  up  with  the 
insolence  of  superiority,  the  coarseness  of  triumph,  that  he  could  no  more  have 
spared  to  the  man  before  him  than  the  hound  will  spare  the  stag  he  has  pulled 
down  the  gripe  of  his  fangs,  the  wrench  of  his  jaws. 

"  On  my  honor,  monseigneur,  we  can't  stand  that  style  now,  you  know. 
We  put  up  with  your  pride  when  you  were  the  lord  of  Clarencieux,  but  I'll 
be  hanged  if  men  will  let  you  come  it  over  them  now.  You've  lost  your  head, 
that's  what  it  is,  with  gaming,  and  drinking,  and  going  to  the  bad.  I'm  deuced 
sorry  for  you,  on  my  word  I  am;  awful  break  down,  I  know,  and  a  good  deal 
of  excuse:  still,  when  a  man  would  take  pity  on  you " 

Chandos'  hand  fell  with  a  swaying  weight  upon  his  shoulder  and  forced  him 
back  off  the  step,  off  the  stones.  Under  the  goad  of  his  foe's  insults,  under  the 
taunting  pity  of  the  man  he  had  saved  and  enriched,  all  the  weakness  of  illness, 
all  the  dizziness  of  exhaustion,  seemed  to  leave  him;  he  felt  as  though  the  force 
of  lions  flowed  back  into  his  veins. 

"  Come  out — into  some  lonely  place,"  he  muttered  in  Trevenna'  s  ear. 
"  Come  quietly,  or  I  shall  find  strength  to  kill  you  still." 

Trevenna  was  a  courageous  man,  but  also  he  was  a  sagacious  one;  he  knew 
what  the  gripe  of  the  hand  that  held  him,  what  the  gleam  of  the  eyes  that  stared 
into  his,  foreboded.  He  turned  of  his  own  accord  passively  down  a  solitary, 
gloomy,  unlighted  court  of  a  dreary  uninhabited  fifteen-century  hotel,  not  far 
from  the  Tourelle  de  la  Reine  Isabeau,  in  the  ancient  Rue  du  Temple,  where 
the  darling  of  Paris  was  struck  down  by  the  assassins  of  his  foe  of  Burgundy. 

Chandos  had  never  released  his  grasp  upon  his  shoulder;  he  forced  him 
slowly  on  and  backward  into  the  darkness  of  the  stone-paved  court.  Men 
turned  and  looked  at  him;  he  had  no  sense  of  them;  he  only  saw  John  Tre- 
venna's  face.  Once  alone  there,  in  that  gaunt  black  silence,  he  released  him 
and  shook  him  off. 

"  Now  tell  me  why  you  hate  me  !  " 

The  words  were  distinctly  uttered,  and  were  not  loud;  yet  for  the  moment 
of  their  utterance,  as  he  had  done  once  before,  Trevenna  felt  very  near  his 
death.  But  he  was  a  bold  man;  he  did  not  quail;  he  laughed  audaciously. 

"Why  do  1  hate  you?  What  a  question  !  In  the  first  place,  you  can't 
know  I  do." 


CHANDOS.  281 

Chandos  took  a  step  nearer  to  him;  his  eyes  were  black,  his  lips  were  livid. 

"  No  lies  !  Why  do  you  triumph  in  my  ruin  ?  How  have  I  ever  wronged  you? " 

Trevenna  laughed  again;  his  temper  was  up  for  once,  his  savage  hatred  had 

got  the  better  of  him,  his  caution  was  forgotten  in  the  irresistible  delight  of 

flinging  off  the  disguise  he  had  worn  so  long,  and  taunting  and  cursing  his  fallen 

antagonist  openly  while  he  was  powerless;  even  as  yonder,  under  the  House  of 

the  Image  of  Our  Lady,  the  boar  of  Burgundy  had  commanded  the  "  coup  de 

massue"  to  the  fair  lifeless  body  that  his  brute  envy  had  slaughtered  in  its  youth. 

"  I  have  no  title  to  aspire; 
Yet  if  you  sink,  I  seem  the  higher," 

he  chanted  with  a  malicious  humor.  "That  couplet  is  true  to  the  core. 
Triumph?  I  don't  triumph.  I  only  offer  to  lend  you  a  five-pound  note;  and 
you  look  deucedly  as  if  you  wanted  it.  Of  course  there's  something  droll  in  such 
a  fall  as  yours.  I  can't  help  that.  To  think  of  all  you  used  to  be  and  all  you 
are  !  The  sea-saw  of  Fortune  was  never  half  so  strikingly  illustrated  since  the 
days  of  Crcesus." 

There  was  very  little  light  where  they  stood,  none  save  such  as  the  winter 
moon  shed;  but  there  was  enough  for  him  to  see  the  face  above  him,  and  the 
words  stopped  abruptly  even  on  his  fearless  lips. 

He  knew  that  for  far  less  provocation  than  this  blood  had  been  shed  a 
million  times  since  the  days  of  Cain. 

"  Answer  me,"  said  Chandos, — and  there  was  a  menace  in  the  patient  words 
more  deadly  than  lies  in  passion; — "answer  me.  Why  do  you  hate  me  as 
devils  hate  ?  " 

"  Can't  say  how  devils  hate  !  Don't  believe  in  'em,"  said  Trevenna,  flip- 
pantly. His  audacious  and  insolent  temper  was  dared  and  roused;  though  he 
had  died  for  it,  he  would  not  have  abandoned  his  victory.  "  No  more  do  you. 
They  all  say  now  '  Lucrece '  is  a  deistical  work;  a  season  later,  it'll  be  atheisti- 
cal. Trust  public  opinion  to  run  all  down-hill  when  once  it  takes  the  turn. 
What  if  I  do  hate  you  ?  I'm  not  singular.  No  end  of  men  hate,  you,  man 
beau  Chandos  !  " 

Something  of  the  fierce  concentrated  passion  faded  from  the  face  on  which 
the  white  moon  shone;  a  great  weariness  of  pain  came  there. 

"  Hate  me  ? "  he  re-echoed,  dreamily.  "  I  never  wronged  man  to  my  own 
knowledge.  Why  should  men  hate  me  ?  Why  should  you  ?" 

Trevenna  shrugged  his  shoulders,  and  shook  his  seal-skins  with  a  careless 
laugh. 

"  Why  ?  Why,  hate's  sown  broadcast,  like  so  much  thistle-down.  Why  ? 
Perhaps  you  robbed  me  of  my  mistress,  or  I  envied  yours.  Perhaps  you  beat 
me  once  at  ecarte.  Perhaps  you  only  provoked  me  with  your  d — d  languor  of 


o83  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

aristocratic  hauteur;  that  did  a  deal  of  mischief  for  you  with  a  good  many. 
Perhaps  you  incensed  me  with  the  very  cursed  grace  of  your  generosities,  with 
the  very  royal  nonchalance  of  your  liberalities;  that  annoyed  more  than  you 
wot  of  too.  Hate  ?  Why,  what  is  there  to  wonder  at  in  that  ?  If  I  loved  you, 
now,  you  might  think  it  out  of  the  common  !  " 

And  yet,  were  love  won  by  friendship,  loyalty,  and  gifts,  how  had  he  bought 
this  man's  !  The  memory  rose  in  him  where  he  stood,  with  the  goading  banter 
of  Trevenna's  ironies  on  his.ear;  yet  there  was  too  grand  a  fibre  in  his  nature, 
too  proud  a  chivalry  in  his  blood,  for  him  to  smite  his  torturer  with  the  past 
of  forgotten  benefits, — for  him  to  appeal  against  ingratitude  with  the  rebuke, 
"  /  served  you  !  " 

Yet  to  the  thoughts  of  both  one  memory  unbidded  rose, — the  memory  of 
the  summer  night  among  the  green  pine-woods  of  Baden,  when  a  helpless 
debtor,  pining  in  the  Duchy  prisons,  had  been  released  by  the  free,  loving  hand 
of  the  young  heir  of  Clarencieux. 

The  memory  came  over  Chandos  with  a  sudden  pang  that  stilled  the  pas- 
sion in  him,  and  filled  him  only  with  a  yearning,  wondering  anguish  of  regret. 

"You  hate  me  !  "  he  said,  slowly.     "  You!" 

It  was  the  only  utterance  of  reproach  that  passed  his  lips;  in  it  a  world  was 
spoken.  Though  every  other  living  thing  had  forsaken  him,  he  would  have 
sworn  that  this  man  would  have  been  faithful  as  the  dog  beside  him. 
The  rebuke,  slight  as  it  was,  struck  such  lingering  conscience  as  Trevenna 
retained,  and,  with  that  sense  of  momentary  shame,  stung  afresh  all  his  greedy 
triumph,  his  jeering  exultation,  his  untiring  mockery,  into  their  pitiless  exercise. 

"  Well,  if  I  do  ?  What  if  I  do  ?  You'll  call  me  a  hound  that  bites  the  hand 
that  fed  him.  Basta  !  monseigneur;  there  are  some  gifts  and  caresses  we  can't 
forgive  so  soon  as  we  could  forgive  a  kick  or  a  curse.  Human  nature  !  You 
loved  human  nature;  don't  you  love  it  now  ?  You  were  an  aristocrat,  and  I 
hated  aristocrats.  A  la  lanterne  with  every  one  of  'em.  Not  but  what  I'm 
sorry  for  you, — deuced  sorry  for  you.  I'll  try  to  get  you  a  place,  if  you'll  tell 
me  what  you'll  fill.  There  are  lots  of  things  they'll  give  you;  the  world  heartily 
pities  you,  you  know,  though  you  were  so  imprudent.  Besides,  if  anybody 
ever  hated  you,  my  poor  Chandos,  they  can  afford  to  forget  it  now.  You  can't 
sink  lower, — a  cleaned-out  gamester,  a  sotted  opium-drinker,  a  beggar  in  the 
street  !  " 

The  last  words  had  scarce  left  his  tongue  in  their  insolence  of  assumed  com- 
passion, in  their  vindictiveness  of  victorious  jibe,  when  Chandos  dashed  his  hand 
back  on  his  lips,  smiting  them  to  silence,  the  sole  answer  that  he  gave  his 
traitor.  His  face  had  changed  terribly  as  he  stood  and  heard;  the  instinct  of 
vengeance,  the  instinct  to  kill,  had  weakened  in  him;  for  the  moment  a  very 
hell  of  crime  was  in  him. 


CHANDOS.  283 

Trevenna's  laughing,  sanguine,  sun-tanned  features  turned  livid,  and  set 
fixed  as  in  a  vice;  the  blow  stirred  black  blood  in  him.  Lightly  as  a  leopard, 
and  as  savagely,  he  sprang  forward  on  the  man  he  hated.  For  one  instant,  in 
the  gray  gloom  of  the  old  lonely  court,  there  was  a  close-locked  struggle;  wrong 
and  hate  found  their  last  issue  in  the  sheer  animal  blood-thirst,  the  wild-brute, 
untamed  instincts  that  live  latent  in  all  men:  the  next,  the  unequal  contest 
ended.  Just  risen  from  his  sick-bed,  weak  with  long  fasting  and  past  illness, 
fever-worn,  and  already  blind  and  dizzy  with  the  single  exertion  of  the  crashing 
blow  that  he  had  dealt,  Chandos  reeled  over  under  the  fresh  strength  and  supple 
science  of  his  adversary,  and  swayed  back  heavily  on  the  grass-grown  stones  of 
the  desolate  court.  The  dog,  who  had  wandered  away  for  a  moment,  sprang 
back  with  a  lion's  bound  and  a  lion's  bay  as  his  master  fell,  rushed  at  Trevenna, 
buried  deep  fangs  in  his  clothes  and  flesh,  tore  him  with  mad  fury  off  Chandos, 
and  stood  guard  over  the  senseless  and  prostrate  form; — none  could  have  put 
a  hand  on  it  now  and  lived. 

Chandos  lay  there  as  he  had  lain  in  the  frozen  night  when  Guido  Lulli  had 
found  him,  utterly  still,  utterly  senseless.  His  face  was  turned  upward,  and 
the  moon  shone  on  it  with  a  white,  cold,  clear  light. 

His  foe  looked  at  him,  standing  much  as  in  the  dim  centuries  of  the  Moyen 
Age,  a  little  farther  under  the  shadow  of  the  tower  of  fair  Queen  Isabeau,  John 
of  Burgundy  had  once  looked  on  in  the  evil  night  at  the  stone-dead  body  of 
the  man  his  jealous,  covetous  lust  of  ambitious  envy  had  pursued  and  hunted 
down  to  the  death. 

He  had  his  victory,  so  sweet  to  him  that  he  never  felt  the  blood  pour  from 
his  shoulder,  where  the  retriever  had  seized  him  and  dragged  him  off. 

"  How  easy  to  kill  him  now  ! "  he  thought.  "  Bah  !  only  fools  break  laws. 
He  will  be  dead  soon  enough;  he  is  worse  than  dead  now;  he  can  suffer.  I 
wish  priests'  tales  were  true,  and  souls  could  live.  I  wish  his  father's  could 
have  power  to  see  him  as  he  lies, — see  the  wreck  of  him  and  the  ruin." 

There  was  a  hard,  ravenous,  gloating  longing  in  the  thought  that  stretched 
out  beyond  the  grave.  Not  content  with  its  work  on  earth,  he  looked  linger- 
ingly,  enjoyingly,  reluctant  to  pass  away;  but  it  was  rare  that  caution  with  him 
could  be  conquered  by  passion  or  desire,  and  he  knew  that  if  he  waited  a 
moment  more  the  dog  would  be  at  his  throat.  He  looked  once  more  with  a 
smile, — a  smile  of  full  success, — then  went  out  from  the  still  quadrangle,  leaving 
the  chill  moonlight  to  settle  in  a  broad  unbroken  space  where  Chandos  lay. 

That  black  shade  of  the  old  Rue  du  Temple  had  seen  many  murders  since 
the  night  when  Louis  d'Orleans  was  felled  down  there  as  he  rode  from  his  tryst 
with  Isabeau;  but  it  had  never  seen  fouler  murder  than  that  which  John  Tre- 
venna had  done,  though  he  had  held  back  his  hand  from  the  shedding  of  blood, 
from  the  breaking  of  law. 


284  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

CHAPTER  IV. 

"SIN    SHALL   NOT    HAVE   DOMINION    OVER   YOU." 

THE  square  court,  surrounded  with  its  four  blank  granite  moss-grown  walls, 
with  the  round  pointed  towers  looming  darkly  up  towards  the  sky,  was  wholly 
forsaken;  it  was  three  parts  in  ruin;  no  one  wandered  there  save  once  or  twice 
in  the  length  of  the  night,  when  the  beat  of  the  patrol's  step  sounded  through 
it,  waking  its  hollow  echoes.  It  was  as  still  as  when,  in  the  mediaeval  ages 
which  saw  its  stones  raised,  the  monks  of  its  brotherhood  had  flitted  ghostlike 
through  its  shadows;  the  pale  moon  only  looked  down  on  it,  her  spectral 
swathes  of  light  falling  across  the  leaden  gloom  of  the  damp,  lichen-covered 
pavement. 

How  long  he  lay  there  he  never  knew;  hurled  back,  but  swaying  over  from 
faintness  rather  than  from  injury,  he  had  fallen  in  a  dead  swoon,  his  head  strik- 
ing the  stones  with  a  dull  sound  that  echoed  through  the  silence.  The  fresh 
night-air — not  cold,  but  stirred  with  a  cool  westerly  wind — revived  him,  blow- 
ing over  his  forehead  and  eyes.  He  had  been  struck  down  heavily,  flung  in 
wrestling  by  a  merciless  hand;  but  there  was  little  sense  of  pain  on  him  as  he 
woke  to  the  knowledge  of  where  he  was  and  of  what  had  chanced;  his  bodily 
weakness  had  prevented  the  struggle  and  the  resistance  that  might  have  been 
fatal  to  him.  He  looked  up  at  the  moon  shining  so  far  above,  so  clear,  so 
bright,  so  tranquil;  life  seemed  to  have  faded  far  away  from  him,  and  to  have 
left  him  in  the  calmness  of  the  grave. 

He  rose  with  difficulty, — his  limbs  felt  powerless  and  broken, — and  he  stag- 
gered to  an  old  stone  bench  hard  by,  where  a  shattered  fountain-spout  slowly 
let  fall  a  stream  of  water  that  ebbed  away,  glistening  and  shallow,  in  the  star- 
light over  the  squares  of  the  pavement.  He  stooped  and  drank  eagerly  from 
it, — it  was  cold  and  pure, — then  sank  down  on  the  bench  where  many  weary 
and  heavy-laden  had  rested  before  him  in  the  pressure  of  the  centuries  gone, — 
in  the  violence  and  the  darkness  of  the  Middle  Age.  The  dog  gathered  itself 
close  against  him;  there  was  no  sound  of  the  world  without,  save  the  dull  roar 
of  the  distant  night-traffic  and  the  striking  of  church-clocks  upon  the  stillness: 
they  seemed  alone  in  the  heart  of  Paris, — God-forgotten,  man-forsaken,  in  the 
midst  of  the  peopled  world. 

In  the  stillness,  in  the  solemn  night,  with  the  serene  luminous  stars  gazing 
down  on  the  darkness  of  earth  around  him,  the  opium-mists,  the  brandy-drugged 
stupor,  the  delirium  of  exhaustion,  so  long  on  him,  passed  away;  the  thoughts 
of  his  mind  grew  clearer,  for  the  first  hour  since  the  day  of  his  ruin.  An  in- 
tense agony  was  on  him,— the  deep,  still,  tearless  agony  of  absolute  despair. 


CHAN  DOS.  285 

Yet  he  seemed  to  look  on  the  ruin  of  his  life  as  from  a  burial-place  from  which 
he  would  never  rise;  to  look  on  and  see  the  world  that  knew  him  no  more,  the 
love  that  had  abandoned,  the  friendship  that  had  betrayed  him,  as  one  dead, 
whose  sense  and  soul  returned  to  behold  all  that  he  had  cherished  revile  his 
memory  and  forget  his  loss.  He  had  no  feeling  of  present  existence;  all  he 
knew  was  that  in  the  world  of  men  he  had  no  place,  that  in  the  hearts  of  the 
vast  multitude  of  earth  he  had  no  remembrance,  that  he  had  perished  forever 
into  oblivion  when  the  stroke  had  smitten  him  down.  There,  in  the  stillness 
and  solemnity  of  night,  all  things  seemed  manifest  to  him;  apart  from  all  that 
he  had  once  known,  he  seemed  to  gaze  on  it  and  hear  its  pitiless  course  pass 
on,  as  a  man  lying  paralyzed  watches  and  listens,  having  no  more  part  or  share 
with  the  humanity  around  him  than  though  his  shroud  had  covered  him,  having 
no  hand  to  raise  if  his  cheek  be  smitten,  having  no  arm  to  lift  if  a  fool  mock 
his  misery,  having  no  lips  to  speak  if  a  lie  make  foul  mirth  of  his  name;  life- 
less, and  yet  among  the  living;  slain,  and  yet  alive  to  suffer. 

This  is  how  it  seemed  to  him  that  he  was  now.'  Breath  was  in  him, — that 
was  all  he  claimed  of  life;  in  every  other  thing  he  was  a  corpse;  felled  into  a 
grave,  whence  he  heard  the  jibing  laughter  of  those  who  jested  at  his  fall,  the 
restless  feet  of  those  who  passed  on  and  bade  him  be  forgot,  the  stones  flung 
down  on  him  by  the  hands  he  had  filled  with  gifts,  the  kisses  that  were  wel- 
comed by  the  cheek  his  kiss  had  warmed!  He  was  dead;  and  as  the  dead  he 
was  abandoned  and  forgotten. 

The  beauty  that  had  been  his  was  given  to  the  embrace  of  another;  the 
caress  that  had  been  on  his  lips  now  burned  as  softly  on  the  mouth  of  his 
spoiler;  the  roof  that  had  sheltered  him  from  his  birth  up  covered  the  sleep  and 
the  revel  of  strangers;  the  treasures  that  had  owned  him  master,  and  been 
gathered  by  him  from  north  to  south,  east  to  west,  were  scattered  broadcast 
over  the  earth;  the  world  that  he  had  led  knew  him  no  more,  and  never  named 
his  name;  the  women  who  had  smiled  in  his  eyes,  and  wound  their  wreathing 
arms  about  his  neck,  let  their  bright  hair  brush  the  bosoms  and  their  pulses 
thrill  to  the  whispers  of  newly-wooed  lovers;  the  men  whom  he  had  served 
followed  the  light  of  rising  suns,  and  gave  no  heed  to  the  eternal  night  that 
had  fallen  for  him:  all  that  he  had  loved,  all  that  he  had  owned,  all  that  he 
had  lost,  was  gone  to  make  the  joy  of  other  hearts:  his  fate  was  the  fate  of 
the  dead. 

He  was  forgotten  in  his  misery,  as  slaughtered  kings  are  forgotten  in  their 
sealed  sepulchres;  and  his  sceptre  was  not  even  broken,  in  pity  and  honor  for 
his  name,  above  his  grave,  but  passed  to  the  hands  of  those  who  dethroned  him, 
bringing  them  his  wealth,  his  crown,  his  treasuries,  his  lieges. 

Of  all  that  he  had  possessed,  of  all  he  had  reigned  over,  he  could  claim 
nothing, — not  even  a  heart  that  had  loved  him. 


286 


QUID  AS     WORKS. 


He  knew  the  width  and  depth  of  his  desolation  as  he  had  never  known  it. 
The  man  whom  he  had  fed  as  utterly  as  he  had  fed  the  dog  at  his  feet,  when 
he  had  been  starving  and  homeless  and  friendless,  the  man  whom  he  had  lifted 
from  a  foreign  prison  and  served  as  few  serve  their  own  flesh  and  blood,  the 
man  who  had  been  his  guest,  his  debtor,  his  suppliant  for  the  very  bread  and 
wine  of  his  table,  had  turned  against  him,  had  deserted  him,  had  cursed  him 
with  a  foe's  hate;  no  other  thing  could  have  told  him  how  utterly  he  had  sunk, 
how  utterly  had  the  world  forsaken  him. 

This  man  had  flung  his  scorn  at  him,  and  had  reviled  him  with  a  traitor's 
pitiless  mockery;  he  knew  it  was  the  last  depth  of  his  fall,  the  last  and  the  most 
infamous  witness  of  his  degradation, — as  the  Plantagenet  had  known  it,  when 
the  hound  that  had  been  reared  by  his  hand  went  from  him  to  fawn  on  the 
conqueror. 

In  the  state  to  which  his  mind  had  sunk,  in  the  world-wide  wreck  that  he 
saw  around  him,  the  strangeness  of  Trevenna's  hatred  struck  him  little;  he  did 
not  muse,  as  earlier  he  would  have  done,  on  what  could  be  the  secret  and  the 
spring  of  this  coarse,  merciless  passion  of  enmity  in  one  to  whom  his  gifts  had 
been  as  many  as  the  sands  of  the  sea,  and  whom  he  had  served  more  truly 
than  he  had  served  himself.  He  accepted  it  with  the  hopeless  apathy  that 
comes  with  despair:  all  left  him,  all  changed  with  his  changed  fate,  all  con- 
demned him  where  all  had  caressed  him;  it  seemed  but  of  a  piece  with  the 
rest  that  the  greatest  of  debtors  should  bring  him  as  payment  the  blackest 
of  ingratitude. 

He  had  loved  men  so  well,  he  had  trusted  them  so  blindly,  he  had  benefited 
them  so  loyally,  to  believe  in  their  baseness  had  been  so  impossible  to  his 
nature,  and  to  conceive  their  infidelity  so  distant  from  his  every  thought,  that, 
in  an  inevitable  reaction,  he  now,  beneath  the  scourge  of  their  mockery  and 
the  time-serving  of  their  desertion,  looked  for  no  faith  amidst  them,  wondered 
at  no  betrayal.  The  woman  who  had  nestled  to  his  bosom  with  languid  eyes 
of  eloquent  love  and  sweet  words  of  eternal  tenderness  had  forsworn  her  vows 
and  sold  herself  for  the  gold  of  another  lover;  he  could  feel  no  wonder  that 
the  man  who  had  been  bound  to  him  by  the  ties  of  self-interest  and  human 
gratitude  had  turned  traitor  too.  In  one  sense  only  did  the  full  bitterness 
and  shame  of  Trevenna's  taunts  strike  home  to  him:  they  showed  him  how 
low  he  must  have  sunk  that  this  man  could  dare  revile  him.  It  was  less  loath- 
ing of  his  foe  that  rose  in  him  than  it  was  loathing  of  himself;  it  was  less 
hatred  of  his  betrayer's  infamy  than  it  was  hatred  of  his  own  abasement.  He 
shuddered  as  he  thought  what  adversity  already  had  made  him;  he  dared  not 
think  what  a  brief  while  more  might  make  him. 

The  bodily  illness  which  had  held  him  prostrate  so  long*  had,  in  a  degree, 
done  him  good;  it  had  weakened  his  frame,  but  it  had  saved  his  reason;  it  had 


CHAN  DOS.  287 

rescued  him  from  madness,  as  a  heavy  fall  that  makes  the  blood  flow  from  the 
surcharged  brain  may  rescue  the  man  it  injures.  A  few  nights  more  of  the 
life  he  had  led,  of  the  heavy  drugs,  the  burning  drinks,  the  endless  gambling, 
the  hell  of  vice,  the  delirium  in  which  he  sought  forgetfulness,  and  he  would 
have  been  dead  at  the  Morgue  or  raving  in  a  madhouse.  The  lengthened 
sleep  that  had  preceded  the  congestion  of  the  lungs  which  cold  and  lack  of  food 
produced,  and  the  danger  in  which  he  had  lingered  through  so  many  days,  had 
cooled  and  had  saved  him,  had  stilled  the  fever  in  his  blood,  and  freed  his 
reason  from  the  half-drunk  phantoms  in  which  it  had  lost  itself  and  had  been 
broken  and  blinded  for  so  long.  He  rose  from  his  wretched  bed  but  the 
shadow  of  what  he  had  once  been;  but  the  look  was  gone  from  his  eyes  which 
had  made  the  fille  de  joie  in  the  gaming-den  thrust  the  opium  to  him  and  bid 
him  not  live  to  be  what  he  must  be. 

Her  words' came  back  to  him  now  where  he  sat,  the  serene,  cool  night, 
through  which  the  stars  alone  looked,  stilling  the  riot  of  his  mind  with  the 
sense  of  their  own  eternal  calm.  "  What  he  must  be  !  "  He  knew  well  enough 
what  that  was. 

A  little  while  more  of  such  a  life  as  he  had  led  since  the  day  of  his  ruin,  of 
those  hideous  orgies,  of  that  drunken  stupor,  of  that  horrible  and  ghastly  union 
of  poverty  and  intoxication,  of  despair  and  vice,  and  the  lowest  creature  that 
crawled  through  the  midnight  snows  to  devour  the  stray  relics  of  offal  that  the 
curs  had  left  would  be  as  high  as  he;  a  little  more,  and  every  better  thing 
would  be  crushed  out  in  him,  and  the  vilest  den  would  spurn  him  from  it  to 
die  in  the  river-slime  like  a  choked  dog. 

"  What  he  must  be  !  " 

His  head  sank  down  on  his  hands  as  the  words  drifted  slowly  through  his 
mind;  what  could  he  choose  but  be  ? 

Had  he  embraced  dishonor  and  accepted  the  rescue  that  a  lie  would  have 
lent  him,  this  misery  in  its  greatest  share  had  never  been  upon  him.  He  would 
have  come  hither  with  riches  about  him,  and  the  loveliness  he  had  worshipped 
would  have  been  beyond  the  touch  of  any  rival's  hand.  Choosing  to  cleave  to 
the  old  creeds  of  his  race,  and  passing,  without  a  backward  glance  into  the 
paths  of  honor  and  of  justice,  it  was  thus  with  him  now.  Verily,  virtue  must  be 
her  own  reward,  as  in  the  Socratic  creed ;  for  she  will  bring  no  other  dower 
than  peace  of  conscience  in  her  gift  to  whosoever  weds  her.  "  I  have  loved 
justice  and  fled  from  iniquity;  wherefore  here  I  die  in  exile,"  said  Hildebrand 
upon  his  death-bed.  They  will  be  the  closing  words  of  most  lives  that  have 
followed  truth. 

What  could  he  be  ?  What  could  the  future,  if  he  lived  for  one,  hold  for 
him  ?  Misery,  privation,  abandonment,  solitude,  the  ceaseless  thirst  of  vain 
desires,  the  unending  void  of  eternal  losses,  the  haunting  knowledge  of  all  he 


288  OU IDA'S     WORKS. 

might  have  been.  These  were  what  faced  him;  these  were  what  alone  awaited 
him.  If  he  lived  on,  he  could  but  look  for  these,  and  for  worse  yet, — he  to 
whose  beauty-steeped  senses  every  passing  pain  had  been  unknown,  every  sight 
of  deformity  been  veiled  !  He  thought  of  the  old  sacred  legend  of  Herodotus. 

how,  when  the  Argive  mother  prayed  at  the  temple  of  Juno  in  Argos  for  the 

highest  blessing  that  mortals  can  attain  to  be  bestowed  on  Cleobis  and  Bito, 
her  prayer  was  granted:  her  sons  fell  asleep  to  awake  no  more.  He  knew  now 
its  terrible  truth,  its  eternal  meaning, — he  who  had  thought  ten  thousand  times 
the  span  of  his  rich  and  shadowless  life  would  be  too  brief  a  space  to  spend 
on  earth  !  Death; — it  would  not  come  to  him;  and  he  longed  for  it  as  a  man 
in  a  desert  land,  shipwrecked  amidst  the  burning  wealth  of  color  and  the  cruel 
wantonness  of  beauty  round  him,  longs  for  water  as  he  perishes  of  thirst. 

Still  yet,  even  yet,  a  pulse  of  life  stirred  that  he  could  not  with  his  own  hand 
slay;  it  was  the  power  of  the  genius  in  him.  Dulled,  drugged,  stifled,  paralyzed, 
beneath  the  weight  of  infinite  wretchedness,  the  frozen  apathy  of  despair,  the 
fever  of  vice,  the  pangs  of  famine,  it  was  not  dead,  and  the  taunts  of  his  foe  had 
stung  the  pride  sleeping  with  it  into  fresh  existence;  with  the  outrage  of  John 
Trevenna  some  faint  throb  of  the  thoughts  and  the  instints  of  old  returned. 
The  insult  of  his  debtor  and  his  traitor  had  been  the  crowning  agony  of  his 
passion;  but  it  brought  back  life  in  him,  as  the  plunge  of  the  surgeon's  steel 
will  bring  it  back  and  cut  the  cords  of  death  by  the  very  force  and  suddenness 
of  its  stab. 

A  gentler  hand  could  not  have  saved  him  or  arrested  him;  the  unpitying  and 
brutal  thrusts  of  his  adversary  roused  him  ere  it  was  yet  too  late. 

There,  in  the  silence,  in  the  solitude,  with  the  dark  walls  brooding  above 
him,  and  the  cold  winter's  moon  looking  down,  something  of  the  grandeur  of 
resistance,  something  of  the  calm  endurance,  came  on  him.  Should  this  man 
see  him  die  in  a  bagnio?  point  to  him  as  one  so  womanish  weak  that  the  first 
stroke  of  calamity  had  slain  him?  mock  him  as  a  madman,  who,  having  squan- 
dered his  birthright,  flung  his  manhood  and  his  mind  and  his  soul  away 
with  it? 

Before  his  memory  rose  that  day  in  his  childhood  when  he  had  told  his 
father  what  his  future  should  be  made;  he  had  thought  of  it  ere  now,- — never  as 
now.  He  saw  the  purple  mists  of  the  distance,  the  golden  brown  of  the  autumn- 
woods  in  the  warmth  of  the  sunset,  the  far-stretching  sea  growing  dim  in  the 
dying  light,  while  away  to  the  westward  the  red  flush  of  the  after-glow  lin- 
gered; the  very  scent  that  uprose  from  the  dew-laden  earth,  the  very  breath  of 
the  wind  stirring  the  coils  of  the  leaves,  came  back  to  him;  he  saw  his  father's 
eyes  look  down  on  him  with  a  proud  tenderness,  a  gentle  smile,  seeing  in  him 
the  sole  successor  of  the  finest  ambitions  of  a  stainless  and  world-famous  life, 
the  reaper  of  his  ripe  triumphs,  the  heir  of  his  honor  and  his  heritage.  "  I  will 


CHANDOS.  289 

live  so  that  the  nation  shall  only  need  to  write  '  Chandos  '  on  my  grave,  and 
the  name  will  tell  its  own  tale!  "  The  words,  in  all  their  childlike  visionary 
impulse,  all  their  pure  impossible  ambition,  all  their  high  and  chivalrous  desire, 
came  back  upon  his  mind  with  a  deadly  anguish.  These  had  been  the  dreams 
of  his  youth;  and  he  had  kept  true  to  them  thus! 

He  had  been  gifted  with  such  a  genius  as  was  in  Alcibiades  when  he  listened 
in  love  to  the  golden  words  of  his  master,  or  heard  the  shouts  of  the  people 
give  him  to  triumph  as  his  chariot-wheels  crushed  the  wild  thyme  they  threw. 
Should  he  perish,  like  Alcibiades,  in  the  arms  of  a  courtesan,  lost  to  all  that 
earlier  and  holier  time  ?  A  greater  inheritance  than  that  which  he  had  squan- 
dered had  been  given  him  in  his  intellect;  a  greater  suicide  than  that  of  the 
body  would  be  the  suicide  that  now  was  destroying  the  mind  with  which  nature 
had  dowered  him. 

Freedom  was  left  him,  and  intellect, — the  two  first  treasures  of  life;  whilst 
the  powers  of  his  brain  were  still  his,  and  his  liberty,  the  poet  would  have 
said, — 

Then  first  of  the  mighty,  thank  God  that  thou  art. 

There  are  liberties  sweeter  than  love;  there  are  goals  higher  than  happiness. 

Some  memory  of  them  stirred  in  him  there,  with  the  noiseless  flow  of  the 
lingering  water  at  his  feet,  and  above  the  quiet  of  the  stars;  the  thoughts  of  his 
youth  came  back  to  him, -and  his  heart  ached  with  their  longing. 

Out  of  the  salt  depths  of  their  calamity  men  had  gathered  the  heroisms  of 
their  future;  out  of  the  desert  of  their  exile  they  had  learned  the  power  to  re- 
turn as  conquerors.  The  greater  things  within  him  awakened  from  their 
lethargy;  the  innate  strength  so  long  untried,  so  long  lulled  to  dreamy  indo- 
lence and  rest,  uncoiled  from  its  prostration;  the  force  that  would  resist  and,  it 
might  be,  survive,  slowly  came  upon  him,  with  the  taunts  of  his  foe.  It  was 
possible  that  there  was  that  still  in  him  which  might  be  grander  and  truer  to 
the  ambitions  of  his  imaginative  childhood  under  adversity  than  in  the  volupt- 
uous sweetness  of  his  rich  and  careless  life.  It  was  possible,  if — if  he  could 
once  meet  the  fate  he  shuddered  from,  once  look  at  the  bitterness  of  the  life 
that  waited  for  him,  and  enter  on  its  desolate  and  arid  waste  without  going 
back  to  the  closed  gates  of  his  forfeited  paradise  to  stretch  his  limbs  within 
their  shadow  once  more  ere  he  died. 

There  is  more  courage  needed  oftentimes  to  accept  the  onward  flow  of  exist- 
ence, bitter  as  the  waters  of  Marah,  black  and  narrow  as  the  channel  of  Jordan, 
than  there  is  ever  needed  to  bow  down  the  neck  to  the  sweep  of  the  death- 
angel's  sword. 

He  rose  slowly  and  looked  upward ;  the  hours  had  fled,  the  city  was  sleeping, 
the  busy  feet  of  the  crowds  were  silent,  and  the  hush  of  an  intense  rest  was 

VOL.  III.— 10 


290  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

on  the  world  around  him.  Beneath  it  vice  might  yet  riot  and  misery  still 
moan;  but  it  was  towards  dawn,  and  the  noiseless  peace  was  unbroken;  the 
trembling  rays  of  moonlight  shivered  on  the  water's  surface,  and  far  above, 
shining  from  the  deep,  blue-black,  fathomless  vault,  the  lustre  of  the  stars 
burned  through  the  brilliancy  of  winter  air, — a  myriad  worlds  uncounted  and 
unknown.  Men  had  abandoned  and  hope  forsaken  him;  on  the  earth  he 
had  no  place,  and  in  human  love  no  memory;  but  there,  under  their  solemn 
light,  their  own  tranquillity  encompassed  him;  solitude  lost  its  desolation 
in  the  eternity  and  the  immensity  of  that  limitless  space,  of  that  unknown 
deity.  A  lifetime  suffered  here, — what  was  it?  the  span  of  a  single  day  in 
those  bright  worlds  beyond  the  sun.  In  face  of  that  changeless  and  endless 
calm,  the  burden  of  so  brief  a  labor  might  well  be  borne;  sufficient  if  through 
travail  the  faintest  shadow  of  likeness  unto  truth  were  gained.  To  many  in 
their  suffering  that  unalterable  and  eternal  serenity  of  nature  is  pitiless,  is  unen- 
durable; they  find  no  mercy  in  it;  no  shelter,  and  no  aid;  to  him  it  was  divine 
as  consolation,  divine  with  the  majesty  of  God.  Above  the  fret  and  vice  and 
wretchedness  of  earth  it  brooded  so  still,  so  cold,  it  stretched  so  boundless  and 
so  deathless  out  into  the  infinite  realms  of  space! — from  it  there  seemed  to 
breathe  the  promise  of  a  future  when  men  should  live  "  sceptreless,  free,  uncir- 
cumscribed;"  from  it  there  seemed  to  steal  the  bidding,  "  Let  the  world  abandon 
you,  but  to  yourself  be  true." 

His  foe  too  early  had  triumphed. 

Though  he  had  lost  all,  there  were  with  him  still  the  dreams  of  his  youth; 
the  world  forsook  him,  and  the  width  of  the  earth  stretched  before  him, — a 
desert  laid  waste,  barren  and  pitiless  as  stone,  through  which  he  must  pass, 
wearily  and  in  solitude,  to  live  and  to  die  alone;  yet  he  arose  with  his  dead 
strength  revived,  with  the  calm  of  a  passionless  endurance  fallen  on  him. 

He  accepted  the  desolation  of  his  life,  for  the  sake  of  all  beyond  life, 
greater  than  life  which  looked  down  on  him  from  the  silence  of  the  night. 


CHANDOS.  291 


BOOK    THE     FIFTH. 


Seggundo  in  piuma, 
In  fama  non'si  vien.  DANTE. 

Comme  il  6tait  reveur  au  matin  de  son  age, 
Comme  il  etait  penseurau  terme  du  voyage  ! 

HUGO. 

Lucky  men  are  favorites  of  Heaven. 
All  own  the  chief,  when  Fortune  owns  the  cause. 

DRYDEN. 


CHAPTER   I. 

IN    EXILE. 

IT  was  sunset  in  Venice, — that  supreme  moment  when  the  magical  flush  of 
light  transfigures  all  the  Southern  world,  and  wanderers  whose  eyes  have  long 
ached  with  the  grayness  and  the  glare  of  northward  cities  gaze  and  think  them- 
selves in  heaven.  The  still  waters  of  the  lagunes,  the  marbles  and  the  porphyry 
and  the  jasper  of  mighty  palaces,  the  soft  gray  of  the  ruins  all  covered  with 
clinging  green  and  the  glowing  blossoms  of  creepers,  the  hidden  antique  nooks 
where  some  woman's  head  leaned  out  of  an  arched  casement,  like  a  dream  of 
the  Dandolo  time,  when  the  Adriatic  swarmed  with  the  returning  galleys  laden 
with  Byzantine  spoil,  the  dim,  mystic,  majestic  walls  that  towered  above  the 
gliding  surface  of  the  eternal  water,  once  alive  with  flowers,  and  music,  and  the 
gleam  of  golden  tresses,  and  the  laughter  of  careless  revellers  in  the  Venice  of 
Goldoni,  in  the  Venice  of  the  Past.  Everywhere  the  sunset  glowed  with  the 
marvel  of  its  colors,  with  the  wonder  of  its  warmth. 

Then  a  moment,  and  it  was  gone.  Night  fell  with  the  hushed,  shadowy 
stillness  that  belongs  to  Venice  alone;  and  in  place  of  the  riot  and  luxuriance 
of  color  there  was  the  tremulous  darkness  of  the  young  night,  with  the  beat  of 
an  oar  on  the  water,  the  scent  of  unclosing  carnation-buds,  the  white  gleam  of 
moonlight,  and  the  odor  of  lilies-of-the-valley  blossoming  in  the  dark  archway 
of  some  mosaic-lined  window. 

One  massive  and  ancient  house  towered  up  amidst  many  another  palace, — 


292  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

a  majestic,  melancholy  place,  with  shafts  of  black  marble  and  columns  of  por- 
phyry, and  deep  sea-piles  that  the  canal  bathed  into  a  hundred  umber  tints. 
Long  ago  some  of  the  greatest  of  the  oligarchy  had  held  there  their  highest 
state;  now  it  was  scarcely  habited,  left  to  decay,  and  lost  in  gloom, — a  sep- 
ulchre of  dead  glories,  while  the  insolence  of  foreign  mirth  and  the  shame  of 
foreign  arms  outraged  the  captive  and  widowed  beauty  of  the  Adriatic  spouse. 
It  was  lonely  and  unspeakably  desolate;  with  the  gliding  sheet  of  the  still 
water  beneath  its  walls,  and  the  long  sombre  lines  of  forsaken  palaces  stretch- 
ing beyond  it  on  either  side,  and  facing  it  in  the  splendor  of  the  early  moon. 
Yet  it  was  infinitely  impressive,  infinitely  grand,  standing  there  with  its  mediae- 
val sculptures  touched  with  rays  of  starlight,  and  its  costly  marbles  washed  by 
the  ebbing  of  the  tide. 

At  one  of  its  lofty,  narrow  casements  a  man  leaned  out  into  the  fragrant 
spring-tide  air;  he  had  risen  from  close  studies  in  the  chamber  within — vast  in 
space  as  a  king's  throne-room,  barren  in  garniture  as  a  contadina's  hut — to 
watch  the  fading  of  the  sun,  the  sudden  loss  of  all  the  wealth  of  color  in  the 
gray  hues  of  evening;  and  he  lingered  still,  now  that  the  night  had  wholly 
fallen.  In  that  stillness,  in  that  soft  lapping  of  the  water,  in  that  glisten  in  the 
distance  of  the  silvery  lagune,  in  that  scarcely-stirring  wind  filled  with  the 
breath  of  opening  blossoms,  there  was  a  lulling  charm, — there  was  the  echo  of 
a  long-lost  youth. 

His  face  was  of  a  great  beauty;  though  many  yea'rs  had  passed  over  it, 
time  could  touch  and  could  dim  it  but  little;  but  in  the  eyes  there  was 
the  exile's  weariness  and  the  deep  thought  of  the  scholar;  on  the  mouth  there 
was  that  certain  look  which  comes  of  bitter  pain  borne,  of  strong  victories 
wrung  from  calumny  and  poverty  and  hard  defiance, — such  a  look  as  Dante 
might  have  worn,  yet  less  harsh,  though  not  less  mournful,  than  the  Floren- 
tine's. He  looked  down  on  the  deep  and  sleeping  shadows,  on  the  gliding 
darkness  of  the  canal  below;  the  sweetness  of  the  young  night,  the  Adriatic 
fragrance  of  the  sea-wafted  air,  brought  him  a  thousand  memories  across  the 
desert  of  long  years. 

"Through  his  mind  floated  such  thoughts  as  wearied  Cleon: — 

Indeed,  to  know  is  something,  and  to  prove 
How  all  this  beauty  might  be  enjoy'd  is  more; 
But,  knowing  naught,  to  enjoy  is  something  too. 
Yon  rower  with  the  molded  muscles  there, 
Lowering  the  sail,  is  nearer  it  than  I. 

There  had  been  a  time  when  every  breath  of  life  had  been  for  him  enjoy- 
ment, rich  as  the  god's  life  of  Dionysus.  In  moments  such  as  these  he  longed 
for  that  dead  time,  as  the  poet  Ovid,  in  the  ice  and  winter  storms  and  snow- 


CHANDOS.  293 

bound  forests  of  his  Danubian  exile,  longed  for  the  golden  sunlight,  for  the 
purple  pomp,  for  the  glad  idolatry  of  the  vine-crowned  land  that  knew  his  place 
no  more. 

"  Am  I  any  nearer  the  ambitions  of  my  youth  than  I  was  twenty  years  ago  ? 
— am  I  as  near  ? "  he  thought.  In  the  voluptuous  hush  and  fragrance  of  the 
Venetian  night  his  years  seemed  cold  and  fruitless  and  heavy-laden. 

Where  he  stood,  in  the  dark  arch  of  the  window,  the  measured  music  of  oars 
beat  the  water;  beneath  the  walls  several  gondolas  glided;  on  the  silence  rose, 
chaunted  by  the  mellow  voices  of  young  Venetians,  a  hymn  of  liberty.  They 
might  pay  to  their  tyrants  wellnigh  with  life  for  its  singing;  yet  that  knowledge 
gave  no  tremor  to  the  cadence  that  rang  so  bold  and  so  clear  in  the  stillness. 
Passionate,  yet  unspeakably  sad,  rich  as  the  world  of  color  that  had  just  passed 
from  the  world,  but  melancholy  as  the  breathless  stillness  of  the  calm  lagunes, 
the  ode  of  freedom  was  sung  by  the  lips  of  those  who  knew  themselves  to  be 
slaves, — young,  fresh  voices,  the  voices  of  youth  and  of  vivid  ambition,  yet 
touched  to  a  deeper  meaning  and  vibrating  with  a  hopeless  desire;  for  they 
were  the  voices  also  of  forbidden  hope,  and  of  thoughts  held  in  bond  and  en- 
chained. It  was  the  "  lo  triumphe  "  of  liberty, — 

Thou  huntress  swifter  than  the  Moon  !  thou  terror 
Of  the  world's  wolves  !  thou  bearer  of  the  quiver, 
Whose  sun-like  shafts  pierce  tempest-tossed  error 
As  light  may  pierce  the  clouds; 

but  also  it  was  the  lament  of  Leopardi, — the  lament  most  weary,  most  utterly 
desolate,  of  all  upon  earth, — the  lament  of  men  whose  hearts  ache  for  lofty 
aims  and  noble  fields,  and  whose  lives  are  denied  all  purpose  and  all  effort, — 
of  men  whose  country  is  in  thraldom. 

The  chaunt  ceased;  all  the  many  and  melodious  tones  which  had  risen  on 
the  night  and  swelled  louder  and  sweeter  down  the  canal,  till  the  boatmen  far 
off  heard  the  echo  and  gave  it  back,  were  suddenly  silenced,  as  a  choir  of  song- 
birds will  cease  at  noontide.  In  the  prow  of  the  foremost  vessel  a  young 
Venetian  rose,  the  gleam  of  his  auburn  hair  and  the  kindling  light  on  his  face 
like  some  old  painter's  Gabriel  or  Michael  yonder  in  the  gloom  of  the  ancient 
churches.  He  lifted  his  eyes  to  the  arch  of  the  casement  where  he  stood  up  in 
the  white,  tremulous  lustre  of  the  moon. 

"You  have  striven  for  the  freedom  of  thought  and  for  the  liberty  of  judg- 
ment," he  said,  simply.  "  Venice,  who  has  lost  them  both,  loves  you  for  that 
which  you  have  loved,  and  gives  you  thus  the  only  homage  she  now  dares." 

Without  pause,  without  a  word  more,  the  rowers  bent  above  their  oars,  the 
gondolas  floated  down  the  dark  surface,  the  young  impassioned  faces  of  the 
singers  turned  backward  with  a-  fond  and  reverent  farewell  as  their  vessels 


294  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

swept  into  the  shadows,  so  deep,  so  rayless,  underneath  the  walls  of  the  aban- 
doned palaces:  it  was  all  they  had  to  give,  that  song  of  freedom  in  a  fettered 
land. 

He  to  whom  they  gave  it  thought  it  more  than  the  gift  of  crowns  laid  at  his 
feet.  It  touched  him  strangely  with  its  suddenness,  with  its  meaning, — this 
gratitude  rendered  to  him  by  the  young,  pure,  patriot- voices  of  those  who  might 
pay  the  cost  of  that  night's  utterance  with  the  pain  of  captive's  bondage  or  of 
exile's  banishment.  It  was  more  worth  to  him  than  any  diadem  with  which  the 
world  could  have  anointed  him, — this  recognition  of  what  he  sought,  this  knowl- 
edge of  why  he  labored. 

It  came  to  him  as  answer  and  rebuke  to  the  thoughts  which  had  been  with 
him  as  that  unbidden  music  rose  upon  the  night.  To  enjoy  was  much;  but  to 
seek  truth  and  labor  for  freedom  might  be  more. 

"  One  fetter  of  tradition  loosened,  one  web  of  superstition  broken,  one  ray 
of  light  let  in  on  darkness,  one  principle  of  liberty  secured,  are  worth  the  living 
for,"  he  mused.  "Fame! — it  is  the  flower  of  a  day,  that  dies  when  the  next 
sun  rises.  But  to  do  something,  however  little,  to  free  men  from  their  chains, 
to  aid  something,  however  faintly,  the  rights  of  reason  and  of  truth,  to  be  un- 
vanquished  through  all  and  against  all,  these  may  bring  one  nearer  the  pure 
ambitions  of  youth.  Happiness  dies  as  age  comes  to  us;  it  sets  forever,  with 
the  suns  of  early  years  :  yet  perhaps  we  may  keep  a  higher  thing  beside  which 
it  holds  but  a  brief  royalty,  if  to  ourselves  we  can  rest  true,  if  for  the  liberty  of 
the  world  we  can  do  anything." 

For  he  was  one  of  those  who  to  the  cause  of  freedom  and  of  truth  bring  the 
wealth  of  their  intellect  and  the  years  of  their  life,  and  receive  but  little  requital 
save  a  sullen  reverence  wrung  from  an  unwilling  world,  and  the  railing  bitter- 
ness of  the  crowds  who  abhor  light  and  hug  error  and  tradition  close.  His 
words  stirred  with  shame  the  hearts  of  nations  steeped  in  lust  and  lethargy  and 
the  greed  of  gold ;  and  they  awoke  to  hoot  and  hiss  the  one  who  dared  to  rouse 
them  from  their  torpor  or  arrest  them  in  their  money-changing.  His  thoughts 
sank  down  into  the  unworn  hearts  of  youth,  and  they  shook  themselves  free 
from  the  ashes  of  superstition  and  the  chains  of  creeds;  and  the  priests  of 
superstition  cursed  him.  His  utterance  probed  the  surface  of  the  world,  and, 
piercing  its  panoply  of  wordy  falsehood,  brought  to  it  the  clear  keen  light  of 
skepticism  and  truth;  and  the  world  was  weary  of  him,  it  slept  so  much  more 
soundly  beneath  the  veil  and  in  the  darkness.  He  loved  men  with  a  pity  and  a 
tolerance  no  trial  could  exhaust;  he  would  have  led  them,  if  he  could,  to  the 
search  and  the  knowledge  of  other  things  than  their  gold-thirst  and  their  para- 
dise of  lies;  and  they  turned  back  to  their  treasuries  of  money,  to  their 
granaries  of  hypocrisies,  and  would  have  none  of  him.  Their  ears  were  wilfully 
deaf,  their  eyes  were  wilfully  blind,  their  feet  loved  the  trodden  paths,  their 


CHANDOS.  295 

hands  were  busy  grasping  their  neighbor's  goods;  they  wondered  at  and  they 
reviled  him;  they  would  not  follow  to  the  mountain-air  he  bade  them  breathe; 
they  stayed  in  the  mud,  seeking  a  coin.  He  was  alone.  The  world  gave  him  fame 
grudgingly,  reluctantly,  because  it  could  not  withhold  it  longer;  but  it  left  him 
alone  and  condemned  because  he  saw  no  holiness  in  the  shrine  of  gold  and 
no  right  divine  in  the  tyranny  of  tradition. 

He  was  alone;  eagles  that  love  the  high  light-penetrated  air,  that  has  no 
mist  and  clog  of  earth-born  dust,  must  ever  dwell  in  solitude.  Yet  now  and 
then  there  came  to  him,  as  there  had  come  from  the  voices  of  fettered  men  to- 
night, an  echo  of  his  owr.  thoughts,  a  recognition  of  his  own  labors,  and  these 
sufficed  to  him. 

Where  he  leaned  now,  in  the  fragrant  Venetian  night,  with  the  Southern 
song  of  liberty  still  seeming  to  linger  above  the  waters,  and  the  moonlight  full 
upon  the  decaying  grandeur  of  the  forsaken  sea-palaces,  he  thought  of  the 
words  of  Dante,  written  in  exile,  as  he  lived  in  exile  now. 

They  who  labor  justly  for  the  sheer  sake  of  truth  find  no  present  reward: 
will  they  hereafter  find  it  ?  A  weary  question; — one  to  which  men  never  yet 
have  gained  an  answer. 


CHAPTER  II. 

IN    TRIUMPH. 

THE  stars  as  they  shone  on  Venice,  shone  likewise  farther  northward  on 
one  of  the  mighty,  labyrinthine,  ink-black  cities  of  labor.  The  heavy  pall  of 
smoke  loomed  over  the  forests  of  roofs,  of  chimneys,  of  factories,  of  churches; 
the  bells  of  the  latter  were  chiming  with  incessant,  joyous,  pealing  clangor, 
bells  that  rung  a  chime  called  of  God  every  seventh  day  in  the  midst  of  the 
worship  of  Mammon,  bells  put  up  in  many  a  steeple,  iron  offerings  to  Deity  by 
iron  hands  that  wrung  the  last  bitter  drop  out  of  poverty,  and  clammed  the 
last  starveling  of  labor,  and  bought  redemption  cheaply  by  a  sop  to  a  parish 
priest. 

The  bells  were  rhyming  wildly,  with  no  pretence,  happily,  that  it  was  in  the 
honor  of  Godhead  now, — tossing  upward  through  the  weight  of  murky  air  wave 
on  wave  of  changing  sound,  of  riotous  triumph,  of  passionate,  mirthful,  ran- 
dom, uncouth  music  like  the  harmony  of  Thor's  great  hammers.  Under  the 
sea  of  iron-echoing  noise  vast  crowds  pressed  tumultuous,  in  a  grim  triumph 
like  that  of  the  metal  melodies.  Their  hard,  keen,  indomitable  faces  were 
sharp-set  as  the  knives  they  made,  were  massive  as  the  iron  they  worked;  and 
on  them  was  the  flush  and  the  pride  of  victory.  It  was  on  the  night  of  a  great 


296  OUJDA'S     WORKS. 

election,  an  election  that  had  followed  in  Lenten  time  on  a  sudden  and  un- 
looked-for dissolution, — an  appeal  to  the  country  as  agitating  as  it  had  been 
unforeseen;  and  they  had  brought  to  the  fore  their  champion,  their  idol,  the 
most  famous  of  all  his  party.  In  this  vast  city  of  Darshampton  there  was  but 
one  name  and  but  one  sovereignty, — his.  The  people  had  crowned  him;  and 
who  should  dare  to  discrown  ? 

In  one  of  the  chambers  of  a  magnificent  hotel,  he  stood  in  the  dusky  red 
glow  of  the  sunset  that  burned  through  the  smoke-laden  atmosphere  and  fell 
about  his  feet  as  though  it  to  were  eager  to  seek  him  out  and  smile  on  him, — 
this  man,  omnipotent  in  all  he  undertook.  A  crowd  of  friends  were  about  him, 
breathless  in  congratulation  on  what  was  but  a  repeated  triumph,  waiting  in 
delighted  warmth  of  welcome  on  one  in  whom  they  saw  a  deity  more  potent 
than  all  the  gods  of  Semitic  or  Achaean  creeds, — the  deity  of  a  supreme  Success. 
Throngs  had  been  about  him  from  earliest  days, — throngs  of  friends,  of  flatter- 
ers, of  men  who  believed  in  him  honestly  and  would  have  fought  for  him  to  the 
death  had  need  been, — of  men  who  believed  in  nothing  except  the  divinity  of 
success,  and  followed  that  idolatrously  in  him  because  they  saw  his  acumen 
never  fail,  his  fortune  never  change.  The  city  would  give  him  its  banquet  to- 
night; his  party  brought  him  devoted  gratitude  and  ecstatic  pride,  the  country 
bestowed  upon  him  scarce  less  admiration;  young  men  looked  to  him  as  their 
leader,  elder  looked  to  him  to  reap  the  harvest  of  the  seed  they  had  sown  in  the 
future;  the  aristocracy  dreaded,  the  plutocracy  bribed,  the  multitude  adored 
him.  He  was  a  great  man  already;  later  on  he  would  be  a  greater, — popular 
beyond  all  conception,  triumphant  in  whatever  he  essayed. 

The  shouts  and  the  cheers  of  the  populace  swelled  louder  and  louder;  the 
clamor  was  hoarse,  Titanic,  almost  terrible  in  its  imperative  power,  as  the  voice 
of  the  People  always  is  when  once  it  thunders  through  the  land, — imperative 
for  murder  as  imperative  for  bread,  mighty  and  resistless  alike  in  both.  Here 
it  rose  with  one  accord,  with  one  word, — his  own  name.  They  had  brought  him 
in, — those  men  with  their  horny,  supple  hands,  and  their  blackened,  resolute 
brows,  and  their  limbs  like  the  limbs  of  the  old  Bersaerkers,  those  men  of  the 
Black  Country,  who  grasped  so  doggedly  at  truths  sharp  as  steel,  yet  grasped 
at  but  half-truths,  and,  so  blinded,  reached  but  hatred  of  an  Order  when  they 
thought  they  grasped  at  liberty  for  Mankind.  The  shouts  swelled  ouder  and 
louder,  more  and  more  full  of  peremptory  demand;  they  had  brought  him 
through,  or  thought  they  -had,  and  clamored  for  their  idol. 

He  humored  them  ever,  as  a  lion-tamer  humors  his  cubs,  that  he  may  cut 
the  claws  and  grind  smooth  the  teeth  and  make  the  brave  beast  lie  down 
passive  as  a  spaniel  at  his  beck,  and  turn  to  profit  the  world's  terror  when  he 
shows  how  docilely  he  guides  the  wild,  tawny  desert-king  that  at  his  bidding 
would  leap  forth  and  tear  and  slay. 


CHANDOS.  297 

He  went  out  on  the  balcony,  and  the  din  of  the  acclamations  rolled  up  to 
the  red  evening  skies  like  thunder.  In  the  large  square  before  the  building, 
and  in  the  transverse  streets  that  crossed  and  met,  the  dense  multitudes  were 
gathered,  wave  on  wave  of  human  life,  surging  in  in  swift  succession,  and 
stretching  far  andjjwide  away  beyond  the  sight,  like  a  stormy  and  restless  sea. 
Their  dark  faces,  swarthy  and  begrimed,  shrewd  and  stern,  were  turned  upward 
to  the  balcony  with  an  eager  pride  and  pleasure,  while  from  the  brawny  chests 
of  the  iron-workers  that  tremendous  welcome  rang.  The  sun  shone  more  bur- 
nished red  in  the  crimson,  heavy  west,  and,  slanting  in  broad,  glowing,  dusky 
streams  of  light  athwart  the  misty  gloom,  fell  on  that  ocean  of  upraised  faces, 
and  across  the  eyes  of  the  man  they  honored, — eyes  so  keen,  so  mirthful,  so 
unerring,  so  full  of  sagacious  life,  of  triumphant  victory. 

"  He  is  the  man  for  the  Future,"  said  one  stalwart  worker,  with  the  breath 
of  the  furnace-blasts  and  the  blackness  of  the  iron-foundry  upon  him,  yet  who 
read  Bentham,  and  Fourier  and  Mill. 

One,  less  book-wise  and  more  world-wise,  pierced  nearer  to  the  secret  of 
success,  to  the  root  of  popularity,  as  he  answered, — 

"  He's  more:  he's  the  man  for  the  Present." 

"  And  the  man  for  the  People  !  "  shouted  a  third,  behind  them.  The  words 
.were  caught  up  and  echoed  on  all  sides,  till  they  ran  through  the  packed  thou- 
sands like  electric  fluid,  till  from  the  whole  of  the  swaying  gigantic  mass  the 
words  broke  unanimously,  rising  high  above  the  pealing  of  the  bells  and  the 
strife  of  the  streets,  hurling  his  name  out  in  that  grim,  passionate,  furious  love 
of  a  multitude  which  has  ever  in  it  something,  and  wellnigh  as  much,  of  menace 
as  of  caress. 

He  nodded  to  them  with  a  pleasant,  familiar  smile, — such  a  smile  as  a  boy 
gives  to  his  favorite  and  unruly  dogs;  then  he  stood  more  forward  against  the 
iron  scroll-work  of  the  balcony,  looking  down  on  that  movement  beneath  him, 
and  spoke. 

Not  for  the  first  time  here,  in  Darshampton,  by  many,  the  ringing,  metallic 
clarion-roll  of  the  voice  they  knew  so  well  stilled  them  like  magic;  thrilled  them 
as  hounds  thrill  at  the  notes  of  a  horn,  and  held  them  in  check  as  the  horn 
holds  the  pack.  He  spoke  as  only  those  can  speak  who  have  been  long  trained 
to  the  public  arena,  who  have  studied  every  technicality  of  their  science  and 
every  weakness  of  their  audience,  who  have  brought  to  it  not  only  the  talent  of 
native  skill,  but  the  polish  of  long  usage,  the  power  of  assured  practice.  He 
spoke  well, — keen,  trenchant,  vigorous,  humorous  oratory,  English  to  the  back- 
bone, coarse  in  its  pungency,  withal,  here  as  it  could  be  scholarly  elsewhere, 
striking  to  the  heart  of  its  subject  as  surely  and  as  straightly  as  the  arrow  of 
Tell  to  the  core  of  the  apple.  There  was  a  breathless  silence  while  he  spoke, 
the  trumpet-like  tones  of  his  ringing  voice  penetrating  without  effort  to  ,the 


298  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

farthermost  of  the  listening  throngs,  the  Swift-like  humor  and  wit  shaking  sar- 
donic laughter  from  the  brawny  chests  of  his  hearers,  the  biting  and  incisive 
reasoning  drawn  in  by  them  as  eagerly  as  town-dusted  lungs  draw  in  the  salt, 
fresh  breezes  of  the  sea.  He  was  their  master,  though  they  thought  them- 
selves his  electors  and  creators;  and  he  played  at  will  on  them,  as  a  strong, 
skilled  hand  plays  on  a  stringed  instrument,  moving  it  to  what  cadence  he 
chooses.  They  listened  in  devoted  silence,  only  broken  by  tumultuous  cheer- 
ing, or  by  the  hoarse,  gaunt  laughter  that  was  ominous  as  any  curses  raised 
against  what  they  hated.  He  spoke  long,  though  so  succinctly,  so  pungently, 
that  the  minutes  of  his  speech  seemed  moments;  then  ceased,  while  the  red 
sun-glow  still  strayed  to  his  feet,  and  the  chimes  of  the  bells  swung  wild 
delight,  and  the  shouts  of  the  populace  teeming  below  deafened,  the  air  with 
his  name. 

He  laughed  to  himself  as  he  bowed  many  times  his  thanks  and  his  farewell, 
then  sauntered  from  the  balcony  into  the  lighted  and  crowded  room,  glancing 
back  at  that  shifting  sea  of  upraised,  earnest,  hard-lined  faces  in  the  dusky  heat 
of  the  fading  sun. 

"  D — d  rascals,  every  one  of  you,  my  friends,"  he  thought  "  or  out-and-out 
fools;  Gods  knows  which.  Rave  about  oppression  and  the  wrongs  of  Capital  to 
Labor,  while  you  send  your  children  to  sweat,  at  five  years  old,  in  furnaces,  and 
threaten  to  kill  your  brother  if  he  don't  join  your  trade-union  and  strike  when 
he's  told;  clamor  for  the  rights  of  man,  and  worry  your  brains  after  political 
economics,  while  you  think  all  the  '  rights '  centre  in  scribbling  your  name  in 
a  poll-book  and  talking  mild  sedition  in  a  tap-room  !  Oh,  you  precious  fools  ! 
how  we  use  you,  and  how  we  laugh  at  you  !  " 

For  he  was  not  even  wholly  true  to  those  who  were  so  true  to  him;  and  he 
had  no  belief  even  in  their  thorough,  heartfelt  earnestness,  erring  from  imperfect 
vision,  and  distorted  from  imperfect  education,  but  sincere  and  true  in  its  widest 
errors. 

They  thought  they  had  made  him  what  he  was;  he  knew  that  they  were  his 
tools,  his  wax,  his  weapons. 

He  glanced  back  once- on  to  the  vast,  oscillating  crowd  in  the  reddening 
angry  sunset  mist,  and  the  laugh  of  a  consummated  victory,  the  insolence  of  a 
secure  triumph,  was  in  the  backward  flash  of  his  eyes,  mingled,  too,  with  a 
certain  proud  power,  a  certain  exultation  of  self-achieved  distinction.  His 
name  was  still  echoing  to  the  skies  from  the  lungs  of  the  close-packed  throngs. 

"Who  dare  sneer  at  that  name  now?"  he  thought:  and  there  was  in  that 
thought  the  glow  which  Themistocles  felt  when  they  who  had  exiled  him  as  a 
nameless  thing  of  the  people,  to  wrestle  him  the  base-born  in  the  Ring  of 
Cynosarges,  welcomed  him  in  the  city  of  the  Violet  Crown  as  ihe  victor  of 
Salamis,  the  slayer  of  Persia. 


CHANDOS.  299 

Then  he  went  within  from  the  stormy  clangor  and  the  scarlet  flush  of  even- 
ing, and  was  feasted  through  that  night  by  the  men  of  the  mighty  town,  nobles 
who  hated  him  bearing  their  part  in  his  honor,  rivers  of  wine  flowing  to  his 
toast,  the  crowds  of  the  streets  knowing  no  theme  but  his  present  and  his  future, 
the  nation  on  the  morrow  saying,  as  the  city  said  to-night,  "  He  is  a  great  man, 
he'  will  be  a  still  greater." 


BOOK  THE  SIXTH. 


From  the  world  as  it  is  Man's,  into  the  world  as  it  is  God's. 

COWLEY. 

Sie  ist  volkommen  und  sie  fehlet 
Darin  allein  dass  sie  mich  liebt. 

GOETHE. 


CHAPTER  I. 

"PRIMAVERA!    GIOVENTU  DELL'  ANNO!" 

DOWN  at  the  foot  of  the  mountain-slopes  reaching  to  Vallombrosa,  hidden 
away  in  the  deep  belt  of  the  chestnut-forests,  was  a  little  Tuscan  village. 
Sheltered  high  above  by  the  pines  of  the  hills,  and  veiled  from  every  glance  by 
the  thick  masses  of  the  chestnut-leaves,  no  strange  foot  ever  scarcely  wan- 
dered to  it.  It  was  out  of  the  route  of  travellers;  it  had  slumbered  here  for 
ages:  it  had  been  here  when  Milton  looked  on  the  Val  d'Arno;  it  had  been 
here  when  Totila  thundered  at  the  gates  of  Rome;  it  had  been  here  when 
Plautus  caught  in  the  color  of  his  words  the  laughter,  the  mirth,  the  tavern-wit, 
the  girls  a  libre  allure,  the  wine-brawls,  and  the  Bacchan  feasts  of  the  Latin 
life;  it  had  been  here  through  all  changes;  but  it  had  never  changed.  Belike, 
it  had  been  sacked  by  Caesar,  razed  by  Theodoric,  visited  by  Stilicho,  plundered 
by  the  Franks  of  Carl;  but  it  was  still  the  same,  surviving  all  ruin,  and  covered 
in  the  spring-time  with  so  dense  a  leafy  shade  that  the  gray  tint  of  its  stone,  the 
red  brown  of  its  few  roofs,  showed  no  more  than  the  oriole's  nest  through  the 
boughs.  The  purple  plums  of  the  olives  ripened  and  were  gathered,  the  red 
osiers  changed  to  tender  green,  the  grapes  were  garnered  with  the  vintage-tide, 
the  cattle  came  down  the  hill-sides  when  the  sun  sank  low,  the  chestnuts  turned 
to  ruddy  brown  and  broke  their  husks  and  fell  upon  the  moss;  a  few  lives  were 


300  O  UIDAS     WORKS. 

born,  a  few  lives  were  buried.  These  were  all  the  changes  known  there,  the 
changes  of  the  night  and  day,  of  the  seasons  of  the  year,  and  of  the  coming  t>f 
life  and.of  death.  The  light  of  the  after-glow  shone  on  it,  the  scorch  of  the 
later  summer  parched  its  fields  and  woods,  the  snows  of  winter  lay  upon  its 
hill-top  and  gleamed  between  the  darkness  of  its  pines,  the  breath  of  the  spring 
breathed  the  flower-glory  over  its  land,  and  uncurled  the  white  spiral  blossom 
of  its  arums  in  the  water-bed;  but  through  wars  and  rumors  of  wars,  through  the 
Campaign  of  Italy  as  through  the  wars  of  the  great  Captain,  through  the  ravages 
of  the  Cinque  Cento  as  through  the  raids  of  the  Goths  and  the  Gauls,  the  little 
woodland  nook  of  Fontane  Amorose  remained  unaltered,  as  though  the  foot  of 
Dionysus  when  it  had  pressed  its  sward  had  bidden  its  blossoms  keep  an 
eternal  bloom,  and  the  Dryads  and  the  Satyrs,  driven  from  every  other  ancient 
haunt,  still  lived  beneath  the  green  fronds  of  its  trailing  plants  and  laughed 
amidst  the  bronzed  gold  of  its  autumn  vines. 

It  was  in  the  "  mezza  notte  d' Aprile,"  beloved  of  painters,  hymned  of  poets, 
which  makes  of  all  the  Southern  land  one  fresh  and  laughing  garden.  Upward 
yonder,  higher  still  on  the  hills,  there  was  some  little  chillness  lingering  still, 
and  the  air  blew  keener  through  the  aisles  and  pines;  but  here,  midway  in  the 
sloping  of  rich  mossy  greensward,  deeply  sheltered  by  its  beeches  and  chest- 
nuts and  by  the  slopes  of  its  fir-woods,  the  delicious  spring  of  Italy  was  in  its 
fairest,  with  the  purple  orchid  glowing  in  the  noon,  and  the  delicate  wind-flower 
fanned  by  the  breeze,  and  the  young  buds  of  the  vine  opening  in  the  clear  and 
perfect  light.  A  few  miles  from  the  clustering  dwellings  of  Fontane  was  a 
grove  of  beech-trees,  always,  save  at  the  height  of  noon,  dark  as  twilight;  for 
the  branches  were  dense,  and  the  trees  towered  massive  and  many.  Yet  in  the 
heart  of  them  was  a  nook  fit  for  the  couch  of  a  Naiad — fit  to  have  had  laid 
down  in  it  the  fair  lifeless  limbs  of  Adonis.  In  the  shade  of  the  leaves  the 
moss  and  grass  were  ever  fresh;  the  sun-tan  of  midsummer  never  brought 
drought  there;  anemones  and  violets,  and  all  wild  flowers  that  bloom  in  Tuscan 
woods,  filled  it  with  odor  and  color,  and  through  it  welled  the  bright  clear  water 
of  a  broken  fountain,  so  old  that  underneath  its  moss  might  still  be  traced  the 
half-effaced  Latin  inscription.  By  it  perhaps  Virgil  once  had  leaned,  or  Claudian 
rhymed  his  epic;  at  its  spring  the  beautiful  evil  lips  of  Antonina  might  have 
drunk,  or,  lying  beside  them,  Lucretius  might  have  thought  of  the  Etrurian 
shades,  looking  far  down  into  those  deep,  rayless  aisles  of  beech,  sublime  and 
sad  as  his  own  genius.  Where  the  water  rippled,  losing  itself  among  the  mosses 
and  the  orchids,  a  glory  of  sunlight  came,  touching  to  silver  the  wing  of  a 
wood-pigeon  poised  to  drink,  lending  a  warmer  blush  to  the  white  wild  rose  as 
the  rifling  bee  has  hummed  far  down  in  its  violated  chalice,  and  shedding  its  ripe 
gold  on  the  hair  of  a  young  girl  leaning  motionless  there. 

The  birds,  fearless  of  her  presence,  paused  in  their  flight  to  glance  at  her; 


CHAN  DOS.  301 

the  nightingales,  thinking  it  night  in  the  beech  shadows  yonder,  sung  her  their 
softest  songs;  the  butterflies  alighted  on  the  flowers  her  hands  held;  they  knew 
her  well,  they  loved  her;  they  were  her  only  playmates  in  the  long  Italian  day. 
Arum  lilies,  and  the  pale-green  blossoms  of  ivy,  and  anemones  glowing' crimson, 
and  the  emerald  coils  of  moss,  were  in  a  loose  sheaf  on  her  lap;  she  sat  in  a 
day-dream,  watching  the  mystical  flow  of  the  water  as  though  its  patient  music 
could  sing  her  the  hymn  of  her  future. 

She  was  very  young,  but  on  her  beauty  was  the  Tuscan  glow;  and  she  had 
already  the  tall,  slender,  yielding,  voluptuous  form  of  the  South.  In  the  hair, 
like  a  chestnut  that  has  the  fleck  of  the  sunlight  upon  it,  in  the  deep  eyes  with 
their  blue-black  lustre  and  their  dreamy  passionate  lids,  in  the  lips  so  soft,  so 
proud,  so  mournful,  in  the  brow,  broad  and  thoughtful  like  an  antique,  in  the 
brilliance  and  the  light  upon  the  face,  were  all  the  Southern  types:  it  was  only 
in  the  fairness  of  the  skin  that  something  more  Northern  might  have  been 
fancied;  in  all  else  it  was  the  rich  and  sunlit  loveliness  of  Italy. 

Her  hand  rested  on  the  stones  that  bore  the  Latin  words,  all  covered  now 
with  the  wild  growth  of  ivy;  her  gaze  rested  on  the  water  sparkling  so  bright 
in  sunshine  here,  flowing  so  dark  beneath  the  grasses  there;  the  sheaf  of  wood- 
land wealth  rested  listlessly  on  her  lap.  She  leaned  there,  in  her  childhood's 
carelessness,  in  the  classic  solitude,  against  the  black  shades  of  the  beech-woods 
that  closed  her  in  as  in  a  temple,  and  only  let  the  flood  of  sun  pour  down  across 
the  ruined  Roman  fountain  and  the  countless  flowers  at  her  feet. 

She  was  fair  as  Sappho  while  yet  love  was  unknown  and  a  child's  laughter 
amidst  the  roses  of  lona  was  only  hushed  now  and  then  by  vague  and  prescient 
dreams;  she  was  fair  as  Heloise  while  yet  only  the  grand  serenity  of  the  Greek 
scroll  lay  opened  before  her  eyes  and  no  voice  beside  her  had  taught  a  lore 
more  fatal  and  a  mystery  more  mournful  than  the  wise  words  of  Hellas. 

She  was  very  lovely,  motionless  here  where  no  sound  came  except  the  lulling 
of  the  water  and  the  gliding  noise  of  a  bird's  wing,  where  the  tender  green  of 
blossoming  vines  hung  coiled  above  her  head,  and  where  the  deep  bronze  of  the 
beech -belt  drew  round  her  the  gloom  of  the  night. 

Where  she  leaned  thus,  one  passing  through  the  denseness  of  that  gloom 
saw  her,  unseen  himself,  and  paused;  he  thought  of  Proserpine  among  the 
flowers  ere  the  cruelty  of  fate  fell  on  her.  The  young  life  and  the  grass-grown 
ruin,  the  aisle  of  color  and  sunlight,  and  the  mass  of  enclosing  shade  were  a 
picture  and  a  poem  in  one, — the  gladness  of  a  Greek  idyl,  with  the  mystic  dark- 
ness of  a  Northern  Saga. 

Once  he  would  have  lingered  there,  drawn  the  ivy-wreaths  from  the  hands, 
wooed  the  eyes  from  their  musing  gaze,  paused  beside  her  in  the  leafy  peace, — 
once  in  the  days  of  his  youth.  Now  he  looked  an  instant,  thought  how  fair  she 
was,  and  passed  onward  down  his  lonely  path  far  into  the  beechen  shadows. 


302  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

CHAPTER    II. 

CASTALIA. 

SUDDENLY,  without  a  warning,  the  radiance  of  the  late  day  clouded,  the 
stormy  cirri  whirled  together  in  angry  turbulent  masses,  the  clouds  swept  up 
with  instantaneous  movement,  like  the  ranks  of  any  army  hurrying  to  battle; 
one  of  the  tempests  of  the  South  broke  over  the  spring-tide  peace  of  hill  and 
valley, — rainless,  furious,  driving  down  the  hill-sides,  flashing  in  flame  through 
the  depths  of  the  woods,  rending  off  the  shoots  of  the  vine  and  the  buds  of 
the  olive,  blinding  the  trembling  cattle,  breaking  the  fast-rooted  pines  like 
reeds,  rolling  its  thunder  down  the  mountain  and  over  the  plain  till  the  earth 
shook  and  the  end  of  the  world  seemed  to  come  to  the  peasants  crouching  be- 
neath their  roofs,  well  used  though  they  were  to  the  sweep  of  the  hurricane,  to 
the  blaze  of  the  skies.  Before  the  mules  could  patter  along  the  stony  roads, 
before  the  contadine  could  reach  homeward  as  they  came  from  antique  Pelago, 
before  the  workers  could  leave  the  olive-fields  and  vineyards,  before  the  mild- 
eyed  oxen  of  the  Apennine  could  be  driven  through  the  rank  hill-grass,  without 
warning,  the  mighty  clouds  gathered,  the  night  fell,  the  fires  ran  down  the 
heavens,  the  storm  broke  ! 

Through  it,  as  best  he  might,  he  who  had  an  hour  or  two  before  passed 
through  the  moss-grown  path  of  the  beech-woods  made  his  backward  way.-  He 
had  seen  it  gather  as  he  crossed  the  broad  stretch  where  the  cross  stands,  and 
the  view  of  the  Val  d'Arno  lies  unfolded  in  all  its  beauty;  but  before  he  could 
retrace  many  steps  of  his  road,  the  full  force  of  the  tempest  was  down.  It  was 
now  peril  to  life  and  limb  to  be  out  in  its  fury;  the  melon-plants  were  torn  up 
by  their  roots,  the  twisted  olives  writhed  into  tenfold  contortion,  the  peaceful 
bubbling  waters  turned  into  angry  torrents,  the  young  trees  were  uprooted  and 
hurled  down  the  steep  descents;  the  darkness  was  impenetrable,  except  when 
the  lightning  lit  the  whole  land  in  its  glare,  and  the  rushing  of  stones  and  of 
boughs  and  of  saplings,  as  the  winds  tore  them  up  and  whirled  them  on  its  blast, 
roared  with  a  thunder  only  -drowned  in  the  peals  that  shook  from  hill  to  hill 
and  echoed  through  the  solitude  of  the  forests. 

He  could  not  even  tell  his  road;  he  had  lost  its  certainty  in  the  blackness 
around;  the  woodland  paths  were  all  so  similar,  the  tracks  ran  all  so  much 
alike  under  the  pines,  and  stretching  towards  Vallombrosa  that  he  told  with 
difficulty  how  near  or  how  far  he  was  from  the  refuge  of  Fontane  Amorose,  or 
from  the  shelter  of  his  own  house-roof.  All  that  he  could  do  was  to  retain  his 
footing  against  the  fury  of  the  hurricane,  and  to  make  head  as  best  he  might 
against  the  force  that  drove  him  back  at  every  step,  and  the  deafening  din  that 


CHANDOS.  303 

rioted  around.  Unknown  to  himself,  he  had  wandered  back  once  more  into 
the  beech-glades,  and  was  lost  in  their  impenetrable  shades,  instead  of  holding 
on  his  upward  road  along  the  hill-side  through  the  pines.  As  he  went,  feeling 
his  way  slowly  through  the  dense  hot  gloom  that  was  like  the  gloom  over  earth 
and  sky  when  the  lava-torrent  of  Vesuvius  bursts,  he  trod  on  some  fallen 
thing  that  his  foot  crushed  ere  he  felt  it.  He  stopped  and  stooped  to  it;  he 
thought  it  might  be  some  frightened  hare  or  some  large  bird  struck  in  the 
storm  and  entangled  in  the  yielding,  clinging  moss.  The  darkness  was  dark  as 
that  of  a  moonless  midnight;  he  had  no  sense  to  guide  him  but  the  sense  of 
touch.  The  grasses  and  the  flowers,  all  bruised  and  beaten,  met  his  hand; 
then,  as  it  moved  farther,  it  wandered  to  the  loose  trail  of  some  floating  hair, 
and  passed  over  the  warmth  of  human  lips  and  the  outline  of  a  woman's  cheek 
and  bosom.  He  thought  of  the  Tuscan  child  whom  he  had  seen  in  the  sunset 
light. 

The  heavy  tresses  lay  in  his  hand;  he  could  not  tell  whether  she  were  living 
or  dead,  she  was  so  still  in  the  darkness.  He  passed  his  hand  gently  over  her 
brow,  she  did  not  move;  he  spoke,  she  did  not  hear;  he  drew  her  loosened 
dress  over  her  uncovered  chest,  she  did  not  feel  his  touch.  There  was  warmth 
from  the  lips  on  his  palm,  there  was  a  faint  pulsation  in  the  heart  as  he  sought 
for  its  throb  ;  that  was  all.  Else  she  lay,  as  one  dead,  at  his  feet  in  the  black- 
ness of  the  driving  storm,  in  the  din  of  the  echoing  thunder. 

The  fire  flashed  from  the  cleft  skies;  the  blaze  of  an  intolerable  light  poured 
down.  In  it  he  saw  her  features,  and  the  broken  stone  of  the  Latin  ruins,  with 
the  water  gliding  into  its  deep,  still  pool.  She  was  stretched  senseless  on  the 
very  grasses  amidst  which  she  had  leaned  in  her  summer  dream;  her  eyes  were 
closed,  and  her  breathing  was  so  low,  so  lingering,  that  it  seemed  each  breath  might 
be  the  last  she  drew.  He  paused  a  moment,  leaning  over  her  with  the  thick 
wealth  of  the  hair  lying  in  his  hand;  he  could  not  leave  her,  and  succor  there 
was  none.  With  little  thought,  save  such  an  impulse  of  pity  as  that  in  which  a 
man  might  raise  a  fawn  his  shot  had  struck,  or  a  song-bird  his  foot  had  trodden 
on,  he  stooped  and  raised  her  in  his  arms.  Her  head  fell  back,  her  limbs  were 
powerless,  she  lay  passive  and  unconscious -in  his  hold;  forsaken  here,  she 
must  perish:  death  was  abroad  in  every  blast,  in  every  flash.  He  hesitated  no 
more,  but  leaned  her  brow  against  his  breast,  and,  thus  weighted,  went  on  his 
toilsome  and  perilous  way  through  the  beech-glades.  He  knew  his  road  now; 
that  was  much;  and  he  was  not  very  far  from  his  own  home.  He  forced  his 
passage  slowly  and  with  difficulty  through  the  denseness  of  the  woods.  It  was 
a  tedious  and  dangerous  toil;  her  long  hair  blew  in  his  eyes,  her  burden 
chained  his  arms,  the  great  blasts  blew  against  him  with  the  blow  of  a  sea-wave; 
the  forest  now  was  sunk  in  the  ink-black  gloom  of  night,  now  alive  with  lurid 
points  of  flame;  his  sight  was  blinded,  and  his  strength  sorely  spent.  But  still 


304  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

as  he  went  he  sheltered  her,  and  he  pierced  his  road  at  length  through  the  aisles 
of  the  beech-wilderness  till  he  came  into  the  broken  arches  of  what  had  once 
been  stately  Roman  courts.  So  far  near  his  refuge,  he  paused  a  second  to  take 
rest;  the  vivid  lightnings  filled  the  arcade  with  their  glow,  the  peal  of  the  storm 
rolled  above;  he  leaned  against  a  marble  shaft  and  looked  down  on  his  burden. 
Her  head  rested  on  his  breast  as  peacefully  as  though  she  slept  upon  her 
mother's  heart;  the  long  dark  lashes  swept  her  cheek;  her  lips  were  slightly 
parted  with  a  warmer  breath.  There  was  a  touching  sanctity  in  the  uncon- 
scious rest,  a  plaintive  appeal  in  the  extreme  youth  and  in  its  death-like 
calm. 

"  Poor  child  !  "  he  thought,  "  she  may  live  to  wish  she  had  been  abandoned 
there  to  die  in  the  peace  of  her  childhood." 

In  other  years  his  lips  would  have  called  back  the  sleeping  life  with  a  caress; 
now  he  looked  on  her  with  a  passionless  pity,  gentle  because  profoundly  sad, 
sad  because  she  had  so  much  youth,  and  that  youth  was  a  woman's. 

Then  he  went  onward  through  the  shattered  arches  that  were  canopied  and 
covered  with* impenetrable  ivy  and  feathery  grasses  tinted  to  every  hue  in  the 
flashings  of  the  light,  and  entered  by  a  low  side-door  the  first  court  of  a  Latin  villa 
half  in  ruins,  crossed  the  court,  and  passed  into  the  first  chamber.  It  was  long 
and  lofty,  and  had  in  it  the  decay  of  a  patrician  greatness;  fragments  of  a  per- 
fect sculpture  were  upon  the  walls,  a  fresco  in  hues  fair  as  though  painted  but 
yesterday  covered  the  ceiling,  the  pavement  was  of  mosaic  marbles;  these  were 
all  of  its  old  classic  glories  that  time  had  left  untouched:  for  the  rest,  it  was  an 
artist's  studio,  a  student's  library,  strewn  with  papers  and  with  books,  with  here 
and  there  a  cast  or  bronze;  at  the  far  end  a  lectern  with  a  vellum  manuscript 
open  upon  its  wings,  and  in  the  midst  an  Etruscan  lamp  swinging  from  on  high 
and  shedding  a  subdued  silvery  light  and  a  soft  perfume  on  the  gloom.  Here 
he  brought  her,  and  laid  her  gently  down  upon  the  cushions  of  a  couch.  She 
knew  nothing  of  what  was  done  with  her.  He  went  to  a  flask  of  Montepulciano 
standing  near,  poured  some  of  the  wine  out,  and  touched  her  lips  with  it.  She 
drank  a  little,  by  mere  instinct;  the  warmth  revived  her;  her  lids  trembled, 
then  unclosed,  and  her  eyes  looked  out  with  a  dreamy,  bewildered  sight- 
lessness. 

"  What  is  it  ?    Where  am  I  ?  " 

He  bent  to  her  soothingly,  speaking  her  own  Tuscan. 

"  Have  no  fear,  my  child;  you  are  safe  now.  I  found  you  in  the  storm  and 
brought  you  here." 

Her  glance  met  his;  consciousness  came  to  her,  the  color  flushed  back  into 
her  face;  a  shyness,  half  awe,  half  shame,  was  on  her. 

"  You  saved  my  life,  eccellenza!     How  can  I  thank  you  ? " 

"  By  telling  me  you  are  unhurt." 


THE  HOURS  PASSED,  THE  PICTURE  GREW.— Page  316,  Vol.  III. 


CHANDOS.  305 

She  looked  at  him  with  that  awed  wistfulness,  that  earnest  wondering  grati- 
tude, of  a  child. 

He'touched  the  bright  masses  of  her  hair,  moving  them  back  from  her 
brow,— she  was  so  young;  he  caressed  her  with  his  hand  as  he  would  a 
wounded  bird. 

"  I  fear  you  are  in  pain  ?  There  is  a  bruise  on  your  temple;  and  you  were 
senseless  when  I  found  you.  Do  you  suffer  now  ?  " 

She  sighed, — a  sigh  rather  of  rest  and  of  wonder  than  of  pain. 

"Oh,  no!  not  much.  You  brought  me  from  the  forest?  How  good!  how 
merciful! " 

She  stooped  her  head  with  the  supple  grace  of  the  South,  and  kissed  his 
hand  with  the  reverent  supplication  and  thanksgiving  of  a  young  slave  to  her 
owner.  He  drew  it  from  her  quickly. 

"  My  child,  do  not  pay  me  such  homage  for  a  mere  cornmon  charity.  What 
creature  with  the  heart  of  a  man  could  have  left  you  to  perish  alone  ?  The 
blow  must  have  struck  you  down  senseless.  Was  it 'from  a  bough,  do 
you  think  ? " 

She  shuddered  with  the  memory. 

"  I  cannot  recollect.  The  storm  came  up  from  the  back  of  the  woods 
before  I  saw  or  thought  of  it;  it  burst  suddenly,  and  as  I  went  something  struck 
me  down;  whether  it  was  the  flash  or  a  fallen  branch,  I  can  remember  nothing 
since,  till  I  awoke — here." 

She  lifted  herself  a  little,  and  glanced  round,  the  chamber  with  the  startled 
wonder  still  in  her  eyes,  as  of  one  who  wakes  from  a  deep  sleep  in  a  strange 
scene;  her  glance  came  back  to  him,  and  dwelt  on  him  with  a  venerating  mar- 
vel and  admiration:  she  knew  his  face  well,  though  until  that  day  he  had  never 
seen  hers.  Her  sweeping  lashes  were  weighted  and  glistening  with  tears  as  she 
looked, — sweet,  sudden  tears  of  an  infinite  gratitude  for  her  rescue,  and  to  him 
by  whom  she  had  been  saved.  She  was  very  fair  in  that  moment. 

Her  hair,  all  loosened  by  the  wind,  fell  backward  and  over  her  shoulders, 
like  a  shower  of  molten  gold;  the  warmth  of  the  chamber,  and  the  surprise  of 
her  waking  thoughts,  gave  a  glow  like  a  wild  rose  to  her  cheeks.  Some  of  the 
ivy- coils  that  she  had  dropped  in  her  haste  to  rise  and  flee  from  the  storm  had 
caught  in  the  gay  color  and  the  white  broideries  of  her  simple  picturesque  dress: 
an  artist  would  have  given  a  year  of  his  life  to  have  painted  her  as  she  was  then, 
in  the  shadowy  chiar'oscuro  of  the  lamplight,  in  the  marble  waste  of  the  far- 
stretching,  half-ruined  chamber. 

A  dim  fugitive  memory  wandered  before  him  with  the  glance  of  her  eyes, — 
a  likeness  that  he  could  not  trace,  yet  that  pursued  him,  rose  before  him  with 
the  earnest,  haunting  beauty  of  her  face.  Far  down  in  his  past  it  lay;  he  could 
not  disinter  it, — he  could  not  give  it  name  or  substance, — but  its  shadow 


306  OUIDA'S     WORKS. 

flickered  before  him.     She  was  like  something  remembered,  like  something  re- 
covered,  this  strange  young  Tuscan  girl  whom  chance  had  thrown  across  him. 

"You  are  tired  and  exhausted;  lie  still,"  he  said,  gently,  as  she  strove  to 
rise.  "They  shall  bring  you  food;  I  need  some  myself;  and  in  an  hour  the 
storm  may  lull,  perhaps.  May  I  ask  who  it  is  that  my  roof  has  the  honor 
to  shelter  ? " 

She  looked  at  him  still  with  that  wistful  wondering  homage;  she  was  very 
shy  with  him  and  the  language  of    courtesy  was   unfamiliar  to  her;  it  was 
very  new  to  her  to  be  addressed  so. 
He  smiled. 

"  What  is  your  name,  poverina  ?  "  he  asked  her. 

Her  eyelids  drooped,  the  hot  color  deepened  in  her  face;  she  hesitated  a 
moment. 

"  They  call  me  Castalia." 

"  Castalia! — a  fair  and  classic  name!     And  what  else?  " 
"Nothing  elsa,  eccellenza!" 

Her  voice  was  very  low;  her  head  sank,  the  tears  glittered  thickly  on  the 
length  of  her  lashes.  In  the  answer  she  had  told  him  all  the  history  she  had. 

He  was  silent  a  moment,  regretful  that  he  had  pained  her;  his  voice  was 
very  tender  as  he  spoke  again. 

"  And  your  mother, — is  she  living  ?  " 
She  shook  her  head. 

He  looked  at  her  with  a  deep  pity,  this  child  with  the  brilliance  of  Southern 
suns  about  her,,  and  a  fate  so  lonely  and  so  blighted  at  the  outset. 

He  asked  her  no  more;  but,  as  a  Tuscan  woman  answered  his  summons  and 
brought  into  the  chamber  a  tray  of  fruits,  and  macaroni,  and  truffles,  with  some 
flasks  of  Italian  and  Rhine  wines,  he  served  her  with  his  own  hands  as  assidu- 
ously, as  reverently,  as  any  would  serve  a  queen.  And  as  the  rest  and  the  food 
revived  her  more  and  more,  and  more  and  more  restored  the  animation  to  her 
lips,  the  lustre  to  her  eyes,  she  seemed,  in  the  antique  classic  Doric  charm  of 
the  silent  chamber,  like  some  gem  of  the  old  Venetian  masters  set  in  the  white 
coldness  of  the  marble  walls, — like  some  lusttous,  gold-leaved,  Italian  flower 
sprung  in  its  bud  from  the  gray  solemnity,  the  sublime  decay,  of  Roman  ruins. 
He  wondered  whence  she  came  and  what  she  was, — this  Tuscan  child  with 
the  grace  of  a  daughter  of  the  Antonines,  who  was  without  a  name;  and  once 
more  the  memory  which  had  haunted  him  rose  again,  not  to  be  grasped,  but 
lost  in  the  mazy  shades  of  a  far-distant  past. 

The  storm  was  at  its  height,  there  seemed  little  chance  of  its  abatement;  the 
mighty  din  of  its  thunder  rolled  like  the  roar  of  a  hundred  battles,  and  the 
moaning  and  trembling  of  all  the  beech  and  chestnut  woods  were  heard  on 
the  stillness.  She  shuddered  as  she  listened. 


CHANDOS.  307 

"  Ah!  I  should  have  been  lying  dead  in  all  that  terror  now,  but  for  your  pity!  " 

"  Do  not  think  of  it,"  he  answered  soothingly.  "  Let  the  storm  rage  *as  it 
will,  you  are  safe  here  with  me.  Tell  me,  where  is  it  you  live  ?  " 

She  looked  at  him  with  an  intense  sadness,"Very  strange  upon  the  glow  and 
glory  of  her  youth;  and,  though  the  flush  grew  hotter  in  her  face,  it  was  proud 
and  still  in  its  pain. 

"•  Illustrissimo,"  she  said  softly,  for  there  was  a  breathless  awe  of  him  upon 
her,  mingled  touchingly  with  a  spaniel-like  trust,  "  You  ought  to  know  whom 
your  house  shelters;  it  is  only  just.  I  have  no  name;  I  have  no  history.  My 
mother  died  when  I  was  a  few  months  old;  she  came  a  strang'er,  and  the  vil- 
lage knew  nothing  of  her,  only  this, — she  was  not  wedded.  The  Padre  Giulio 
and  his  mother  adopted  me;  they  have  been  very  good.  The  name  they  found 
on  me  was  Castalia.  I  have  nothing  more  to  tell." 

The  simplicity  of  the  words  lent  them  but  the  deeper  sadness;  the  restrained 
pain,  the  half-haughty,  half -appeal  ing  shame,  with  which  she  spoke  them  gave 
them  but  the  stronger  pathos.  They  touched  her  listener  greatly: 

"Thank  you  for  your  confidence,  my  fair  child,"  he  answered  her,  with  a 
pitying  tenderness  in  his  voice, — she  was  so  young  to  be  already  touched  with 
life's  suffering  and  the  world's  reproach.  "You  do  not  know  your  history; 
there  is  room,  then,  to  hope  it  a  bright  one." 

She  shook  her  head. 

"  Illustrissimo,  how?     It  began  in  shame;  it  will  end  in  a  convent." 

"  A  convent  ?     Better  the  tomb!  " 

He  spoke  on  an  impulse.  To  cage  her  to  that  living  death  of  the  veil 
seemed  barbarous  as  to  shut  away  in  darkness,  till  it  died,  one  of  the  golden- 
winged  orioles  that  fluttered  through  the  length  of  a  spring  day  below  the 
slopes  of  Vallombrosa. 

"  Yes  better  a  thousand  times!  "  she  answered  him,  with  a  sudden  vibration 
of  passion  that  told  how  surely  passion  would  wake  in  her  one  day.  "  In  the 
grave  one  sleeps  unconscious!  But,  forgive  me,  eccellenza;  I  weary  you.  Let 
me  go." 

"Go!  with  the  storm  at  that  height?  You  would  go  to  your  destruction. 
No  living  thing  could  pass  from  here  to  Fontane  in  such  a  night.  Wait  a 
while;  it  may  lull  presently.  And  give  me  no  titles  of  deference;  I  can  claim 
none." 

She  looked  at  him  wistfully,  with  a  shy  surprise,  like  that  with  which  a  forest- 
bird  glances  at  a  stranger. 

"  You  must  be  a  great  lord?  "  she  said,  softly  and  hesitatingly. 

He  smiled,  something  wearily. 

«  My  greatness — if  I  ever  truly  had  any — departed  from  me  long  ago.  I 
am  no  noble-.  I  am  little  richer  than  your  peasants  of  Fontane." 


308  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

She  glanced  round  the  chamber:  to  her,  after  the  bare  simplicity  of  the 
Fontane  hamlet,  the  frescoes,  the  sculpture,  the  mosaics,  though  they  were  but 
the  relics  of  Latin  ruins,  made  it  seem  a  palace;  then  her  glistening  meditative 
eyes — eyes  divine  of  the  South — dwelt  on  him. 

"  You  are  lord  of  yourself,  at  lea,st  ?  "  she  said,  lingeringly,  with  the  naif 
expression  of  a  child. 

"  I  have  but  a  rebellious  subject,  then,"  he  answered,  with  a  tinge  of  sad- 
ness that  did  not  escape  her.  "  But,  poverina,  you  look  feverish  and  tired.  I 
have  been  thoughtless  for  you.  You  must  have  been  terribly  hurt  by  that 
blow,  I  fear.  Are  you  in  pain?  " 

She  smiled  at  him, — a  smile  of  infinite  patience  and  sweetness,  that  brought 
back  in  his  thoughts  once  more  a  memory  he  could  not  follow. 

"  Not  much:  it  is  nothing." 

She  would  not  confess  that,  in  truth,  an  intolerable  pain  ached  through  her 
bruised  temples,  and  that  an  utter  exhaustion  was  stealing  fast  upon  her. 

"Lie  still;  then,"  he  said,  bending  over  her;  "the  tempest  is  at  its  worst 
now.  Take  no  heed  of  me,  but  sleep,  if  you  can.  Your  eyes  are  too  heavy  and 
too  hot,  and  I  have  let  you  talk  when  you  should  have  been  at  rest." 

She  thanked  him  softly,  and  obeyed  him;  the  color  grew  richer  in  her  cheek 
at  his  touch,  but  she  offered  him  no  opposition;  she  watched  him  with  a  rever- 
ent, wondering  homage;  she  revered  him  already  like  a  king,  like  a  deity. 

He  had  saved  her  life,  and  he  had  brought  her  here  to  this  mellow  light,  to 
this  delicate  temple-like  chamber,  to  this  dream,  as  it  seemed  to  her  still,  of 
classic  beauty,  of  hushed  repose,  that  had  followed  on  the  tumult  of  the  tempest 
like  an  enchantment.  She  had  passed  all  her  young  years  in  the  chestnut- 
shadows  beneath  Vallombrosa,  and  she  had  far  too  much  innocence,  far  too 
much  faith,  to  think  of  harm  that  could  be  done  her  in  this  solitude,  to  feel  any- 
thing but  a  sublime,  devoted  trust  in  the  stranger  who  had  saved  her  life. 
Moreover,  the  weariness  that  was  growing  on  her,  the  sleep  that  weighed  down 
her  eyelids,  the  reaction  from  the  shock  and  peril  of  the  night,  left  her  little 
sense  save  of  a  lulling  peace  that  surrounded  her,  of  a  voice  that  soothed  her 
like  music,  of  a  wish  to  be  silent  and  still  and  keep  unbroken  this  soft  charm. 

He  left  her,  and  went  to  the  lectern  at  the  farther  end  of  the  room,  where 
the  vellum  scroll  lay,  a  disputed  manuscript  of  Boethius;  he  leaned  his  arms  on 
the  desk,  he  bent  his  eyes  on  the  Latin  words  of  the  last  of  the  Romans,  of  the 
man  martyred  for  too  much  truth.  On  the  wide  stone  hearth  some  pine  logs  were 
burning,  for  the  evenings  were  chilly,  though  the  days  were  so  warm;  the 
aromatic  odor  of  the  lamp  filled  the  room  with  a  sweet,  faint  incense;  the 
shadows  were  deep  in  all  the  farther  parts  of  the  hall,  only  about  the  hearth 
was  the  ruddy,  flickering  glow  of  the  pines;  all  else  was  in  gloom.  The  roar 
of  the  storm  was  almost  ceaseless,  and  the  drenching  rains  broke  above  the  low 


CHANDOS.  309 

Latin  roof  like  a  waterspout.  He  heeded  them  little;  his  thoughts  were  gone 
back  into  the  studies  that  filled  his  days  and  nights.  She  heeded  them  no  more; 
an  irresistible  exhaustion  had  weighted  her  eyes,  till  they  closed  unconsciously; 
she  lost  all  knowledge  of  where  she  was,  and  slept. 

The  hours  passed;  he  almost  forgot  that  he  was  not  wholly  alone.  The 
volumes  about  him  were  many,  and  rare,  and  old;  the  classic  treasures  of  dead 
empires  and  buried  freedom  were  before  him;  their  eternal  charm,  so  old  yet  so 
vernal,  their  thoughts,  so  familiar,  so  long  known,  yet  never  sounded,  as  it 
s«emed,  in  all  their  depths,  enchained  him  in  their  compensative  beauty.  He 
was  such  a  scholar  as  the  world  lost  of  late  years  at  Damascus,  when  Henry 
Buckle  died  of  fever,  with  those  last  words  of  love  for  his  labor  on  his  lips: 
"  My  book!  my  book  !" 

The  hours  passed  uncounted;  the  thunder  had  somewhat  lulled,  but  the 
winds  were  a  hurricane,  and  the  drenching  downpour  of  rain  scoured  the  land 
and  howled  through  the  pine  and  the  beech  woods.  It  was  a  night  which  broke 
the  mountain  firs  like  saplings,  and  wrenched  up  the  gray  writhing  olives  by 
the  roots,  and  laid  the  young  birds  stone  dead  by  the  score.  No  human  thing 
could  venture  out  in  it  and  be  sure  of  life.  The  twelfth  hour  struck  from  the 
campanile  as  the  lull  of  the  moment  succeeded  to  the  roar  of  the  storm;  he 
lifted  his  head  from  where  he  bent  over  the  lectern,  and  looked  at  the  young 
companion  chance  had  so  strangely  brought  there.  In  the  glow  of  the  embers 
she  lay,  in  her  delicate,  richly-hued  beauty,  a  child  in  her  innocence  and  her 
tranquil  rest,  far  more  than  a  child  in  her  grace  and  her  charm, — a  thing  of 
light,  and  life,  and  color,  and  youth,  in  the  cold,  classic  solitude  of  the  lonely 
and  half-ruined  hall,  whose  cracked  mosiac  had  been  worn  by  the  passing  of  so 
many  banished  feet  that  had  trodden  through  their  brief  day  and  had  glided 
onward  down  into  their  tombs.  He  watched  her  with  an  indefinable  pity, 
with  a  fugitive,  intangible  remembrance  pursuing  him;  her  brief  story  was  so 
mournful,  and  the  memory  that  pursued  him  was  so  strong,  though  he  could 
find  it  no  clue  and  would  give  it  no  substance.  As  a  chord  of  music,  as  a 
flower  blooming  in  a  desert  place,  as  a  sound  of  harvest-chant  or  a  spring- 
bird's  singing,  will  bear  us  back  to  long-gone  hours,  so  the  sight  of  her  bore 
his  thoughts  backward  to  years  that  were  sealed  forever, — thoughts  that 
thronged  on  him,  many,  and  embittered  by  their  own  sweetness,  as  the  thought 
of  all  that  he  will  never  again  see  comes  on  the  exile  with  the  mere  scent  of 
faded  leaves  brought  to  him  from  the  summer  woodlands  that  hear  his  step 
no  more. 

In  them  he  was  lost,  as  he  leaned  against  the  broad  bronze  wings  of  the 
lectern-eagle,  with  his  eyes  on  the  ring  of  ruddy  color  that  circled  her  like  a 
halo.  The  storm  shook  above  the  low,  flat  roof  of  the  Latin  villa,  breaking  on 
it  as  with  the  force  of  a  waterspout.  He  roused  himself  and  went  near  her. 


310  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

"  She  cannot  go  out  in  such  a  night  as  this,"  he  thought. 

She  slept  still,  softly  as  a  child,  the  long  black  fringes  of  her  eyelashes 
lying  on  her  flushed  cheeks,  a  proud,  resigned  sadness,  like  the  memory 
of  her  stained  birth  and  lonely  fate  on  her  face.  He  was  loath  to  break 
her  rest,  yet  he  knew  that  to  let  her  sleep  on  here  would  be  to  let  the  coarse 
tongues  of  the  mountain-peasants  touch  even  her  defenceless  childhood.  He 
stooped  and  passed  his  hand  lightly  over  her  brow.  At  the  touch,  slight  as  it 
was,  she  wakened  instantly;  the  blue-black  lustre  of  her  eyes  startled  into 
consciousness,  the  flush  on  her  cheek  bright  as  the  scarlet  japonica-blossoms. 
She  started  up,  ashamed. 

"  Oh,  eccellenza,  forgive  me  ! — I  have  been  asleep!  " 

He  smiled  kindly  at  her  alarm  and  her  penitence. 

"  Naturally,  after  your  danger  and  your  fatigue.  It  was  the  best  restora- 
tive you  could  have.  It  is  midnight  now,  and  the  storm  is  scarce  lessened " 

"  Midnight  ? "  she  murmured,  terror-stricken.  "  The  Padre  Giulio  will  be 
so  wretched!  What  will  he  think  ?  Let  me  go;  pray  let  me  go." 

"Impossible;  you  would  go  to  your  certain  death.  I  could  not  venture 
myself  in  such  a  night;  you  hear  the  hurricane  ?  You  must  remain  with  me." 

"  With  you  ? "  she  repeated,  under  her  breath. 

"Surely:  I  would  not  let  a  dog  leave  my  roof  in  such  weather  as  this  is. 
Besides,  you  are  miles  higher  on  the  slope  here  than  Fontane;  the  return  to 
the  village  would  be  impossible  for  those  far  hardier  than  you." 

She  looked  at  him  with  a  wondering  awe;  he  seemed  to  her  such  an  emperor 
as  Marcus  Antoninus,  who  had  laid  down  his  pomp  and  come  to  dwell  a  while 
like  other  men.  The  deep-blue,  weary,  brilliant  eyes  that  gazed  on  her  made 
her  think  of  the  serene,  imperial  eyes  of  Augustus. 

"  I  am  a  total  stranger  to  you,  it  is  true,"  he  said,  gently,  misinterpreting 
her  silence;  "but  you  are  not  afraid  to  remain  in  my  house?  I  am  only  here 
for  a  villegiatura,  and  the  place  is  desolate  enough,  but  it  will  at  least  give  you 
shelter." 

She  lifted  her  head  with  the  proud  grace  that  would  have  paled  and  shamed 
the  grace  of  many  royal  women. 

"Afraid?  Afraid  of  you?  What  could  I  fear  ?  You  saved  my  life;  it  is 
yours  to  command.  All  is — I  cannot  thank  you  enough." 

The  words  were  very  touching  in  their  liquid  Tuscan,  in  their  complete 
innocence,  and  in  their  perfect  trust. 

"You  have  nothing  to  thank  me  for;  a  mule-driver  or  a  charcoal-burner 
must  have  done  for  you  what  I  did,"  he  answered  her,  his  voice  unconsciously 
softening.  "And  now  go  to  rest;  you  want  it.  I  will  send  the  women  to  you, 
and  they  shall  remain  in  your  chamber;  for  you  are  not  well  enough  to  be  left 
alone." 


CHAN  DOS.  311 

"  Ah,  eccellenza  how  good  you  are!  "  she  murmured.  A  few  years  older, 
and  she  would  have  been  grateful  to  him  in  silence,  better  knowing  the  motive 
of  his  words.  "But  indeed  I  am  strong  now;  we,  below  Vallombrosa,  have 
the  strength  of  the  mountain-air,  and — shall  I  not  trouble  you  with  staying 
here  ? " 

"  Far  from  it;  you  bring  your  own  welcome,  like  the  birds  that  come  and 
sing  under  our  windows.  Good-night,  poverina,  and  sleep  well." 

He  held  his  hand  out  to  her;  she  was  but  a  child  to  him,  and  a  child  who 
had  been  sheltered  on  his  breast  through  the  driving  of  the  storm.  She  stooped 
with  the  exquisite  softness  of  movement  of  Southern  women,  and  touched  the 
hand  he  gave  her,  lightly  and  reverently,  with  her  lips. 

"  I  would  thank  you,  excellenza,  but  I  cannot." 

She  did  thank  him,  however,  better  than  by  all  words,  with  that  hesitating 
touch  of  her  young  lips,  with  that  upward  glance  of  her  eyes,  languid  with  sleep 
and  fatigue,  yet  lustrous  as  the  Tuscan  skies  by  night, — eyes  that  seemed  to 
him  to  have  some  story  of  his  past  in  their  depths. 

Then  he  summoned  the  women  to  her,  peasants  who  dwelt  in  the  villa,  and 
he  left  her. 

He,  having  surrendered  to  her,  though  she  knew  nothing  of  it,  the  only 
habitable  chamber  that  the  half-ruined  villa  afforded,  stretched  himself  in  the 
warmth  of  the  pine  logs  on  the  wolf-skins  strewn  before  it.  She  had  brought 
back  to  him,  why  or  whence  he  could  not  tell,  memories  that  he  would  willingly 
let  die, — memories  that,  through  the  length  of  weary  years,  burned  still  into  his 
heart  with  unutterable  longing,  with  intolerable  pain. 

In  the  loneliness  of  the  old  classic  hall,  in  the  leaping  light  of  the  pine  flames, 
throngs  of  shadowy  shapes  arose  around  him, — the  shapes  of  his  past,  sum- 
moned by  the  light  of  a  child's  smile. 

She  meanwhile  lay  wakeful,  yet  dreamy,  gazing  out  at  the  unfamiliar 
chamber  and  the  swaying  figure  of  the  peasant-woman  keeping  watch  over  her 
and  nodding  in  her  sleep.  Her-  thoughts  were  steeped  in  all  the  wonders  of 
legendary  lore,  and  she  fancied  some  enchantment  had  been  wrought  in  her 
since,  out  of  that  awful  forest- darkness,  she  had  been  brought  to  this  charmed 
stillness  in  w.hich  only  one  remembrance  was  with  her,  the  remembrance  of  the 
musing,  lustrous,  weary  eyes  that  had  looked  so  gently  on  her,  of  the  voice  that 
had  soothed  her  terror  and  her  pain  with  an  accent  softer  than  she  had  ever 
heard.  She  thought  of  him,  and  thought,  as  one  other  had  once  done  before, 
that  he  was  like  the  Poet-king  of  Israel,  but  having  known  the  bitterness  of 
abdication,  having  known  the  ingratitude  of  the  people.  Then  her  musing  be- 
came a  dream,  and,  with  a  smile  upon  her  lips,  she  slept  under  a  stranger's  roof 
till  the  tempest  had  passed  away  and  the  dawn  was  bright.  As  she  awoke,  the 
morning  had  risen.  The  sun  broke  in  full  glory  over  a  splendid  mass  of  purple 


312  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

cloud  and  tumbled  storm-mist  that  glowed  in  magnificent  color  beneath  the 
newly-risen  rays.  The  earth  laughed  again  even  amidst  her  ruin,— her  ruin 
of  crushed  olive-buds,  and  uprooted  saplings,  and  trees  rent  asunder,  and 
nests  flung  down,  with  the  young  birds  killed,  and  the  mothers  flying  with 
piteous  cries  over  the  wieck;  but  the  wheatsprouts  were  too  low  to  be 
harmed;  the  vines,  though  they  trailed  and  hung  helplessly  under  the  dead 
weight  of  rain-drops,  were  still  only  in  blossom;  the  watercourses  made  the 
wilder,  merrier  music,  filled  to  overflowing,  and  laying  in  swathes  the  rank 
grasses  of  their  beds;  the  mules  began  to  patter  over  the  broken  paths,  picking 
their  careful  way  over  the  dislodged  boulders  of  rocks  and  the  deep  channels  of 
brimming  brooks.  Beneath  Vallombrosa  the  morning  was  fair  and  sun-lightened 
again,  deadly  through  the  tempest  had  been  over-night,  and  rough  work  of  de- 
struction though  it  had  wrought.  With  the  sun  she  rose,  her  youth,  like  the 
youth  of  the  spring  and  the  earth,  the  brighter  for  the  storm  and  the  danger 
gone  by.  There  was  the  flush  of  waking  childhood  and  of  past  sleep  upon  her 
cheeks,  and  her  eyes  had  the  gladness  of  a  wondering  dream  in  them,  as  she 
found  her  way,  marvelling  if  she  dreamed  a  fairy-tale,  down  some  broken  marble 
steps  and  out  into  the  air. 


CHAPTER   III. 

"GIOVENTU!     PRIMAVERA   DELLA    VITA!" 

THE  full  light  poured  into  the  open  loggia  before  the  half-ruined  courts  and 
halls  of  the  Latin  villa.  Within,  the  one  spacious  chamber,  with  its  frescoes 
and  the  mosaics,  its  books  and  scrolls,  was  bare  enough.  But  the  world  of 
blossoming  spring,  of  morning  mists,  of  lavish  foliage  that  opened  out  before 
it,  made  ample  amends  for  any  poverty  and  .decay  of  the  interior;  and  it  was 
perfect  for  a  villegiatura,  this  deserted  place  that  Roman  pomp  had  once  filled 
in  Augustan  days. 

In  this  loggia,  reading,  her  host  sat, — a  man  no  longer  young,  though  as 
yet  there  was  no  silver  amidst  the  fair  and  golden  length  of  his  hair;  a  man 
of  a  grave  grace,  of  a  serene,  meditative  dignity  of  look  and  of  movement 
that  had  in  it  something  that  was  very  weary,  yet  something  not  less  grand, 
not  less  royal :  he  might  have  been  a  king  in  purples  rather  than  what  he  was, — 
an  exile,  and  poor. 

The  book  was  open  upon  his  knee,  but  his  eyes  were  not  upon  it  for  the 
moment;  they  were  resting  on  the  gardens  without, — gardens,  wild,  forsaken, 
uncultured,  but  only  the  more  beautiful  for  that,  with  dark  waters  winding 


CHAN  DOS.  313 

under  laurel-thickets,  and  green  cistus,  and  ilex,  and  pomegranate,  and  Banksia 
roses  growing  at  their  will,  and,  all  ivy-coiled  and  covered,  broken  fragments 
of  arches  and  statues  and  fountains.  What  he  watched  in  them  was  the  passage 
of  the  young  Tuscan  flitting  through  them  with  the  freedom  of  a  chamois  in 
her  step,  and  all  the  languor  of  a  dew-laden  flower  in  her  loveliness. 

Sixteen  years  beyond  the  Apennines  bring  womanhood;  they  had  brought 
it  to  her  in  the  loveliness  nature  had  dowered  her  with,  but  in  all  else  she  was 
young  as  a  child, — she  who  had  never  wandered  from  the  chestnut  shadows  of 
her  village,  who  had  but  dimly  heard  of  another  vast  world  beyond  the  beech- 
woods,  who  had  known  no  friends  but  the  birds  who  sang  to  her,  who  had 
known  no  pleasures  but  to  watch  a  blue-warbler  shake  his  bright  wings  in  the 
myrtles,  or  to  look  deep  down  into  the  heart  of  a  passion-flower  and  build  a 
thousand  fancies  from  its  mystic  burning  hues.  She  was  a  child  with  the 
beauty  of  a  woman;  there  could  be  no  greater  peril  for  her. 

He  thought  so  as  he  saw  her  in  this  deserted  garden.  Art  had  no  handling 
with  her;  the  pure  hill-air  of  Tuscany  had  made  her  all  she  was;  and  she  had 
the  abandon  and  the  unconsciousness  of  some  rich  plumaged  bird,  now  floating 
softly  through  the  sunlight,  now  pausing  on  the  wing,  now  alighting  to  drop 
down  in  happy  rest  in  a  couch  of  feathery  grasses. 

He  gazed  at  her  as  she  wandered  through  them,  that  exquisite  ease  in  her 
step  which  many  a  royal  woman  has  not,  which  a  contadina  may  have  balancing 
on  her  dark  imperial  head  a  pannier  of  watermelons.  The  lizards  did  not 
hurry  from  her,  but  watched  her  with  curious  eyes;  the  timid  hares  let  her 
stoop  and  stroke  them;  the  old  owls  blinking  in  the  ivy  let  her  lift  her  hand 
and  touch  their  crests;  the  wood-doves  flew  about  her  and  pecked  the  buds 
from  the  boughs  she  held  up  to  them.  She  bent  over  the  black  swollen  water, 
and  saw  her  own  reflection  laurel-crowned  as  the  branches  met  above  her  head; 
she  gathered  the  lilies  of  the  valley,  the  buds  of  Banksia  roses,  and  the  young 
green  ivy-blossoms,  and  crowned  herself  with  them  till  the  wreath  was  too 
heavy  and  shook  all  her  glistening  hair  downward  in  a  shower  of  gold,  like  a 
picture  of  Flora.  Then,  lastly,  she  sank  to  rest  on  a  gray  rock  «f  fallen  sculp- 
ture, the  crown  of  flowers  still  above  her  brow;  and  after  the  glad,  thoughtless 
pastime  of  a  child,  the  proud  and  profound  sadness  that  usually  in  repose  was 
on  her  face  succeeded  it  with  a  charm  not  the  less  great  because  so  sudden. 

It  was  like  the  sudden  fall  of  evening  over  the  brilliance  and  the  glow  of 
her  own  Tuscan  landscape. 

As  he  saw  it,  he  left  the  loggia  and  went  towards  her.  She  did  not  hear  his 
step  till  he  had  approached  her  close;  then  she  sprang  up  with  the  swiftness  of 
a  fawn,  and  with  words  of  gratitude  made  only  softer  by  the  awe  of  him  which 
lent  her  its  delicate  coyness. 

"I  have  been  watching  you  for  the  last  half-hour,  Castalia,"  he  said,  gently. 


314  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

"  I  am  glad  you  could  find  such  companions  in  my  flowers  and  my  birds;  there 
is  little  else  here  fit  for  your  bright  youth." 

She  colored  under  his  gaze,  and  put  her  hands  up  hurriedly  to  remove  the 
dew-laden  wreath  of  bud  and  blossom;  she  had  forgotten  it  till  his  speech 
brought  it  back  to  her  thoughts.  He  put  out  his  own  hand  and  stayed  her. 

"  Not  for  worlds!  I  wish  Titian  lived  to  paint  you!  you  look  like  a  young 
priestess  of  Flora.  But,  tell  me,  what  spell  have  you  that  tames  the  lizards, 
and  stills  the  hares,  and  brings  all  the  birds  to  your  hand  ? " 

She  lifted  to  him  her  musing  eloquent  eyes,  grave  as  a  child's  when  he 
pauses  to  think. 

"  I  do  not  know,  eccellenza,  unless — it  may  be  because  I  love  them  so 
well." 

His  face  grew  a  shade  darker  and  yet  softer;  her  words  recalled  the  fond 
belief  of  his  own  youth. 

"  You  think  love  begets  and  secures  love  ?     I  thought  so  once." 
"  And  was  it  not  so  ?  " 

"No;  but — that  knowledge  should  not  kill  love  in  us;  there  is  much  that 
is  worth  it,  if  there  be  much  that  is  not.  Because  a  viper  turns  and  stings  you, 
it  would  be  wild  vengeance  to  wring  the  wood-pigeons  neck."  • 

He  spoke  half  to  his  own  thoughts,  half  to  her;  she  regarded  him  with  a 
reverent,  grateful,  wondering  gaze;  in  her  little  beech-forest  nest  of  Fontane 
she  had  never  seen  anything  like  him.  She  who  had  known  but  one  bent  old 
priest,  and  brown,  brawny  muleteers  and  vintagers  from  whom  she  shrank  as 
the  white  sea-swallow  shrinks  from  the  hard  beak  and  cruel  pursuit  of  the  kes- 
trel, thought  almost  he  must  be  more  than  mortal. 

"I  ought  to  leave  you, 'lustrissimo  ?"  she  said,  hesitatingly.  "I  have 
troubled  you  so  long." 

"  Do  you  wish  to  leave  me  ? " 

Her  eyes  opened  more  lustrous  than  ever  in  their  surprised  negation. 
"Wish?  oh,  no!" 

"  Well,  do  not  leave  me  yet,  then.  Come  within,  and  let  me  see,  though  no 
Titian,  if  I  can  paint  you  with  your  crown  of  flowers.  Your  Padre  Curato  will 
feel  no  anxiety,  I  sent  a  messenger  to  him  to  say  you  were  here." 

The  gravest  contrition  stole  over  her  face,  she  looked  penitent  as  a  chid- 
den child. 

"Oh,  'lustrissimo!  I  had  forgotten  him.      How  ungrateful,  when  he  is  so 
good!     How  selfish  one  grows  when  one  is  happy!  " 
The  naif  confession  amused  him. 
"  Then  you  are  happy  with  me?  " 

"  Eccellenza,"  she  said,  under  her  breath,  "  it  seems  to  me  that  I  have  been 
happier  than  in  all  the  years  of  my  life." 


CHANDOS.  315 

The  reply  pleased  him.     He  had  always  loved  to  see  happiness  about  him. 

"  I  am  glad  it  should  be  so.  And  do  not  believe  that  happiness  makes  us 
selfish;  it  is  a  treason  to  the  sweetest  gift  of  life.  It  is  when  it  has  deserted  us 
that  it  grows  hard  to  keep  all  the  better  things  in  us  from  dying  in  the  blight. 
Men  shut  out  happiness  from  their  schemes  for  the  world's  virtue;  they  might 
as  well  seek  to  bring  flowers  to  bloom  without  the  sun." 

He  spoke  again  rather  to  his  own  thoughts  than  to  her,  but  she  understood 
him.  This  young  Tuscan,  lost  amidst  the  chestnuts  beneath  Vallombrosa, 
had  in  her  the  heart  of  a  Heloise,  the  mind  of  a  Hypatia,  though  both  were  in 
their  childhood  yet. 

"  Eccellenza,"  she  said,  hesitatingly,  "  that  is  true.  If  we  keep  light  from 
a  plant,  it  will  grow  up  warped.  When  they  condemn,  do  they  ever  ask  if  what 
they  condemn  had  a  chance  to  behold  the  light  ?  Perhaps — perhaps  if  my 
mother  had  been  happy  she  would  not  have  been  evil,  as  they  call  her  ? " 

The  color  burned  hotly  in  her  face,  but  her  eyes  were  raised  in  wistful  en- 
treaty to  him;  it  was  but  very  vaguely  that  she  understood  the  shame  that  she 
was  made  to  feel  was  on  her  birth,  but  very  dimly  that  she  comprehended  some 
vast  indistinct  error  with  which  her  dead  mother  was  charged. 

The  question  touched  him  with  great  pity. 

"  Poverina"  he  said,  caressingly,  "  do  not  weary  your  young  life  with  those 
subtleties.  You  do  not  know  that  error  lies  at  all  upon  your  mother's  history; 
who  can,  since  you  say  that  history  is  wholly  unknown, — even  to  her  very  name  ? 
It  may  be  that  the  thing  the  world — your  little  woodland  world,  at  least — 
blames  in  her  was  some  unrecognized  martyrdom,  some  untold  unselfishness. 
At  all  events,  be  she  what  she  will, you  are  stainless  and  blameless;  all  you 
need  seek  is  to  be  so  forever." 

She  looked  at  him  with  a  look  of  passionate,  of  intense,  yet  of  restrained 
feeling,  which  told  him  how  well  she  would  love  some  day,  and  how  bitterly 
she  would  suffer. 

"  I  thank  you,  eccellenza,"  she  said,  her  voice  very  low,  "  more  for  those 
noble  words  than  for  the  life  that  you  saved  me." 

The  brief  answer  was  very  eloquent, — eloquent  of  her  nature  and  of  her 
gratitude.  He  said  no  more,  but  led  her  within  to  the  old  hall,  only  fit  for  a 
summer  residence  for  an  artist,  or  a  scholar  sufficently  content  with  its  classic 
charm  and  forest  wildness  to  bear  its  scant  accommodation.  An  easel  stood 
before  the  open  colonnade  facing  the  gardens;  he  paused  before  it,  and 
glanced  at  her.  A  lovelier  theme  never  lured  any  painter's  brush,  with  the 
fresh  crown  of  lilies  and  rose-buds  and  light-green  blossoms  of  ivy  shaking 
their  dew  upon  the  gold-flaked  shower  of  her  hair.  He  looked  at  her,  then  he 
threw  aside  the  colors  he  had  taken  up. 

"  Twenty  years  ago  I  could  have  given  your  picture  there,"  he  said,  half 


316  OU  IDA'S     WORKS. 

wearily.     "  Now  I  have  not  the  heart  to  paint  you,  my  fair  child.     I  have  not 
the  great  inspiration, — youth." 

Twenty  years  ago  he  would  have  found  no  hour  more  beguiling  than  that 
spring  morning  with  the  young  Tuscan,  bringing  the  bloom  of  her  beauty  and 
of  her  crown  of  flowers  out  on  the  canvas;  now  it  only  recalled  to  him  all  he 
had  lost. 

A  shadow  stole  over  her  eyes;  he  saw  it,  and  turned  back  to  the  easel. 

"Are  you  disappointed,  poverina?" 

She  looked  beseechingly  in  his  face. 

"  I  never  saw  any  paintings  except  those  in  our  little  chapel." 

"  No?     Well,  then,  I  will  try  and  give  you  your  desire." 

He  took  the  colors  and  brushes  up  again,  and,  standing  before  the  easel, 
sketched  her  as  she  leaned  against  one  of  the  pillars  of  the  colonnade,  the  rich 
glow  and  warmth  of  her  young  face  but  the  brighter  for  the  whiteness  of  the 
lilies  and  the  deep  green  of  the  leaves  that  circled  her  hair.  He  had  both  the 
skill  and  habit  of  Art;  and  the  impassioned  brilliance  of  her  beauty,  with  the 
coronal  of  blossoms  weighting  her  forehead  with  the  weight  of  all  diadems,  rose 
gradually  under  his  hand  out  of  the  sea  of  brown  opaque  gloom  on  which  it 
was  painted.  The  hours  passed,  and  the  picture  grew;  it  beguiled  him  for  the 
time  of  heavier  cares,  and  won  him  out  of  deeper  thoughts;  yet  ever  and  again, 
as  he  lifted  his  eyes  and  glanced  at  her,  the  weariness  which  had  made  him  turn 
from  the  task  came  over  him  again.  He  thought  of  so  many  golden  hours, 
when  faces  as  fair  had  bloomed  to  fresh  life  thus  on  his  canvas,  and  the  glory 
of  his  youth  had  been  with  him  to  lend  its  sweetness  to  the  eyes,  and  teach  the 
language  of  love  to  the  lips,  of  those  he  painted.  The  soft  labor  only  recalled 
to  him  so  many  days  that  were  dead. 

The  noontide  was  intensely  still,  the  heat  of  the  sun  quivered  down  through 
the  open  arches  of  the  colonnade;  the  picture  grew  clearer  and  richer  beneath 
his  hand,  and  the  blossoms  faded  where  they  crowned  her  head.  She  untwined 
them  and  touched  them  mournfully. 

"  Ah,  eccellenza,  they  are  all  dying!  " 

He  smiled,  not  without  sadness,  too,  though  it  was  for  deeper  things  than 
the  flowers. 

"Never  mind;  you  have  had  their  sweetness.  Be  content  with  that. 
Nothing  endures." 

"  But  it  is  better  never  to  have  had  them  than  to  see  them  withered!  " 

"  I  doubt  that.  If  we  should  have  been  spared  much  pain,  we  should  also 
Have  missed  much  joy." 

His  thoughts  were  with  other  things,  though  he  spoke  still  in  the  figure  of 
the  flowers.  He  had  seen  his  own  crowns  wither  and  fall  and  be  trodden  under 
foot,  yet  he  would  never  have  worn  them.  She  looked  at  him  in  silence,  rever- 


CHANDOS.  317 

ently,  wonderingly;  she  mused  on  what  his  history  could  be;  she  thought  him 
a  king  in  exile.  So,  in  a  sense,  he  was. 

There  was  an  infinite  shyness  of  him  in  her  that  gave  her  tenfold  more 
charm,  it  was  so  innocent,  and  so  full  of  religious  veneration.  He  seemed  to 
her  like  the  archangels  of  her  Church,  so  full  of  majesty,  so  full  of  pity.  She 
thought  with  him  of  all  the  grand,  serene,  lonely  lives  that  she  had  read  of  in 
the  Latin  legends. 

He  rose,  and  turned  the  easel  to  her. 

"  Castalia,  do  what  even  wise  men  never  do;  see  yourself  as  you  are." 

She  came  forward,  and  looked,  as  the  sun  fell  full  on  the  work  of  a  few  hours, 
and  her  countenance  changed  as  by  magic;  a  breathless  surprise  was  on  her 
lips,  a  scarlet  flush  upon  her  cheeks,  the  light  of  an  immeasurable  admiration 
and  amaze  beamed  in  her  eyes.  She  stood  entranced  at  the  likeness  of  her- 
self, as,  with  its  diadem  of  blossoms,  it  gazed  out  at  her  from  the  brown 
shadows  of  the  background. 

"  Well  ?  "  he  asked  her,  smiling. 

She  turned  to  him  bewildered  and  beseeching. 

"Oh!  'lustrissimo,  can  it  be?     Am  I  as  beautiful  as  that?" 

"  Did  the  river  and  the  fountain  never  tell  you  so  before  ? " 

Her  head  drooped,  the  color  in  her  cheek  deepened;  her  innocent  delight 
had  no  thought  of  vanity,  but  at  his  words  she  remembered  what  she  looked  on 
was — herself. 

"  And  yet  it  is  beautiful!  "  she  murmured,  very  low,  as  though  in  apology. 
"  And  if  I  be  really  like  it " 

"  What  then  ?  " 

A  prouder,  more  passionate  glory  flashed  into  her  face;  she  lifted  her  head 
with  the  royalty  of  a  daughter  of  emperors,  mingled  with  a  great  softness  of 
regard. 

"  Then,  I  think,  if  I  could  once  see  the  great  world  I  might  reign  there,  and 
I  might  win  some  love,  and  not  be  scorned  as  peasants  scorn  me  here.  Would 
it  not  be  so,  eccellenza?  " 

He  paused  a  moment;  the  words  touched  him  to  compassion.  How  little 
she  knew  that  her  nameless  loveliness  would  only  bring  her  in  the  "great 
world  "  a  sovereignty  and  a  love  that  would  be  but  added  shame!  Nor  could 
he  tell  her. 

"  Would  it  not  be  so,  eccellenza  ? "  she  asked  him,  eagerly  again. 

"Yes,"  he  answered,  slowly;  "doubtless  it  would.  But  do  not  wish  it,  if 
you  be  wise.  Your  diadems  would  not  be  so  pure  as  the  one  that  lies  withered 
there;  your  brows  would  soon  ache  under  them,  and  for  the  love " 

"Ah!  "  she  said,  softly,  whilst  the  glow  faded,  and  her  eyes  filled  with  tears 
as  she  spoke  with  the  pathos  and  the  guilelessness  of  a  child,  "  I  long  to  be 


318  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

loved!  All  the  children  of  Fontane  have  their  mothers,  who  look  brighter  when 
they  see  them  near;  but  I  am  all  alone.  I  have  been  alone  so  long!  " 

The  words  had  an  intense  and  touching  piteousness  in  them;  a  harder 
nature  that  her  listener's  was  would  have  been  moved  by  them.  How  could  he 
find  the  cruelty  to  tell  her  that  the  chances  were  as  a  million  to  one  that  the 
only  love  she  would  ever  meet  in  this  world  beyond  the  pine  woods,  to  which 
she  vaguely  looked  as  the  redresser  of  her  wrongs,  would  be  one  less  merciful 
to  her  even  than  the  bitterness  and  loneliness  which  now  visited  on  her  in- 
nocence and  her  youth  the  unproven  errors  of  her  dead  mother?  Twenty 
years  before  he  would  have  heard  her  with  little  thought,  save  to  let  his  lips 
linger  on  the  brow  whence  the  faded  ivy-buds  had  fallen,  and  murmur  to  her 
the  tenderness  which  her  unawakened  heart  longed  for,  as  an  imprisoned  bird 
longs  for  the  shelter  of  summer  leaves  and  the  whispers  of  summer  rivers; 
now  such  a  thought  as  this  was  distant  from  him  as  the  wide  unknown  world 
was  far  from  her. 

But  pity  her  he  did,  profoundly.  This  nameless,  motherless  child,  with  her 
radiant  grace  and  her  pioud  instincts,  was  as  desolate  as  any  chamois-fawn  lost 
on  the  hills  and  driven  as  an  alien  from  every  herd  with  which  it  seeks  a 
refuge. 

"  You  will  have  love,  some  day,  poverina,"  he  said,  gently,  "  and  as  much 
as  you  will;  you  will  hardly  lift  such  eyes  as  those  to  ask  for  it  in  vain." 

She  sighed,  and  her  head  sank  lower,  while  she  looked  still  at  the  painted 
likeness  of  herself.  She  was  unaware  of  any  tribute  to  her  beauty  in  his  words; 
she  thought  he  meant  that  some,  one  day,  would  pity  her. 

"  Ah,  eccellenza,"  she  answered,  wearily,  "  where  is  the  worth  of  love,  if 
with  it  is  scorn  ? " 

The  thoughtless  taunts  and  tlie  careless  jests  which  among  the  peasantry 
had  been  cast  at  her  from  her  birth  up  as  a  foundling — rather  in  the  mothers' 
jealousy  of  her  face  and  the  children's  resentment  of  her  love  of  solitude,  than 
from  any  cruelty  or  any  real  contempt- — had  sunk  deeply  into  her  nature, 
rousing  rebellion  and  disdain  wellnigh  as  much  as  they  caused  sorrow  and  a 
vague  sense  of  shame. 

He  saw  how  great  a  shipwreck  might  be  made  of  her  opening  life,  even 
from  the  very  purest  and  loftiest  things  in  her,  if  this  outlawry  banned  her  long, 
— if  this  passion  of  mingled  defiance  and  humiliation  were  fostered  by  neglect 
He  spoke  on  that. 

"  Scorn!  Why  dwell  on  scorn  ?  It  is  unworthy  of  you.  It  is  a  word  that 
may  bring  a  pang  to  those  who  merit  it  by  their  own  ill  deeds;  it  need  have  no 
sting  for  any  other.  Keep  your  life  high  and  blameless,  and  you  will  afford  to 
treat  scorn  with  scorn." 

She  did  not  reply  to  him  with  words,  but  she  flashed  on  him  with  an  answer- 


CHAN  DOS.  319 

ing  glance  the  night-like  lustre  of  her  eyes,  in  an  eloquence,  in  a  comprehension, 
in  a  promise,  that  accepted  his  meaning  far  more  deeply  and  more  vividly  than 
by  speech.  He  saw  that  she  might  be  led  by  a  cord  of  silk, — that  she  would 
not  be  driven  by  a  scourge. 

He  stood  a  few  moments  in  the  shadow  of  the  colonnade,  later,  when  she 
had  left  him,  looking  at  the  painting  that  had  grown  out  of  the  deep,  sombre 
backwork  by  the  work  of  his  own  hand,  the  head  alone  luminous,  from  the  evil 
of  gloom  around  it,  with  its  spiritual  radiance,  crowned  by  that  wealth  of 
flowers;  he  looked,  then  turned  it  aside  towards  the  wall,  so  that  the  richness 
of  color  no  longer  smiled  out  of  the  opaque  shadows,  and  went  within  to  his 
solitude.  That  face,  gazing  out  from  the  darkness  under  the  diadem  of  woven 
blossoms,  seemed  like  the  phantom  of  his  own  dead  youth. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

"SEIGNEUR!  AYEZ  PITHS." 

NEVER  in  the  rich  days  of  the  Cinque  Cento,  of  the  Dandolo  age,  when  the 
cities  of  Italy  were  filled  with  pomp  and  mirth  and  music,  when  the  mighty 
palaces  were  wreathed  with  flowers  that  lent  their  bright  blush  to  the  white 
stone  and  glowed  over  the  black  marbles,  when  the  dark  arches  framed 
hair  like  the  gold  arras  that  draped  the  balconies,  and  lips  ripe  as  the  scarlet 
heart  of  the  rose  that  glowed  in  their  bosom,  and  eyes  that  sent  men  to  far 
Byzantium,  or  to  the  oaths  of  the  Templar,  with  the  riot  of  burning  thoughts 
which  drove  their  steel  with  fiercer  thrust  into  the  Paynim  foe, — never  among 
those  "  dear  dead  women,"  whose  lost  loveliness  the  poet  mourns,  was  any 
beauty  rarer  or  more  lustrous  than  that  of  the  young  Tuscan  who  had  grown  up 
under  the  forest-shadows  below  Vallombrosa,  scarce  more  tended,  not  more 
heeded,  than  one  of  the  passion  flowers  that  bursts  into  its  glorious  bud  unseen  by 
any  eyes  above  the  broken  stone  of  some  ruined  altar  of  Pan.  Though  her  years 
were  so  few  that  the  fulness  of  her  beauty  might  yet  be  scarcely  reached,  she 
had  already  the  splendor  of  a  Titian  picture  on  her,  the  superb  grace,  wild  as  a 
deer,  proud  as  the  daughter  of  Caesars,  that  here  and  there  still  lingers,  as 
though  to  verify  tradition,  in  the  women  of  Campagna  or  of  Apennine. 

The  loneliness  of  her  childhood,  the  consciousness  of  a  ban  placed  on  her, 
the  haughty  instincts  which  had  weakened  in  self-defence  against  the  shafts  of 
scorn,  the  solitary  and  meditative  life  which  she  had  led,  had  lent  her  a  certain 
patrician  pride,  a  certain  thoughtful  shadow;  a  wistful  pain  sometimes  gazed 
out  of  the  depths  of  her  blue-black  eyes;  a  lofty  rebellion  sometimes  broke 


320  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

through  the  dreaming  gladness  of  her  smile.  She  was  happy,  because  she  was 
young,  because  she  was  sinless,  because  she  had  the  innocence  which  finds  its 
joy  in  the  caress  of  a  bird,  in  the  radiance  of  a  sunset,  in  the  mere  breath  and 
consciousness  of  existence;  but  she  had  the  pang  of  wounded  pride,  the  burden 
of  a  scarce-comprehended  shame,  and  the  vague,  bitter,  impassioned  longing  of 
a  mind  too  ardent  and  too  daring  for  its  sphere;  and  these  gave  their  character 
to  her  face,  their  hues  to  her  youth;  these  made  her  far  more  than  a  mere  child, 
however  lovely,  can  be.  She  was  like  Heloi'se  ere  her  master  had  become  her 
lover,  and  while  her  eyes,  as  they  gazed  on  the  Greek  scroll  or  the  vellum 
Evangeliarium,  were  brilliant  with  the  light  of  aspiration  and  dark  with  the 
thoughts  of  a  poet,  but  had  never  yet  drooped,  heavy  with  the  languor  and 
burning  with  the  knowledge  of  love. 

From  the  aged  priest  she  had  learned  all  his  scholarly  lore  that  plunged 
deep  into  the  life  of  the  past,  and  drank  deep  of  Latin  and  Hellenic  culture;  he 
had  loved  the  rugged  roads  of  wisdom,  the  unfathomed  sea-depths  of  knowl- 
edge, the  buried  treasures  of  cloister  folios  and  of  crabbed  copia, — she  had 
loved  them  too.  With  no  other  in  the  obscure  hill-side,  to  which  fate  had  con- 
demned him,  to  give  him  sympathy  or  understanding  in  these  things,  the  stern 
old  man  had  taken  eager  pleasure  in  steeping  with  them  the  virgin  soil  of  a 
young  and  thirsty  mind.  In  the  bare,  gray,  narrow  chamber  of  his  dwelling, 
with  its  single  lancet  window  through  which  crept  the  mellow  sunlight  from  the 
cloudless  skies,  the  fair  head  of  the  child  Castalia,  with  its  weight  of  burnished 
tresses,  had  bent  above  the  huge  tomes  and  the  century-worn  manuscriptum 
for  hour  on  hour,  like  Heloi'se  in  the  cell  of  the  canonry.  She  had  a  passionate 
love  of  those  studies;  and,  whilst  they  filled  her  mind  with  great  and  impersonal 
thoughts,  they  did  much  to  console  her  for  her  fate,  and  much  to  enrich  her 
intelligence  far  beyond  her  years  and  her  sex.  They,  and  the  beauties  of  the 
earth  and  the  seasons,  were  her  sole  pleasures.  The  priest's  mother,  under 
whose  roof  she  lived,  was  nearly  ninety  years,  descript  and  harsh,  who,  well 
as  she  loved  her  foundling  in  her  heart,  could  be  no  aid  or  associate  to  her. 
With  the  peasantry,  the  people  who  maligned  her  unknown  parent,  she  would 
have  no  converse  in  their  flower- feasts  and  their  vintage  celebrations.  She 
lived  alone  with  the  learning  of  dead  ages  and  the  fragrance  of  a  forest-world. 

Some,  such  an  isolation  would  have  maddened  or  ruined;  Castalia,  with  a 
singular  vividness  of  imagination,  and  a  proud  patience  beneath  the  passionate 
warmth  of  her  nation,  had  received  through  it  a  higher  nature  than  any  other 
and  happier  life  could  have  developed. 

She  was  a  poem,  with  her  aristocracy  of  look  that  might  have  sprung  from 
some  great  race  like  the  Medici  or  the  Medina-Sidonia,  and  with  her  slight, 
sad,  all-eloquent  story,  that  needed  no  detail  to  fill  it  up;  with  her  touching 
desolation  of  circumstance  and  of  destiny,  and  her  brilliant  youth  that  in  its 


CHAN  DOS.  321 

elasticity  and  its  enthusiasm  broke  aside  all  barriers  of  doom  and  pain  and 
found  its  careless  joy  God-given  from  a  song-bird's  carol,  from  a  cloister- 
scribe's  story,  from  the  tossing  of  a  sea  of  green  rushes  in  the  wind,  from  the 
dreams  of  an  outer  world,  unknown  and  glorified  in  fancy  into  paradise.  She 
was  a  poem  in  the  spring-time  of  her  life  and  in  the  spring-time  of  the  year. 

The  smile  of  women's  eyes  had  no  beckoning  light  for  him,  the  whisper  of 
women's  allurement  no  sorcery  for  his  ear;  he  had  been  a  voluptuary  in  an 
earlier  time,  but  he  had  passed  through  bitterness  and  poverty,  and  sensuous 
charms  had  ceased  to  hold  him.  Yet  there  was  enough  of  the  poet  lingering 
in  him  to  make  him  vaguely  feel  some  memories  of  youth  and  some  tenderness 
of  pity  arise  as  he  looked  on  the  bright  head  that  he  painted  with  its  diadem  of 
flowers,  on  the  opening  life  that  he  had  found  in  this  beech-wood  nest.  Had 
chance  not  thrown  her  on  him,  he  would  never  have  sought  her;  brought  to 
his  protection,  to  his  compassion,  she  won  her  way  to  him  in  the  spring  of  the 
divine  Tuscan  year  as  some  forest-fawn  whom'  he  should  have  found  wounded 
and  beaten  in  the  storm  might  have  come  to  his  hand  in  after-days,  and  been 
caressed  for  the  sake  of  its  past  peril  and  its  present  gratitude. 

He  had  sought  the  seclusion  of  the  old  Latin  villa  for  the  isolation  which  he, 
a  writer  and  a  thinker  of  whom  the  world  spoke,  often  preferred  to  the  life  of 
cities,  under  gray  Alpine  shadows,  in  still  Danubian  woods,  by  olive-crested 
Southern  seas,  or  amidst  the  Moorish  ruins  of  a  Granadine  landscape.  Wealth 
he  had  none;  he  was  poor;  but  as  each  young  year  awoke  in  its  renaissance, 
he  liked  to  have  around  him  the  richness  of  color  and  fragrance,  the  beauty  of 
the  earth's  dower,  that  needed  no  purchase,  but  could  be  made  his  own  by  each 
who  loved  it  well  enough  to  understand  its  meaning. 

In  the  monastic  twilight  and  silence  of  the  old  classic  hall,  the  painting  with 
the  crown  of  flowers  glowed  brightly  and  vividly  like  a  living  thing  from  out 
the  gloom;  and  with  the  deep  studies  and  the  solitary  thoughts  which  had  here- 
tofore usurped  him,  the  memory  and  the  presence  of  this  fair  child  mingled, — 
not  without  a  charm,  a  charm  which  had  something  of  recollection.  The  re- 
membrance was  fugitive,  and  he  could  never  bring  it  clearly  before  his  knowl- 
edge; but  it  was  there,  and  strong  enough  to  make  him  seek  more  of  her 
history.  The  search  was  futile:  there  was  no  more  to  know;  her  mother  had 
died,  mute  and  nameless,  and  whence  she  came  there  was  no  record — there  was 
not  even  a  suggestion — to  show  or  to  hint.  One  thing  alone  was  certain;  her 
mother  had  worn  no  marriage-ring,  and  the  only  word  marked  on  the  child's 
linen  was  the  single  one  Castalia. 

The  woman  had  been  of  great  beauty,  the  peasants  said,  though  worn  and 
haggard, — a  Southern  beauty,  with  eyes  that  burned  like  flame,  and  a  terrible 
wandering  look;  but  she  had  been  utterly  exhausted  when  she  had  reached 
Fontane,  and  had  lain  almost  speechless,  until  in  the  middle  of  the  hot,  heavy, 

lL— 11 


323  0  UIDAS     WORKS. 

tempestuous  night  she  had  looked  with  a  glance  that  all  could  read  from  the 
face  of  the  priest  to  the  sleeping  form  of  the  child,  and  had  sighed  wearily  and 
restlessly,  and  died. 

The  blank  in  the  history  made  it  but  the  more  mournful,  the  more  suggestive. 
An  exceeding  pity  moved  in  him,  as  he  heard,  for  the  life  ushered  in  in  such 
abandoned  desolation,  and  for  which  there  seemed  no  haven  open  save  the 
cloister, — a  fate  as  barbarous  for  her  radiant  and  impassioned  loveliness,  which 
not  even  the  melancholy  of  her  fate  could  dim,  as  to  wring  the  glad  throat  of  a 
song-bird  in  the  full  rush  of  its  forest  melody.  With  him  at  least  she  was 
happy, — she  who  had  never  known  what  happiness  was,  except  such  forms  of  it 
as  the  sweet,  irrepressible  intoxication  of  the  mere  sense  of  existence  which 
youth  gives,  and  the  joys  that  a  vivid  imagination  and  a  passionate,  poetic  tem- 
perament confer.  In  his  presence  she  was  happy,  and  he  could  not  refuse  it  to 
her.  Few  days  passed  without  his  seeing  her,  in  the  beech-grove  where  he  had 
first  glanced  at  her  by  the  broken  fountain,  in  the  pine-woods  sloping  up  towards 
Vallombrosa,  in  the  deserted  gardens  or  in  the  ruined  hall  of  his  own  Latin 
villa.  He  had  no  thought  in  it  save  that  of  compassion,  even  whilst  her  lus- 
trous eyes  vaguely  recalled  him  his  past;  and  in  the  untutored  thoughts  that  had 
fed  in  these  hill-solitudes  on  the  legacies  of  the  Hellenic  schools  and  the  liter- 
ture  of  the  Renaissance,  he  found  the  wakening  intellect  of  a  Corinna.  Love 
had  long  been  killed  in  him;  it  was  a  thing  of  his  youth,  never,  he  believed, 
like  that  youth,  to  revive,  and  no  touch  of  passion  mingled  with  the  pity  she 
aroused  in  him;  but  that  pity  was  infinitely  gentle,  and  to  her  the  most  precious 
mercy  that  her  life  had  known. 

In  her  home,  silence  and  austerity  reigned  with  the  stern  simplicity  of  the 
primitive  Church.  From  the  peasants  she  met  with  at  best  a  good-natured  in- 
solence that  was  to  her  instinctively  imperial  nature  worse  than  all  neglect;  from 
him  alone  she  met  with  what  ennobled  her  in  her  own  sight,  and  filler  her  to- 
wards him  with  a  passionate  gratitude  and  veneration  that  was  only  not  love  be- 
cause no  knowledge  of  love  had  dawned  on  her  and  because  an  absolute  sub- 
mission and  awe  were  mingled  with  it.  To  her  he  was  the  incarnation  of  all  sub- 
lime lives  that  she  had  dreamed  of  over  the  histories  of  Plutarch,  and  Tacitus, 
and  Claudius,  of  Augustin,  and  Hildebrand,  and  Basil ;  to  her  he  was  as  an  em- 
peror to  his  lieges,  as  an  archangel  to  his  devotees;  all  grand  and  gracious 
things  to  her  seemed  blended  in  him,  and  all  lofty  and  royal  lives  of  poet, 
saint,  or  king  with  which  her  memory  was  stored  seemed  to  her  met  in  his.  It 
was  not  love  that  she  bore  him;  it  was  something  infinitely  more  uncoscious  and 
more  idealized:  it  was  an  absolute  adoration. 

She  did  not  know  why  the  hours  were  a  dead  worthless  space  unless  they 
brought  her  to  his  presence,  why  the  mere  distant  sound  of  his  voice  filled  her 
heart  with  a  joy  intense  as  pain,  why  any  suffering  he  had  bidden  her  would 


CHANDOS.  323 

have  been  sweeter  than  any  gladness,  why  the  forest-world  about  her  wore  a 
light  it  had  never  had  before: — she  did  not  know;  she  only  knew  that  all  the 
earth  seemed  changed  and  transfigured.  He  was  not  blind  to  it;  it  touched 
him,  it  beguiled  him,  it  pleased  him;  it  was  very  long  since  anything  had  loved 
him  and  been  the  happier  for  his  smile;  it  was  very  long  since  these  softer, 
slighter  things  had  come  into  his  life,  and  they  had  a  certain  charm  for  him. 

There  had  been  a  time  when  all  women's  eyes  had  gained  a  brighter  light 
at  his  approach,  though  that  time  lay  far  away  in  a  deserted  land;  yet  in  some 
faint  measure  it  revived  for  him,  as  he  saw  the  silent  welcome,  more  eloquent  than 
all  words,  of  this  young  Tuscan's  glance;  and  to  him  she  was  but  a  beautiful 
child,  to  be  caressed,  without  deeper  thought. 

"•Eccellenza  ! "  she  said,  hesitatingly,  one  day  that  he  had  paused  by  her 
beside  her  favorite  haunt  by  the  Roman  fountain  in  the  black  belt  of  the  beech- 
woods,  "  you  tell  me  that  I  have  talent;  you  say  that  my  voice,  when  I  sing 
the  Latin  chants  that  you  love  best,  is  mus-ic  the  world  would  love  too.  Would 
they  do  nothing  for  me  in  the  world  ?  " 

That  "world"  was  so  vague,  so  far  off,  so  dim,  so  glorious  to  her!  She 
could  not  have  told  what  she  thought  lay  beyond  those  chestnut-belts  that  she 
had  never  past;  but  her  ideal  of  the  unknown  land  was  divine  as  Dante's  of  the 
City  of  God. 

He  answered  her  slowly:  he  knew  the  fate  to  which  her  defenceless  and 
nameless  beauty  would  there  be  doomed;  but  he  could  not  find  the  heart  to 
break  her  fair  illusion. 

"They  might, — they  would;  but  you  are  better  and  safer  here  in  your 
mountain  shelter." 

A  quick  sigh  escaped  her. 

"Oh,  no!  " 

"  No  ?  How  can  you  tell  that  ?  You  do  not  know  what  would  await  you. 
Be  happy  while  you  may,  Castalia;  the  world  would  crush  you!  " 

She  looked  at  him  wistfully,  while  a  grander  power  and  aspiration  than  the 
mere  longing  of  a  child  for  "  fresh  fields  and  pastures  new  "  gleamed  in  eyes 
that  with  a  little  while  would  burn  with  passion  as  they  now  glanced  with  light. 

"  It  is  only  the  weak  who  are  crushed.  They  could  not  scorn  me  for  my 
birth  and  loneliness  if  I  forced  them  to  say,  '  See!  fate  was  harsh  to  her;  but 
God  gave  her  genius  and  endurance,  and  she  conquered! ' ' 

The  words  and  the  tone  moved  him  deeply,  the  fearless  youth,  with  its 
faith,  its  fervor,  its  courage,  its  sublime  blindness  of  belief,  recalled  to  him  his 
own. 

"Ah,  Castalia!"  he  answered,  gently,  "but  the  world  loves  best  to  dwarf 
God  and  to  deny  genius.  And  genius  in  a  woman!  Cyril's  envy  stones 
Hypatia,  and  casts  her  beauty  to  the  howling  crowds." 


304  OUIDA'S     WORKS. 

Her  head  drooped,  but  the  look  of  resolve,  though  shadowed,  did  not  pass 
off  her  face. 

"Perhaps!  Yet  better  Hypatia's  glory  won  with  her  death  than  along, 
obscure,  ignoble,  useless  life!  You  say,  be  happy  here,  'lustrissimo:  happy! 
when  all  my  future  is  the  convent  ? " 

It  was  a  great  terror  to  her,  that  monastic  doom  to  which  the  priest  in- 
exorably condemned  her  future; — other  provision  he  could  make  none  for  her. 
She  was  so  full  of  vivid,  luxuriant,  abundant,  glowing  life.  Life  was  to  her  an 
unread  poem  of  such  magical  enchantment,  an  ungathered  flower  of  such 
sorceress-charm; — and  nothing  opened  to  her  except  that  living  tomb! 

He  gave  an  involuntary-gesture  of  pain. 

"  God  forbid !  Some  fairer  fate  will  come  to  you  than  that.  To  condemn 
you  to  a  convent-cell!  it  would  be  as  brutal  as  the  captivity  of  H61ol'se." 

A  brooding  weariness  passed  over  the  beauty  of  her  face. 

"But  Heloise  was  happier  than  I-should  be.     She  had  been  loved  once? " 

There  was  no  thought  in  her  as  she  spoke,  save  the  longing  for  tenderness 
ever  denied  her,  and  an  instinctive  comprehension  of  the  passion  and  the 
sacrifice  of  Paraclete. 

Where  he  leaned  against  a  beech-stem  above  her,  his  hand  touched  her  hair 
lingeringly  and  tenderly,  as  it  had  done  when  he  had  brought  her  through  the 
storm, — like  a  touch  to  a  fluttering  bird. 

"You  would  love  like  Helo'ise,  Castalia?  " 

She  drew  a  deep,  soft  breath;  she  was  always  awed  with  the  despair  and  the 
beauty,  half  mystic,  wholly  sublimated  to  her,  of  that  eternal  tale. 

"Ah!  who  would  not?  That  alone  is  love!  'Quand  I'empereur  cut  voulu 
m'honorer  du  nom  de  son  epouse,  j'aurais  mieux  aimer  etre  appelee  ta 
maitresse! ' ' 

The  words  of  Heloi'se  on  her  innocent  lips,  which  uttered  them  with  no 
thought  save  of  their  devotion  and  their  fidelity, — their  choice  of  slavery  to  her 
lover  rather  than  of  imperial  pomp  with  any  other, — had  an  eloquence  and  a 
temptation  greater  than  she  knew. 

He  sighed  almost  unconsciously;  it  was  the  love  of  which  he  had  dreamt  in 
his  youth, — dreamt,  and  never  found. 

"  Castalia!  you  make  me  wish  we  had  met  earlier!  " 

The  words  escaped  him  involuntarily.  She  lifted  her  eyes  in  wonder:  his 
meaning  she  could  not  guess. 

"  Earlier,  eccellenza! — why?  " 

He  smiled;  he  was  glad  that  she  failed  to  understand  him. 

"  No  matter!     What  is  it  you  are  reading  there  ?  " 

She  lifted  him  the  book;  an  Italian  translation  of  an  English  romance,— 
"  Lucrece." 


CHANDOS.  325 

A  shadow,  weary  and  heavy,  came  on  his  face  as  he  glanced  through  the 
pages. 

"  You  know  it? "  she  asked  him. 

"  Yes,  I  know  it." 

"  I  love  it  so  well  !  "  she  said,  passionately.  "It  was  left  here  by  chance 
years  ago,  by  some  travellers  going  through  the  Vallombrosa.  It  is  beautiful  ! 
— it  is  like  the  life  of  Heloise!  It  moves  me  as  the  winds  do  when  they  make 
their  music  through  the  woods  and  seem  as  though  they  called  on  men  to  cease 
from  evil  and  remember  God." 

The  words,  fantastic,  yet  very  eloquent  in  the  Tuscan  tongue,  while  her 
eyes  grew  humid,  and  the  color  on  her  cheeks  grew  warm  as  the  scarlet  heart 
of  a  pomegranate,  were  perhaps  the  truest  homage  the  work  had  ever  known. 

He  closed  the  book  and  gave  it  back. 

"  Since  you  feel  it  so,  you  give  the  author  his  best  reward." 

"  But  you  must  think  it  great,  too  ?  " 

"  No;  it  is  very  imperfect.     No  one  knew  that  better  than  he  who  wrote  it." 

"  It  is  perfect  to  me.     And  who  was  he, — its  writer  ?  " 

"  You  see  his  name  there." 

"  Yes,  his  name;  but  his  fate ?" 

"  Was,  they  say,  a  very  common  one.  It  was  the  fate  of  Icarus,  who  thought 
himself  a  winged  god  and  fell  broken  to  earth." 

"  He  never  fell  ignobly,"  she  said,  below  her  breath.  "  He  strove  to  rise 
too  high,  perhaps;  and  those  who  were  earth-bound  envied  him,  and  shot  him 
down  as  hunters  shot  an  eagle;  but  whoever  wrote  Jhat  book  would  only  gather 
strength  from  any  fall." 

He  answered  her  nothing.     A  little  later,  and  he  spoke  of  other  things. 

The  spring  deepened  into  early  summer;  he  had  been  seven  weeks  in  the 
Latin  villa  since  the  day  he  had  found  her  in  the  storm,  and  he  saw  her  often. 
He  was  beguiled  with  her,  and  the  thoughts  of  her  cultured  fancy,  all  untinged 
by  the  world's  taint,  as  they  were,  had  a  certain  charm  for  the  scholar,  not  less 
than  her  personal  loveliness  had  a  charm  for  one  who  had  been,  as  the  world 
held,  a  libertine.  But  either  passion  was  dead  in  him,  or  her  defencelessness 
lent  her  sanctity  in  his  sight;  for  no  warmer  word  or  glance  than  that  of  a  pity- 
ing and  pure  tenderness  ever  came  from  him  to  teach  her  either  his  power 
of  hers. 

She  knew  nothing  of  his  history,  not  even  his  name;  to  the  peasantry  he 
was  simply  "  the  stranger."  He  was  sojourning  here  for  the  villegiatura,  and 
into  his  solitude  none  had  ventured  until  she  had  been  taken  there  by  the  haz- 
ards of  the  mountain  weather.  Muse  on  what  could  be  his  history  she  often 
did,  but  to  question  him  on  it  she  no  more  would  have  thought  of  than,  in  the 
old  legends  of  her  Church,  those  whom  angels  visited  thought  of  pressing  curi- 


326  QUID  AS"    WORKS. 

ously  upon  their  reverenced  guest.  She  followed  other  words  of  Helo'ise,  "  En 
toi  je  ne  cherchai  que  toi,  rien  de  toi  que  toi-meme."  It  was  he  who  was  the 
idol  of  her  thoughts;  what  he  was,  whence  he  came,  she  never  sought  to  know. 
The  kingship  of  the  earth  would  not  have  seemed  to  her  an  empire  too  superb 
for  him  to  have  forsaken.  She  would  have  believed  whatever  he  should  have 
told  her  of  himself, — save  evil.  As  it  was,  he  told  her  nothing;  and  he  spoke 
her  language  and  the  dead  Latin,  which  was  equally  familiar  to  her,  so  that  he 
might  have  been  a  Tuscan  by  birth,  or,  as  her  fancy — imaginative  to  extrava- 
gance— sometimes  could  have  almost  conceived,  have  lived  in  those  ages  of 
Augustan  Rome  or  Gracchan  Revolution  of  which  he  loved  best  to  converse. 

Utterly  at  his  mercy  she  was:  of  peril  to  her  from  him  she  had  no  concep- 
tion,— what  he  had  commanded  she  would  have  obeyed  implicitly;  of  her  own 
danger  she  was  profoundly  ignorant;  and  that  he  could  have  erred  she  would 
have  no  more  believed  than  the  simple  fanatics  of,  her  native  beech-woods 
would  have  believed  in  the  error  of  the  saints  and  seraphs  to  whom  they  prayed. 
The  very  difference  in  their  years,  wide  as  it  was,  lent  an  additional  charm  to 
their  intercourse,  and  even  an  additional  danger,  since  it  lent  it  also  an  appar- 
ent and  fallacious  security. 

Later  on  that  same  day,  returning  through  the  forest  above  Fontane  to  the 
ruined  villa  where  he  lived  in  the  ascetic  simplicity  of  a  man  whose  only  riches 
lie  in  his  own  intellect  and  in  the  books  that  he  can  gather  round  him,  he  saw 
her  again,  as  the  sudden  break  in  the  wall  of  leaves  and  the  sudden  descent  of 
the  rocky  pathway  brought  him  to  a  gray  antique  broken  bridge  that  spanned 
what  was  now  little  save  a  dtied  water-course,  orchid-filled,  with  a  narrow  glim- 
mering brown  brook  under  the  flowers.  She  was  leaning  over  the  parapet,  rest- 
ing her  arm  on  a  basket  of  fruit.  There  was  the  indolent  reposeful  grace  of 
her  Southern  blood  in  the  attitude,  but  there  was  also  something  of  depression; 
and  while  a  joyous  light  flashed  into  her  eyes,  he  saw  they  had  been  dim  with 
tears.  He  paused  beside  her. 

"  Castalia  !  what  has  vexed  you  ?  " 

"  An  idle  thing,  eccellenza." 

"  Nothing  is  idle  if  it  have  power  to  wound  you.     Tell  me." 

A  proud  pain,  that  was  half  of  it  scorn  for  itself  and  half  the  impatience  to 
repay  scorn,  was  on  her  face  as  she  raised  it. 

"  It  is  my  folly  to  be  wounded!  But  as  two  contadine  passed  me  a  while 
ago,  they  thrust  out  their  lips  with  a  smile  that  was  wicked,  and  looked  at  me. 
'  Altro!  come  la  madre,  cosi  la  figlia! '  And  I  knew  that  they  meant  disdain  at 
me  and  at  her;  and  my  heart  ached  because  I  could  not  revenge.  Revenge  is 
guilt,  the  Padre  Giulio  says;  it  may  be,  but  when  they  mock  at  her  it  would  be 
very  sweet  to  me." 

The  strength  of  Southern  vengeance  gleamed  for  a  moment  over  the  soft- 


CHANDOS.  327 

ness  of  her  youth;  he  saw  how  easily  the  noble  nature  here  might  be  driven  to 
desperation  and  to  guilt.  If  the  lash  of  scorn  fell  on  her,  it  would  never 
chasten,  but  it  would  goad  and  madden  into  rebellion,  perhaps  into  reck- 
lessness. 

" Poverina /"  he  said,  caressingly,  "evil  be  to  those  who  cause  you  one 
moment's  pain.  Does  so  much  coarseness  and  cruelty  exist  even  in  your 
primitive  valley  ?  But  do  not  heed  them,  Castalia;  these  women  are  beneath 
your  regret;  and,  remember,  calumny  can  only  lower  us  when  it  has  power  to 
make  us  what  it  calls  us." 

Her  glance  gave  him  eloquent  and  grateful  comprehension. 

"Oh,  'lustrissimo!  it  is  not  their  scorn  that  I  heed;  it  is  only — I  am  afraid 
that  it  may  bring  me  yours.  And  death  would  be  more  merciful  to  me!  " 

The  words  touched  him  deeply, — more  deeply  than  he  showed;  for  he 
sought  to  turn  her  thoughts  from  herself,  as  he  took  her  hands  in  his  own  and 
looked  down  into  the  splendor  of  her  eyes. 

"  Castalia,  never  fear  that.  I  honor  you  for  what  you  are,  my  child.  Your 
mother's  error — if  error  it  were — can  never  rest  upon  you;  and  the  world  is 
often  sorely  at  fault  in  its  judgments.  It  condones  its  thieves,  and  condemns 
its  martyrs.  But  you  are  rash  to  attach  so  much  value  to  my  opinion.  You 
do  not  know  who  I  am, — whence  I  come, — what  my  history  may  be." 

"  But  I  know  you.  Had  I  sought  to  know  more,  woTild  you  not  have  thought 
me  unworthy  of  so  much  ?  The  fable  of  Psyche  is  so  true;  where  doubt  has 
once  come,  faith  is  dishonored." 

He  smiled  at  the  fable  she  chose,  and  her  insight  into  human  nature. 

"  Right.  I  think  Eros  was  justified  in  taking  wing  and  in  never  returning; 
but  still  there  is  such  a  thing  as  prudence.  How  can  you  tell  that  some  guilt 
does  not  rest  on  me  ? — that  I  come  here  because  I  am  a  marked  and  disgraced 
man  ? — that  I  may  be  utterly  unlike  all  you  believe  me  ? " 

She  looked  at  him  proudly  and  yet  sadly. 

"  Eccellenza,  those  who  bear  guilt  do  not  look  as  you  look;  and,  whatever 
you  be,  you  are  great." 

"  No  !  I  told  you  I  am  a  fallen  Caesar,  and  dropped  my  purples  long  ago." 

"  But  his  purples  are  the  least  part  of  Caesar's  greatness." 

"  Not  in  the  world's  estimate.     Come  let  me  see  you  homeward." 

He  raised  the  load  of  yellow  gourds  and  luscious  summer  fruits,  glowing 
amidst  leaves  and  wild  flowers,  as  he  spoke;  she  tried  to  take  it  from  him. 

"Oh,  illustrissimo  !  do, not  do  that !     You  must  not  carry  a  burden." 

"  I  have  carried  many,"  he  said,  half  with  a  smile.  She  looked  at  him  still, 
with  that  reverent,  wistful  look;  she  wondered  what  he  had  been. 

"  You  have  ?  But  they  must  have  been  the  weight  of  royalties,  then.  Give 
me  the  fruit  !  Pray  do  not  take  it  for  me  !  " 


328  OU IDA'S     WORKS. 

"Castalia,  an  emperor  is  bound  to  serve  a  woman.  We  have  that  lingering 
chivalry  among  us,  at  least." 

The  rocky  road  wound  down  under  beech-boughs,  and  over  green  turf,  and 
into  the  twilight  of  dense  woods,  till  the  aerial  campanile  of  Fontane  rose  in  its 
delicate  height  like  a  frozen  fountain  out  of  the  nest  of  leaves.  The  Tuscan 
sunset,  in  all  its  glow,  was  just  on  earth  and  sky  as  they  entered  the  valley  where 
the  white  spire  and  the  masses  of  chestnut-wood  stood  out  against  the  intense 
blue  of  the  early  summer  heavens. 

"  Coleridge  cried,  '  O  God,  how  glorious  it  is  to  live  ! '  "  he  said,  rather  to 
himself  than  to  her,  as  they  came  into  the  rosate  radiance.  "  Renan  asks,  '  O 
God,  when  will  it  be  worth  while  to  live  ? '  In  nature  we  echo  the  poet;  in  the 
world  we  echo  the  thinker." 

The  light  was  gone,  the  twilight  fallen,  as  he  left  her  at  the  little  chalet 
where  the  charity  of  the  Church  sheltered  her.  He  drew  her  to  him  with  an 
involuntary  action  of  tenderness. 

"  Castalia,  good-night!  " 

Her  eyes  looked  up  to  his  in  the  shadows  heavily  flung  around  them  by  the 
bending  boughs.  The  infinite  beauty  of  her  face  had  never  been  more  fair; 
almost  unconsciously,  something  of  the  softness  of  dead  years  revived  in  him; 
he  stooped  his  head,  and  his  lips  touched  the  flushed  warmth  of  her  cheek  in 
farewell.  The  kiss  startled  her  childhood  from  its  rest  forever;  with  it  the 
knowledge  of  love  came  to  her. 

A  sudden  consciousness,  a  sudden  alarm,  quivered  through  her;  her  heart 
beat  like  a  caught  bird,  in  a  sweetness  and  joy  that  made  her  afraid  of  their 
terrible  strength  and  made  her  tremble  before  him  as  though  criminal  with 
some  great  guilt;  she  stood  like  an  antelope  that  in  its  wild,  shy  grace  only 
tempts  the  hunter  the  more:  what  she  felt  had  a  strange  awe  for  her,  and  as 
strange  a  rapture.  Though  given  only  in  compassionate  tenderness,  the  caress  had 
taught  her  the  meaning  of  passion;  her  color  burned,  her  eyes  sank  under  his. 

At  that  instant  the  tread  of  a  heavy  step  was  heard  on  the  silence;  she  fled 
instinctively,  fleet  as  a  fawn,  into  the  deepening  shadow  of  the  arched  and 
open  door;  he  turned  away  and  went  back  up  the  woodland  road  to  his  own 
dwelling.  Fronting  him,  in  a  faint  ray  of  dying  light  that  slanted  through  the 
wall  of  chestnut  and  of  cypress,  the  old  priest  stood,  his  grave,  austere  features 
rugged  as  the  riven  rock. 

"  Give  me  a  word  with  you,"  he  said,  simply. 

He  whom  he  checked  in  his  path  looked  up  and  paused;  he  had  scarcely 
seen,  and  as  scarcely  thought  of,  the  self-appointed  guardian  of  Castalia. 

"  A  word  with  me?     Assuredly." 

The  priest  looked  at  him  with  searching  eyes,  in  which  there  was  still  a 
great  sadness  and  a  great  appeal. 


CHANDOS.  329 

"  Whoever  you  be,"  he  said,  briefly,  "  whether  great,  as  I  deem  by  your 
bearing,  or  no,  1  speak  to  you  not  as  the  one  owning  authority,  nor  as  one  hold- 
ing myself  God's  command,  but  simply  as  man  speaks  to  man." 

"Say  on." 

"  Then  I  say,  have  you  thought  what  it  is  you  do  now  ?  " 

"  Do?     I  fail  to  understand  you." 

He  spoke  patiently  still;  but  there  was  a  touch  of  intolerance  in  the  tone. 

"  I  will  make  my  meaning  plainer,  then,"  said  the  Italian,  who  had 
in  him  the  temper  with  which  Savonarola  upbraided  the  Triple  Tiara  and 
preached  the  ruthless  doctrine  of  renunciation.  "  Do  you  mean  to  ruin  that 
young  life?  " 

"God  forbid!" 

He  meant  it  in  utmost  sincerity,  and  surprise  was  the  strongest  feeling  in 
him  for  the  moment.  The  disavowal  softened  the  Tuscan. 

"  Then  do  you  know  that  they  speak  evil  of  her  on  your  score  ?  Do  you 
know  that,  through  you,  they  say  the  shame  of  her  mother  is  hers  ?  " 

His  face  grew  dark. 

"They  lie,  then, — utterly!  Teach  your  flock  more  charity  to  youth  and 
innocence,  holy  father.  And  let  me  pass;  I  cannot  wait  for  this  catechism." 

The  Tuscan  bent  his  head,  with  a  certain  dignity. 

"  I  thank  you  for  that  denial.  I  did  not  need  it;  her  eyes  are  too  clear 
beneath  mine.  Yet  allow  me  a  few  words  more.  You  give  her  no  love,  prob- 
ably; but  you  are  already  far  more  her  religion  than  the  creed  I  have  taught 
her  from  infancy.  How  will  you  use  your  power  over  her  ?  " 

He  was  silent;  his  thoughts  were  little  with  the  speaker,  he  was  thinking  of 
the  lips  that  had  trembled  beneath  his  own. 

"  You  may  lead  her  where  you  will;  I  confess  it  you!  You,  a  stranger,  who 
saw  her  first  but  a  few  weeks  ago,  have  a  force  to  mold  and  sway  her  that  I 
never  won, — I  who  have  reared  her  and  succored  her  wellnigh  from  her  birth," 
said  the  Italian,  with  a  bitterness  in  which  was  a  yearning  pain.  "  It  may  be 
that  I  have  seemed  harsh  to  her;  it  may  be  that  I  have  missed  my  way, — that, 
while  I  strove  overmuch  to  shield  her  from  her  mother's  error,  I  forgot  to  woo 
her  trust  and  her  heart, — I  forgot  that  a  child,  and  a  woman-child  above  all, 
needs  love  and  needs  indulgence.  It  may  be  that  I  erred.  Be  it  so  or  not, 
you  can  command  her;  and  I  can  no  more  stay  her  from  your  sorcery  than  I 
can  check  the  winds.  Yet  you  say  you  would  not  blight  her  life;  you  speak  as 
though  you  had  pity  on  her.  You  say  you  leave  her  innocence  sacred;  but 
will  you,  then,  rob  her  of  peace  ?  You  say  you  will  not  lead  her  to  dishonor: 
will  you  not  spare  her  also  the  bitterness  of  a  knowledge  that  must  destroy  the 
virginity  of  the  heart  ?  You  say  the  slanderers  lie:  will  you  not,  then,  be 
wholly  merciful,  and  leave  her  ere  she  learns  to  love  you  too  well  ?  You  can 


330  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

make  her  the  plaything  of  an  hour;  but  it  will  only  be  at  the  price  of  her 
whole  future." 

He  stood  silent  still  while  the  old  priest  spoke.  The  appeal  surprised  him, 
and  awakened  many  thoughts  that  had  never  before  dawned  in  the  compassion 
and  tenderness  he  had  felt  to  Castalia, — to  this  young  girl  who  looked  at.  him 
with  such  spaniel-eyes  of  love  and  brought  him  back  so  many  memories  of  his 
youth.  He  had  not  thought  of  cost  to  her. 

"  Your  lips  touched  hers  to-night,"  pursued  the  Tuscan.  "  The  woman  who 
has  once  felt  shame  under  a  caress  has  already  lost  half  her  purity.  You  gave 
her  in  that  a  memory  which  will  burn  into  her  heait  with  humiliation  every 
time  that  she  thinks  of  you.  You  may  mean  her  no  injury  now;  but  you  are 
one  who  has  lived  long,  doubtless,  in  the  pleasures  of  the  world:  how  will  it  end 
if  you  remain  near  her?  " 

He  raised  his  eyes,  where  they  stood  in  the  early  evening  light  falling  so 
faintly  through  the  parting  in  the  barrier  of  cypress,  and  looked  full  at  the 
Italian. 

"  You  plead  with  me  for  her;  to  what  fate  do  you  condemn  her  yourself? 
The  cloister  ?  Have  you  ever  thought  what  it  is  to  bury  her  in  that  tomb 
which  cannot  claim  even  the  repose  of  the  graves  of  the  dead  ? — to  bar  her  out 
from  light  and  laughter  and  melody  and  joy  ? — to  chain  her  loveliness  where 
no  kiss  shall  ever  meet  her  own,  no  heart  beat  on  hers,  no  eyes  see  her  smile, 
no  lover  seek  her  embrace  ?  Have  you  ever  thought  what  you  will  do  when 
you  seal  down  such  luxuriant  life  as  hers  to  beat,  and  struggle,  and  desire,  and 
pine,  and  wither,  and  perish  alone  ?  Yours  is  cruelty, — not  mine!  " 

The  Tuscan's  furrowed  cheek  grew  paler;  he  was  too  deep  a  scholar  to  be  a 
fanatical  churchman,  and  in  his  close,  stern  rugged  soul  he  cherished  Castalia 
tenderly. 

"  I  mean  no  cruelty, — Christ  knows.  But  I  have  no  other  shelter  for  her, 
and  there  at  least  she  would  have  innocence." 

"  Innocence  forced  and  untempted  !  what  is  it  better  than  sin?  Let  her  take 
her  chance  in  the  width  of  the  world,  let  her  even  know  trial  and  poverty  and 
temptation,  let  her  be  a  wanderer  and  a  beggar,  if  she  must;  but  leave  her  the 
free  air,  and  the  forest  liberty,  and  the  human  love  that  is  her  right,  and  the 
possibility  at  least  of  joy  !  " 

The  Italian  sighed  wearily. 

"I  strive  for  the  best;  and  my  cruelty  is  not  as  yours.  I  would  save  her 
at  least  from  actual  pain;  you — if  you  do  her  no  worse  thing — will  bind  on  her 
a  passion  and  a  regret  that  will  consume  her  to  her  grave.  I  know  her  nature; 
and  though  she  has  the  innocence,  she  has  not  the  inconstancy,  of  a  child:  she 
will  not  forget.  There  is  but  one  way  to  spare  her:  leave  her." 

He  was  silent  a  while  longer,  as  the  priest's  words  ceased,  and  there  was  no 


CHANDOS.  331 

sound  save  the  falling  of  a  water-course  rushing  downward  through  the  gloom 
and  through  the  leaves. 

"  I  will  leave  her,"  he  said,  at  last, — "  if  you  in  turn  give  me  your  word 
never  to  force  her  life  into  a  convent  !  " 

The  Tuscan  bent  his  head. 

"  I  promise." 

"  So  be  it.  I  will  make  her  no  farewell ;  let  her  think  me  heartless  of  her, 
if  she  will;  so  she  will  best  forget." 

Then  he  went  upward  through  the  evening  shadows,  along  the  slope  of  the 
hills,  to  the  loneliness  of  the  Latin  villa.  In  the  gloom  of  the  deserted  hall 
the  picture  of  the  diadem  of  flowers  alone  gleamed  radiant  as  a  ray  of  the 
moonlight  fell  across  it.  He  paused  before  the  painting,  and  a  sudden  pity 
stole  on  him. 

The  promise  that  he  had  given  had  a  certain  pain  for  him.  It  was  not  love 
that  he  felt  for  her.  There  had  been  too  great  a  darkness  on  his  life  for  the 
softness  of  that  passion  easily  to  revive;  but  he  had  found  a  pleasure  in  once 
more,  after  lengthened  solitude,  being  the  subject  of  that  sweet,  reverent 
adoration;  and  she  had  inspired  him  with  an  unspeakable  compassion  for  her 
fate,  which  could  not  let  him  muse  without  anxiety  upon  that  fate's  inevitable 
future.  There  had  been  a  time  when  the  lavishness  of  his  gifts  and  the  influ- 
ence of  his  word  could  have  lifted  her  into  happiness  as  easily  as  a  flower  is 
transplanted  into  sunlight  from  the  shade;  but  that  time  was  far  away.  He 
felt  the  hardest  pang  of  poverty  to  those  of  generous  nature:  he  had  nothing 
to  give. 

He  had  offered  the  promise,  and  he  would  redeem  it  because  she  was 
motherless  and  defenceless,  and  therefore  sacred  to  him;  but  he  stood  and 
looked  at  the  flower-crowned  painting  with  a  pang  of  regret. 

"  It  is  a  harsh  mercy  that  he  asks  of  me,"  he  thought;  "  and  yet  what  else 
should  be  the  end  ?  Love  is  no  toy  for  me  now;  and  she  is  worthier  of  a  hap- 
pier fate  than  to  be  the  passing  fancy,  the  consolation  of  an  hour,  to  a  worn 
and  wearied  life." 

On  the  morrow,  ere  the  sun  was  high,  he  was  far  from  Vallombrosa. 


332  GUI  DA'S     WORKS. 


BOOK  THE    SEVENTH. 


Let  go  thy  hold  when  a  great  wheel  goes  down  the  hill,  lest  it  break  thy  neck  with  fol- 
lowing it;  but  the  great  wheel  that  goes  up  the  hill,  let  him  draw  thee  after. 

SHAKSPEARK. 

He  that  calls  a  man  ungrateful,  sums  up  all  the  evil  that  a  man  can  be  guilty  of. 

SWIFT. 

If  the  deed  were  evil, 
Be  thou  contented,  wearing  now  the  garland. 

SHAKSPEARK. 

L'artiste  est  un  dieu  tombe  qui  se  souvient  d'un  temps  ou  il  creait  un  monde. 

ARSENE  HOUSSAYE. 


CHAPTER  I. 

"DO   WELL   UNTO   THYSELF,    AND    MEN    WILL   SPEAK   GOOD   OF   THEE." 

THE  member  for  Darshampton  sat  at  breakfast  in  his  house  in  town, — 
a  fine  mansion,  whose  rental  was  two  thousand  a  year,  yet  in  whose  unostenta- 
tious and  solid  comfort  there  was  the  impress  of  sterling  wealth,  but  not  a  trace 
of  parvenu  arrogance  or  ill  taste.  It  was  luxurious,  certainly;  but  withal  it  was 
quiet,  subdued,  and  bore  the  impress  of  a  plain  sobriety,  but  a  settled  affluence. 
There  was  no  "  veneer  "  in  a  particle  of  it,  and  a  good  deal  of  it  even  had  that 
ugliness  which  in  this  country  is  considered  a  voucher  for  practical  utility  and 
moral  virtue.  The  fashion  of  all  its  decorations  and  garniture  had  little  beauty; 
they  were  angular  and  commonplace,  but  they  were  never  florid,  and  their  gold 
was  real  gold,  their  velvets  were  real  velvet. 

He  sat  at  breakfast  in  his  dining-room,  which  saw  given,  season  after  sea- 
son, the  very  best  dinners  in  town.  It  was  a  long,  low  room,  hung  with  crim- 
son and  with  a  few  fine  pictures;  at  the  farther  end  was  a  white  bust  on  a  pillar 
of  jasper:  it  was  the  bust  of  a  long-dead  statesman,  Philip  Chandos.  The 
member  for  Darshampton  was  taking  his  breakfast,  surrounded  with  a  sea  of 
morning  papers;  he  had  already  done  two  hours'  hard  work  with  his  secretary, 


CHANDOS.  333 

dictating,  annotating,  reading  reports,  computing  satistics,  conning  over  precis. 
Leisure,  indeed,  was  a  thing  he  never  knew;  untiring,  elastic,  indefatigable,  un- 
sparing, he  was  an  admirable  man  of  business,  and  every  moment  of  his  day 
was  consumed  in  a  labor  seemingly  borne  as  lightly  as  it  was  in  reality  thoroughly 
done,  whatever  its  natrre. 

Public  life  was  his  natural  sphere;  to  it  he  brought  a  brain,  ever  vigilant, 
an  energy  ever  unconquerable,  a  facility  that  might  have  been  almost  too 
facile  had  it  not  been  corrected  by  a  keen  and  vigorous  patience  that  would 
never  slur  over  anything,  and  that  searched  out  the  minutest  points  of  every 
subject.  Yet  the  enormous  variety,  and  the  intensity  of  application  that  char- 
acterized his  work,  told  in  no  sort  of  way  on  his  health:  he  felt  well,  looked 
well,  slept  well;  he  never  found  any  tax  on  his  strength  touch  him,  more  than 
if  he  had  been  made  of  oak  or  granite;  he  never  knew  what  pain  or  what  weariness 
was.  He  reaped  now  the  recompense  of  the  training,  the  temperance,  and  the  en- 
tire freedom  from  all  license  in  vice  that  he  had  imposed  on  himself  so  severely 
throughout  his  early  manhood.  His  eyes  were  as  bright,  his  skin  as  clear,  his 
teeth  as  white,  his  smile  as  merry,  as  twenty  years  before;  John  Trevenna  was 
unchanged, — unchanged  in  form  and  feature,  in  manner  and  in  mind.  In  the 
first,  the  man  was  too  healthily  framed  to  alter  much  with  time;  in  the  latter, 
he  was  too  integrally  original,  and  bore  too  thorough  and  marked  an  idio-- 
syncrasy,  to  alter  while  he  had  life.  He  cut  his  impress  on  the  world  about 
him,  he  did  not  take  his  mold  from  it:  men  of  this  type  change  little.  More- 
over, Trevenna  had  Success:  it  is  a  finer  tonic  than  any  the  Pharmacopoeia 
holds,  specially  for  those  who,  like  him,  are  too  wise  to  let  it  be  also  a  stimulant 
that  intoxicates  or  an  opiate  that  drugs  them. 

He  had  success  of  the  richest  and  fullest.  Slowly  won,  but  surely,  he  had 
mounted  his  cautious  and  victorious  way  to  those  heights  that  long  ago  had 
been  a  goal  of  which  men  would  have  called  him  a  madman  ever  to  dream,  and 
had  netted  together  the  innumerable  threads  of  his  policies  and  his  efforts,  till 
he  had  woven  them  into  a  rope-ladder  strong  enough  and  long  enough  to  en- 
able him  to  reach  the  power  he  had  coveted  from  earliest  boyhood.  -His  rise 
had,  in  appearance,  been  gradual,  yet  it  had  been  rapid  in  fruits  and  in  attain- 
ment; and  there  were  few  men  living  of  whom  so  much  was  thought  in  the 
present,  from  whom  so  much  was  expected  in  the  future.  The  sedulous  training 
he  had  pursued  so  patiently  had  brought  its  own  reward:  none  went  to  the 
political  arena  more  finely  prepared  for  it;  none  had  more  completely  gained  a 
footing  and  a  power  there. 

The  first  words  he  had  uttered  in  the  House  had  told  them  his  quality,  had 
told  them  that  no  ordinary  man  had  come  among  them  to  represent  that  little 
borough  of  the  southwestern  sea-board ;  but  he  had  been  careful,  and  he  had 
been  wise.  He  had  not  alarmed  them  with  a  sudden  burst  of  talent;  he  had 


334  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

been  Content  to  run  a  waiting  race  for  the  first,  and  to  bide  his  time.  He  had 
let  his  influence  grow;  he  had  been  noted  earliest  rather  for  his  admirable 
common  sense  and  his  practical  working-powers  than  for  anything  more  brill- 
iant; and  gradually  as  his  critical  audience,  who  regarded  him  as  an  outsider 
and  an  adventurer,  became  cognizant  of  his  value,  he  allowed  the  true  resources 
and  the  real  capabilities  of  his  mind  to  be  discovered.  Festina  lente  was  his 
motto,  and  he  had  followed  it  with  a  patience  the  more  marvellous  in  one  whose 
quick,  energetic,  prompt,  caustic  temper  always  urged  him  to  instant  action  and 
ironic  retort. 

Now  he  had  his  reward;  his  weight  was  immense,  his  popularity  with  the 
large  and  wealthy  and  liberal  mass  of  the  country,  extreme.  Ministers  dreaded 
him,  chiefs  of  his  own  party  recognized  in  him  the  first  of  all  their  auxiliaries; 
Government  would  have  bought  his  silence  with  anyplace;  the  benches  never 
were  so  crowded  as  on  a  night  when  one  of  his  watched-for  and  trenchant 
speeches  rang  through  the  drowsy  air  of  the  Lower  Chamber  like  the  clear 
stirring  notes  of  a  trumpet.  He  was  rich;  his  commercial  speculations,  made 
with  that  unerring  acumen  which  distinguished  him,  had  prospered  and 
multiplied  a  thousandfold;  all  he  undertook  succeeded.  Those  who  had 
sneered  him  down  had  become  compelled  to  court  and  conciliate  him;  great 
orders  who  had  dubbed  him  nobody,  and  shut  him  with  scorn  outside  their  pale, 
now  learned  to  dread  him  as  their  direst  opponent.  Houses  where  he  had  used  to 
enter  on  sufferance  now  received  him  as  an  honored  guest;  statesmen  who  had 
once  blackballed  him  at  clubs  now  would  have  given  any  splendid  bribe  he 
would  have  taken  to  still  his  defiance  or  to  secure  his  alliance.  Against  pres- 
tige, prejudice,  poverty,  the  sneer  of  the  world,  the  antagonism  of  the  nobility, 
the  uttermost  disadvantages  and  difficulties  of  position,  Trevenna  had  fought 
his  way  into  a  foremost  rank,  and  compelled  his  foes  to  acknowledge  and  to 
dread  the  man  whom  they  had  laughed  down  as  an  insignificant  farceur,  a 
nameless  club-lounger.  His  conquest  was  grand;  the  indomitable  courage 
that  he  had  brought  to  it,  the  exhaustless  endurance  with  which  he  had  sus- 
tained defeat  and  humiliation,  the  untiring  resolve  with  which  he  had  kept  one 
aim  in  view  so  long  and  beaten  down  the  barriers  of  class  and  custom,  are  the 
most  magnificent  qualities  of  human  life.  The  work  was  great,  and  greatly 
done.  The  man  who  vanquishes  the  opprobrium  of  adverse  orders  and  the 
opposition  of  adverse  circumstances  is  a  soldier  as  staunch  as  the  Barca  brood 
of  Carthage;  but — the  weapons  with  which  the  fight  had  been  fought  here  were 
foul  as  an  assassin's,  and  the  root,  like  the  goal  of  the  struggle,  was  envy.  A 
man  may  rise  with  an  admirable  perseverance  and  dauntlessness;  but  the 
hatchets  with  which  he  carves  his  way  up  the  steep  shelving  ice-slope  may 
nevertheless  be  blood-stained  steel  and  stolen  goods.  We  are  too  apt,  in  our 
wonder  and  our  applause  at  the  height  to  which  he  has  attained  against  all 


CHAN  DOS.  335 

odds,  to  forget  to  note  whether  his  steps  up  the  incline  have  been  clean  and 
justly  taken. 

Trevenna's  frankness,  his  bonhomie,  his  logical  brain,  his  racy  eloquence, 
his  practical  working-powers,  his  taking  candor,  with  which  he  avowed  himself 
of  the  middle  classes,  claiming  no  rights  of  birth,  his  cheerful  and  unerring 
good  sense,  with  which  he  would  alike  treat  a  political  question  by  ex- 
amining its  business  utility,  and  disarm  a  social  sneer  by  disclaiming  all  pre- 
tensions to  rank  or  to  dignity,  charmed  the  world  in  general,  paralyzed  his  aris- 
tocratic foes,  and  pioneerd  his  way  wherever  he  would,  giving  him  a  wide  and 
sure  hold  on  the  classes  to  whose  sympathies  he  made  his  direct  appeal.  The 
fine  intrigues  by  which  power  had  been  secretly  won  to  him,  the  merciless 
knowledge  with  which  he  coerced  those  whose  histories  he  held  in  a  tyranny 
none  the  less  irresistible  because  tacit,  the  paths  in  which  his  finesses  had 
wandered  to  gather  his  hold  on  so  many,  the  sinks  out  of  which  his  wealth  had 
been  taken,  as  gold  is  found  in  the  sewers,  the  manifold  infamies  into  which 
his  bright  skill  had  dived,  to  issue  from  them  with  a  terrible  omnipotence,  the 
network  of  inimitable  chicaneries,  ever  wisely  to  windward  of  the  law,  with 
which  he  had  overspread  the  world  he  had  vanquished,  the  commercial  gam- 
bling in  which  he  had  filled  his  treasuries  by  a  fluke,  and  doubled  and  quad- 
rupled gains  gotten  by  lies,  the  hearty,  ironic,  good-humored,  rascally  contempt 
in  which  he  held  all  mankind  and  disbelieved  in  all  honesty, — these  were  un- 
known, unguessed,  alike  by  the  people  who  believed  in  him,  by  the  aristocracies 
who  hated  him,  by  the  party  who  adored  him,  and  by  the  world  on  which  he 
had,  against  odds  so  vast,  graven  the  impress  of  his  daring  and  splendid  talent. 

When  the  white  block  of  marble  shines  so  solid  and  so  costly,  who  remem- 
bers that  it  was  once  made  up  of  decaying  shells  and  rotting  bones  and  millions 
of  dying  insect-lives  pressed  to  ashes  ere  the  rare  stone  was  ? 

Trevenna's  success  was,  like  the  bricks  of  the  ancient  temples,  cemented 
with  the  blood  of  quivering  hearts;  but  it  was  all  the  firmer  for  that,  and  none 
the  less  victorious.  Now,  where  he  sat  in  his  dining-rcom,  he  glanced  down 
the  leaders  of  his  own  especial  organ,  a  journal  that  ever  sounded  "  lo  triumphe" 
before  him, — glanced  amusedly  over  the  closing  words  of  the  column  devoted 
to  the  praise  of  "  the  most  promising  statesman  we  possess, — the  assured  chief 
of  the  future, — the  great  orator  by  whom  Darshampton  is  so  nobly  represented." 

"  Of  unflagging  energy,"  pursued  his  claqueur  of  the  Communist,  "  of  the 
highest  political  probity,  of  a  fixity  of  principle  never  to  be  turned  from  its 
goal  by  the  gilded  bait  of  office,  of  talent  most  versatile,  yet  which  never  in- 
terfere with  his  devotion  to  the  smallest  business  detail  or  mercantile  interest, 
essentially  English  in  creed,  bias,  and  temper,  preferring  solid  excellence  to 
the  flashy  fascination  of  superficial  attainment,  and  signalized  by  cordial  and 
earnest  sympathies  with  the  wishes  and  the  rights  of  the  masses,  it  is  to  Mr. 


336  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

Trevenna  that  all  thoughtful  and  advanced  minds  must  inevitably  look  for  prog- 
ress and  assistance  in  the  future  cf  our  nation.  The  laws,  the  liberties,  the  do- 
mestic virtues  of  the  hearth  and  home,  the  independence  abroad,  and  the  pros- 
perity of  internal  interests,  the  maintenance  of  religion  and  morality,  the  secur- 
ity of  the  birthright  of  freedom  to  the  poorest  life  that  breathes,— all  that  are  so 
notably  dear  to  every  Englishman  are  equally  precious  to  him;  and  their  pres- 
ervation from  all  foreign  taint  and  alien  tyranny  is  the  object  alike  of  his  pub- 
lic and  private  career.  Conquest  does  not  recommend  itself  to  him  as  peace 
and  charity  do;  and  the  clash  of  arms  is  jarring  on  his  ear  when  heard  instead 
of  the  whirr  of  a  myriad  looms,  bread-winning  and  bread-giving.  The  welfare 
of  the  vast  industrial  classes  of  Great  Britain  is  at  his  heart  before  all  else;  and 
to  the  sway  which  he  exerts  over  the  Senate,  even  when  its  members  be  most 
strongly  adverse  to  him,  we  may  apply  the  trite  lines  of  the  '  ./Eneid/  '  Hoc  tibi 
erunt  artes,'  etc.  etc." 

So  the  Communist.  Trevenna  laughed:  the  lion  had  too  much  racy  humor 
in  him  not  to  enjoy  the  ridicule  of  his  jackal's  fine  peroration. 

"  Very  well,  my  good  fellow,"  he  thought,  condescendingly.  "  Laid  on  a 
trifle  too  thick,  perhaps;  and  you  will  call  the  Commons  a  '  Senate,'  and  nothing 
will  cure  you  of  trotting  out  your  bit  of  school  Latin,  whether  it  quite  fits  or 
not:  still,  it  does  very  well.  '  Virtues  of  the  hearth  and  home;'  ah?  nothing 
brings  down  the  House  like  that.  We're  as  blackguard  a  nation  as  any  going 
in  vice,  but  we  do  love  to  amble  out  with  a  period  about  domestic  bosh. 
My  puffs  were  neater  when  I  wrote  'em  myself;  no  gale  blows  you  so  bravely 
along  as  the  breeze  you  pick  yourself  out  of  the  wind-bag.  Who  should  know 
so  well  as  yourself  all  your  most  telling  hits,  your  titbits  of  excellence,  your 
charming  niceties  of  virtue?  The  puff  perfect  is  the  puff  personal 
— adroitly  masked.  Mercy  on  us  !  I  do  believe  Htidibras  is  right,  and  the 
cheated  enjoy  being  cheated.  If  I  told  my  dearly  beloved  masses,  now,  '  You're 
a  lot  of  uneducated  donkeys, — but  you're  my  best  stepping-stones,  and  so  I 
make  you  lie  down  and  I  get  into  your  saddles,'  they'd  be  disgusted  to-morrow. 
I  talk  liberties,  moderated  Socialism,  philanthropy,  and  moralties;  I  wear  the 
Bonnet  Rogue  discreetly  weighted  down  with  a  fine  tassel  of  British  prudence, 
and  they  believe  in  me  !  Can't,  either,  quite,  surely  ?  And  yet  I  don't  know; 
there  isn't  anything  so  easily  taken  in  as  a  whole  country.  Nine-tenths  of  a 
nation  are  such  fools, — that's  where  it  is;  of  course  the  other  tenth  part  do  what 
they  like  with  them." 

With  which  reflection  on  the  aggregate  of  whom  he  was  an  honored  repre- 
sentative, Trevenna  ate  a  rognon  au  mn  de  Madere.  His  delight  in  the  infinite 
jest  of  the  world  was  unchanged;  he  enjoyed  with  an  unction  never  sated  the 
whole  of  the  vast  burlesque  to  which  he  played  the  triumphant  part  of  Arlec- 
Qhino;  his  heart  was  as  light  as  a  boy's,  and  his  humor  as  savory  as  Falstaff's. 


CHANDOS.  337 

Having  worn  the  robes  of  respectability  of  a  grave  and  reverend  signior,  all  day 
long  before  the  people,  he  would  come  home  and  toss  them  off  with  as  mischiev- 
ous a  glee  at  the  perfection  with  which  he  had  played  his  part,  as  in  earlier 
days  he  had  tossed  aside  his  domino  and  mask  after  teasing  the  life  out  of 
everybody  at  a  masquerade.  He  ate  his  kidney,  glancing  over  some  other 
journals  that  echoed  the  Communist  with  a  more  or  less  different  wording,  and 
some  Opposition  ones  that  flattered  him  equally  well  by  damning  him  so  very 
strongly  that  nothing  but  an  acute  dread  of  him  could  make  them  so  bitter. 
Of  the  two,  perhaps  these  pleased  him  the  best.  Intense  abuse  may  be,  on  the 
whole,  a  surer  testimony  to  your  power  then  intense  praise,  and,  moreover,  he 
was  of  that  nature  which  is  never  so  vigorously  happy  as  when  it  has  something 
to  combat.  He  was  made  of  splendidly  tough  stuff,  this  man  who  had  been  so 
long  looked  down  upon  as  a  mere  town-chatterbox  and  diner-out;  and  he  throve 
on  every  added  effort  which  endeavored  to  displace  him,  and  only  grew  the 
more  firmly  rooted  for  it.  Breakfast  done,  and  a  first-rate  cigar  or  two  smoked, 
he  rose,  nodded  to  the  white  bust  at  the  end  of  the  chamber  with  mischief  in 
his  eyes,  as  though  it  were  a  living  thing  (he  liked  to  see  that  bit  of  statuary 
there,  as  soldiers  like  to  see  their  enemy's  standards  droop  on  their  mess-room 
walls,  in  witness  of  hard-fought  and  successful  war),  and  went  out  to  his  busy 
day.  He  toiled  none  the  less  than  he  had  done  when  self-educating  himself 
for  the  tribuneship  he  now  filled;  he  was  not  a  whit  less  punctual,  arduous,  and 
methodical  than  he  had  been  when  he  had  ground  logic  and  finance  and  laws 
of  exchange,  while  the  world  thought  him  an  idle  fldfieur;  everything  he  under- 
took was  done  with  a  conscientious  thoroughness,  none  the  less  complete  be- 
cause its  far-sighted  motive  was  ultimate  aggrandizement.  Let  him  have  risen 
as  high  as  he  would,  he  would  never  have  spared  himself:  he  loved  work  for  its 
own  pleasure,  as  a  man  loves  swimming. 

His  party  was  out  of  office  at  this  time, — had  been  so  for  some  two  or  three 
years;  whenever  they  should  come  in  again,  he  knew  they  could  not  help  but 
offer  him  a  seat  in  the  Cabinet;  well  as  many  of  them  detested  him,  they  dared 
not  risk  his  enmity  or  his  opposition.  To  get  them  into  office  once  more, 
therefore,  and  write  himself  the  Right  Honorable  John  Trevenna,  he  labored 
assiduously,  and  for  the  opposite  faction  with  a  terrible  ability.  He  had  so 
weakened,  undermined,  countermined,  impugned,  ridiculed,  arraigned,  and 
stripped  bare  their  policies,  that  it  was  generally  believed  they  would  be  com- 
pelled before  long  to  try  an  appeal  to  the  country.  They  had  no  one  strong 
enough  in  debate,  though  they  had  several  brilliant  speakers,  to  oppose  the 
sledge-hammer  force  of  his  close  arguments  and  the  weight  of  his  keen  logic, 
that  felled  their  defences  with  its  sharp  pole-axe. 

He  accorded  now  two  hours  after  breakfast  to  correspondence  and  such 
matters;  then  he  gave  audience  to  a  Darshampton  deputation,  who  came  in 


338  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

sturdily  sullen,  but  were  received  with  such  a  chatty  familiarity,  such  pleasant 
good  nature,  that  they  went  out  again  docile  and  enchanted,  and  never  had 
time  to  remember  till  they  were  half-way  home  that  they  had  extracted  no 
pledge  from  him  and  received  not  one  single  definite  answer;  then  he  saw  some 
score  or  more  of  different  visitors,  breathless  with  political  anxiety  or  brimming 
with  political  rumors;  a  private  interview  with  a  foreign  ambassador,  and  a 
confidential  t£te-a-tete  with  a  great  lord  of  his  party,  followed;  then  he  saun- 
tered into  one  or  two  of  the  Pall -Mall  clubs,  as  full  of  news,  wit,  and  good 
humor  as  when  he  had  made  his  repartees  to  get  his  dinners;  then  he  drove 
down  to  show  at  a  couple  of  garden-parties  at  a  French  prince's  and  a  Scotch 
duchess's,  vivacious,  full  of  fun,  charming  the  ladies  as  "  so  droll,  so  original  !  " 
and  playing  lawn-billiards  as  if  he  had  not  another  stake  in  the  world;  then  he 
went  to  the  House  for  a  couple  of  hours  and  launched  a  short  speech  that  told 
like  a  rifle-shot;  then  he  went  to  a  dinner-party  at  a  great  chief's  of  his  party; 
and  thence  to  an  Embassy-ball. 

There  were  wars  and  rumors  of  war  political  pending;  there  was  agitation 
in  the  great  aristocratic  ranks  of  opposition;  there  was  excitement  and  intrigue 
in  the  whole  of  the  world  of  state-craft.  It  was  a  crisis,  as  the  grandes  dames 
murmured  with  emphasis,  and  he  liked  to  show  these  nobles,  these  hereditary 
statesmen,  these  women  who  had  once  scarcely  bowed  to  him  as  a  "  rank  out- 
sider," that  he  could  take  the  emergency  with  all  the  sang-froid  imaginable, 
gossip  as  pleasantly  as  though  no  import  hung  on  the  night,  and  chatter  with  a 
duchess  about  Tuileries  tittle-tattle  till  he  was  called  away  and  carried  forcibly 
off  by  a  whip  who  was  in  the  height  of  haste  and  trepidation. 

"  He  will  cut  some  work  out  for  you,"  had  the  old  duke  once  said  of  him; 
and  Trevenna  made  good  his  words.  His  party  hated  alliance  with  him,  but 
they  no  more  dared  alienate  him  than  they  dared  have  call  him  in  Darshamp- 
ton  what  they  called  him  in  secret, — a  demagogue.  Of  a  truth  he  was  no 
demagogue;  he  was  far  too  wise  and  far  too  cultured.  He  was  simply  a 
sagacious,  audacious,  astute,  and  unerring  politician,  willing  to  lead  the  people 
as  far  as  it  was  his  interest  to  do  so,  but  not  one  step  further,  if  they  starved 
by  the  thousand. 

Many  lords  had  come  down  to  hear  the  Debate;  the  Ladies'  and  Strangers' 
Galleries  were  full,  the  crowds  outside  the  House  packed  close  in  expectation; 
it  was  known  that  the  fate  of  parties  hinged  chiefly  on  this  night's  issue.  With 
a  gray  paletot  over  his  evening  dress,  he  sauntered  to  his  place,  imperturbable, 
nonchalant,  looking  as  bright  and  as  keen  as  though  he  were  just  going  up  to 
the  wickets  at  cricket.  All  eyes  were  on  him;  he  was  used  to  that  by  this  time, 
and  liked  nothing  better.  He  loved  to  know  that  his  brisk,  elastic  step,  and 
his  good-humored,  easy  bearing,  were  as  well  known  here  as  the  haughty  grace 
of  Philip  Chandos  once  had  been.  The  ambition  of  his  life  centred  in  the 


CHANDOS.  339 

turn  of  the  night;  the  hopes  of  his  party  centred  in  himself.  It  was  his  to 
attack,  and,  if  possible  to  defeat,  the  Government,  and  all  the  resources  of  his 
intellect  had  been  brought  to  meet  the  need;  yet,  as  he  took  his  seat,  he  was 
as  genial,  as  bright,  as  light-hearted,  as  though  he  were  a  schoolboy,  and  was 
so  without  a  shade  of  affectation  in  it.  He  had  the  qualities  of  a  very  great 
man  in  him,  and  he  loved  the  atmosphere  of  conflict. 

His  famous  rival's  speech  closed:  it  had  been  brilliant,  persuasive,  subtle, 
launching  an  unpopular  measure  with  consummate  skill,  and  fascinating,  if  it 
failed  to  convince,  all  auditors.  It  was  no  facile  task  to  reply  to  and  refute 
him.  Trevenna  rose,  one  hand  lightly  laid  on  the  rail,  the  other  in  the  breast 
of  his  coat;  on,  his  lips  was  his  pleasant,  frank  smile:  the  Opposition  had 
learned  to  dread  its  meaning.  The  House  was  profoundly  hushed  as  his  voice, 
perfectly  moderated,  but  resonant,  telling  and  clarion-like,  pierced  the  silence. 
He  knew  well  how  to  hold  its  ear. 

He  was  a  master  of  the  great  art  of  banter.  It  is  a  marvellous  force:  it 
kills  sanctity,  unveils  sophistry,  travesties  wisdom,  cuts  through  the  finest  shield, 
and  turns  the  noblest  impulses  to  hopeless  ridicule.  He  was  a  master  of  it; 
with  it  he  rent  his  antagonist's  arguments  like  gauze,  stripped  his  metaphors 
naked,  pilloried  his  logic  and  his  rhetoric,  his  finance  and  his  economics,  and 
left  the  residue  of  his  ornate  eloquence  a  skeleton  and  a  laughing-stock.  He 
did  this  matchlessly,  and  did  not  do  it  too  much:  he  knew  the  temper  of  his 
audience,  and  never  transgressed  its  laws  of  courtesy.  He  carried  it  with  him 
as  by  magic,  and  from  his  lighter  weapons  he  passed  on,  and  took  up  the 
terseness  of  reasoning,  the  closeness  of  logic,  the  mathematical  exactitude,  the 
shrewd,  practical  common  sense,  without  which  no  speaker  will  ever  thoroughly 
gain  the  confidence  and  homage  of  the  English  Commons.  It  might  not  be  the 
silver  eloquence  of  a  Demosthenes,  but  it  was  the  oratory  suited  above  all  to 
his  theme  and  to  his  place, — classic,  moreover,  even  whilst  it  was  business-like 
and  restrained,  as  befitting  a  gathering  of  gentlemen,  even  whilst  most  auda- 
cious, most  pungent,  most  merciless  in  raillery  and  attack. 

The  House  cheered  him  in  riotous  excitement  as  he  sat  down,  and  the  su- 
preme triumph  of  a  triumphant  life  was  given  him.  His  speech  did  a  rare  thing 
in  St.  Stephen's:  it  influenced  the  votes:  the  Government  was  defeated  hope- 
lessly on  a  great  issue,  and  could  have  no  choice  but  to  resign. 

There  was  the  grandeur,  if  there  was  the  insolence,  of  supreme  success,  self- 
won,  in  Trevenna's  eyes  and  in  his  thoughts,  as  he  went  out  in  the  lateness  of 
the  night  with  the  cheers  that  had  ratified  his  victory  still  seeming  to  echo  in 
his  ear.  He  looked,  as  his  carriage  rolled  through  the  gaslights,  down  the  dark- 
ling streets  of  Westminster,  and  thought  of  the  night  he  had  stood  there  as  a  boy 
and  trodden  out  the  luscious  Paris  bonbons  of  a  young  child's  gift.  What  he 
had  done  since  then  ! 


340  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

"Beaux  seigneurs  !  what  of  the  outsider  now?"  he  mused,  with  his  victori- 
ous smile  on  his  mouth.  In  a  week's  time  I  shall  be  called  the  RIGHT  HON. 
JOHN  TREVENNA;  and  they  dread  me  so  bitterly  they  will  dare  to  refuse  me  no 
place  in  the  Cabinet  that  I  choose  to  command." 

"The  ministry  will  go  out.  Sit  down,  and  don't  yawn:  there  is  no  end  to 
do,"  he  said,  curtly,  to  his  secretary,  as  he  threw  off  his  paletot  and  entered  his 
library.  It  was  nigh  four  in  the  morning;  but  his  indefatigable  elasticity  and 
energy  knew  no  fatigue.  As  though  just  fresh  to  the  work,  he  plunged  into 
correspondence  that  no  precis-writing  could  have  made  terser  and  no  diploma- 
tist have  surpassed  for  masterly  surface-honesty  and  secret  reticence.  A  splen- 
did campaign  was  to  be  commenced.  The  army  of  attack  had  been  triumphant; 
the  army  of  occupation  was  to  be  headed  in  the  future.  There  would  be 
others  higher  than  he  in  the  titular  dignities  of  office,  but  there  would  be  none 
to  higher  in  virtual  power. 

"  Ah,  monseigneur,"  he  thought,  as  he  passed  through  his  hall  and  glanced 
at  the  great  bust  of  the  minister,  "  it  is  7  who  hold  your  sceptre."  And  he  went 
lie  down  as  lightly  as  a  boy  of  ten,  to  fresh  and  dreamless  sleep. 

"  Do  well  unto  thyself,  and  the  world  will  speak  well  of  thee."  It  was 
rare  indeed  that  ever  now  there  was  found  one  bold  enough  to  murmur 
against  the  wealthy  speculator,  the  popular  favorite,  the  astute  politician,  the 
audacious  and  sagacious  winner  of  all  life's  choicest  prizes,  the  bitter  word 
that  had  long  ago  been  cast  at  him, — "  adventurer." 

Others  forgot  that  old  time;  he  did  not.  He  loved  to  remember  every  jot 
of  it.  He  loved  to  remember  the  vow  he  had  sworn  in  the  midnight  streets  in  his 
childhood.  He  loved  to  remember  every  privation  endured,  every  smart  felt, 
every  insolence  taken  in  silence,  every  long  lonely  night  spent  in  hard  toil  and 
pitiless  study,  while  the  merry  world  laughed  around  in  its  pleasures  and  vices. 
He  loved  to  count  how  much  he  had  conquered,  and  to  pay  back  jibes  of 
twenty  years  ago,  treasured  up  and  waiting  their  vengeance;  he  loved  to  make 
men  who  had  turned  their  back  on  him  then  bow  before  him  now,  and  to  glance 
downward  on  the  vast  decline  up  which  he  had  mounted,  and  to  think  how  the 
sureness  of  his  foot  and  the  keenness  of  his  eye  had  brought  him  against  all 
difficulty  to  the  table-lands  where  he  now  stood  secure.  All  he  forgot  were 
— benefits. 

With  these  triumphal  thoughts  did  remorse  ever  mingle  ?  Did  he  ever 
remember  the  cost  to  other  lives  at  which  so  much  of  his  victory  had  been 
gained  ?  Did  he  ever  give  a  flush  of  shame  when  he  recollected  how  he  had 
rewarded  evil  for  good,  and  bitten  through  with  tiger-fangs  the  hand  which  had 
loaded  him  with  gifts,  and  betrayed  and  robbed  and  driven  down  to  ruin  the 
most  loyal  friend  that  ever  gave  him  fearless  faith  ?  Never  once  !  Amidst 
the  paeans  of  success  conscience  has  small  chance  to  be  heard,  and  the  temper 


CHANDOS.  341 

of  Trevenna  was  proof  against   all  such  weakness.     He  would  have  said  that 
he  knew  neither  form  of  ill-digestion, — neither  dyspepsia  nor  repentance. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE    THRONE   OF   THE    EXILE. 

IT  was  in  the  boudoir  of  the  great  house  of  Lilliesford,  shaded,  fragrant 
with  innumerable  plants, — a  room  where  coquetries  of  the  softest  would  have 
their  fullest  play, — where,  however,  it  was  oftener  that  a  political  coterie  wove 
its  silken  meshes  for  men's  souls  and  official  places.  There  were  times  when 
the  great  of  the  nation  would  listen  there  to  the  charming  voices  that  murmured 
of  a  "  crisis;  "  there  were  times  when  foreign  diplomatists,  in  a  coin  of  vantage 
beneath  the  bronze  shade  of  broad  Mexican  leaves,  would  unwind  other  coils 
than  those  of  the  floss  silks  that  they  held;  there  were  times  when  ladies,  in 
this  witching  temple  of  secrecy,  would  believe  they  governed  the  universe 
because  they  schemed  for  a  party,  and  would  think  they  had  the  making  of 
history  because  they  had  the  gift  of  a  place.  Very  beautiful  women  were  seen 
in  it  sometimes,  but  they  were  rarely  the  gay  young  sovereigns;  they  were 
rather  the  older  and  more  stately  leaders  of  the  world  political.  For  of  these 
latter  was  the  Countess  of  Clydesmore. 

She  sat  there  now,  in  the  darkest  depth  of  the  shadow,  her  head  slightly 
bent,  no  light  on  the  rich  brown  wealth  of  her  hair  or  the  sculpture-like  per- 
fection of  her  features.  She  was  a  woman  whom  her  own  great  world  revered: 
no  levity  ever  touched  her  name,  no  coquetry  ever  lowered  her  dignity. 
Ambitious  she  was,  though  she  scarce  knew  what  for, — rather  for  the  simple 
sake  and  sweetness  of  power  and  of  prerogative  than  anything  else.  If  her 
heart  remained  cold  as  ice  to  the  man  whose  name  she  graced  and  whose 
children  she  had  borne, — if  her  young  sons  never  saw  any  smile  in  her  eyes, 
but  shrank  from  her  in  their  infancy,  chilled  and  afraid, — her  world  did  not 
know  this,  and,  had  it  known,  would  have  thought  it  [no  breach  of  the  social 
code.  We  lay  blame  to  society  because  it  judges  from  the  surface: — idle 
blame:  how  else  can  it  judge  ? 

She  was  a  stainless  wife,  of  a  lofty  purity  of  life;  if  in  her  soul  she  hated 
with  a  hate  intense  as  passion  the  man  to  whom  she  had  bound  captive  her 
beauty, — if  when  she  looked  on  the  children  she  had  brought  him  she  pressed 
her  lips  tight  to  hold  back  a  curse  on  them  because  he  was  their  father, — who 
could  tell  this  ?  None, — save  the  husband  who  had  heard  another  name  than 
his  own  murmured  in  the  dreams  of  her  bridal  sleep, — save  the  young  boys 


342  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

who  glanced  at  her  with  timid,  troubled  eyes,  and  wondered  why,  when,  for 
duty  or  for  appearance,  she  had  touched  their  cheeks  with  a  kiss,  she  had 
thrust  them  away  with  an  involuntary  revulsion  as  they  saw  her  thrust  a  tire- 
some dog. 

Now  Lady  Clydesmore  leaned  back,  musing  of  the  prospects  of  her  party. 
She  reigned  for  reigning's  sake;  she  wove  for  weaving's  sake;  she  was  ambitious 
because  her  nature  could  not  choose  but  be  so;  she  intrigued  because  she  was 
weary  of  her  life  and  forgot  herself  a  little  the  quicker  in  these  cabals.  It  was 
neither  for  her  husband  nor  her  sons  that  she  labored:  if  the  rising  of  her  hand 
could  have  made  the  one  a  king,  she  would  not  for  his  sake  have  raised  it;  if 
by  lifting  it  the  others  could  have  died  out  of  her  sight  and  out  of  her  memory 
and  sunk  into  their  graves,  it  would  have  been  lifted  as  eagerly,  as  pitilessly, 
as  ever  Roman  matrons  gave  the  sign  for  the  slaughter  in  the  arena.  But  the 
acquisition  of  privilege  and  the  vanity  of  her  own  splendid  dominion  were  the 
passions  of  her  character:  she  had  sickened  long  ago  of  the  reign  of  her  beauty; 
the  domain  of  intellectual  and  political  pre-eminence  remained  to  her,  and  she 
had  occupied  it  and  usurped  it. 

The  three  ladies  with  her  had  their  toy-dogs,  in  the  shape  of  a  young  duke, 
a  Guardsman,  and  a  foreign  attache,  at  their  side,  but  were  talking  now  of  one 
who  had  also  won  his  way  to  that  closely-fenced  and  closely-crowded  table-rock 
of  political  strife. 

"  It  could  not  have  been  formed  without  him,"  said  one  fair  politician. 

"  Oh,  no,"  assented  a  yet  warmer  partisan.    "  He  could  make  his  own  terms." 

"  He  was  moderate  to  be  content  with  the  Colonial,"  murmured  the  Lady 
of  Lilliesford. 

The  Board  of  Trade  might  have  done  ? "  suggested  the  first. 

"Certainly  not;  he  would  not  have  taken  it,"  negatived  the  second,  Lady 
Dorenavant,  with  a  certain  contempt.  "  The  Foreign  seals  now " 

"Oh,  no,"  dissented  her  adversary;  "we  should  have  twenty  wars  on  our 
hands  in  as  many  weeks  with  his  brusque,  brief  despatches.  They  would  be 
very  Napoleonic;  but  he  would  say  to  the  Pope,  'You  belong  to  the  past;  off 
with  you  ! '  and  would  write  to  France,  '  We  hate  you,  and  you  hate  us:  why 
mince  the  matter  ? '  He  would  not  be  conducive  to  European  harmony." 

Lady  Dorenavant,  a  still  brilliant  matron,  gave  a  lazy  gesture  of  dissent. 

"  Is  that  all  you  know  of  him  ?  In  the  Foreign  Office,  or  anywhere  else,  he 
would  always  do  just  the  thing  that  needed  to  be  done,  and  no  more.  He  can 
keep  Darshampton  in  good  humor;  it  is  more  unmanageable,  on  the  whole,  than 
Europe." 

"  I  agree  with  you,"  murmured  a  third  fair  Chevreuse  of  politics.  "  I  be- 
lieve he  would  hold  the  Foreign  portfolio  and  hold  it  well.  He  would  keep 
peace;  but  there  would  be  no  fog  in  his  correspondence,  and  no  beating  about 


CHANDOS.  343 

the  bush.  What  he  had  to  say  would  be  said  briefly,  firmly,  and  with  infinite 
tact.  The  only  pity  is — he  was  nobody." 

"  Everyone  has  forgotten  that  by  now,"  said  Lady  Clydesmore,  with  a  curl 
of  disdain  on  her  thoughtful  lips,  that  was  followed  by  a  darker  and  more  bitter 
shadow  where  she  sat  in  the  shelter  of  the  curled  tropic  leaves. 

"No:  it  is  never  forgotten  and  never  forgiven,"  said  the  last  speaker,  with 
delicate  disdain;  for  she  was  a  very  keen  wit,  a  very  truthful  temper,  and  de- 
spised her  own  party  now  and  then  not  a  little.  "  But,  you  know  as  well  as  I, 
we  can't  afford  to  appear  to  remember  it.  He  is  so  much  to  us." 

"  I  do  not  see  there  is  anything  to  be  forgotten,"  said  Lady  Dorenavant, 
who  piqued  herself  on  being  positively  "  Red  "  in  her  political  tastes  in  theory, 
but  who  would  nevertheless  never  have  set  foot  again  in  any  house  in  which  the 
order  of  precedence  had  been  violated  in  going  down  to  dinner  and  the  heraldic 
dignities  of  her  house  been  offended  in  any  iota  of  ceremonial.  "  That  is  such  a 
miserable  monoply,  such  an  old-world  opticism,  to  adhere  so  much  to  lineage. 
For  my  own  part,  I  never  forget  that  the^greatest  men  of  all  nations  have  sprung 
from  the  people.  Life  is  too  earnest,  truth  too  broad,  for  these  insignificant 
class-distinctions." 

"  Quite  so,  dear,"  yawned  her  pretty,  inconsequent  antagonist.  "  We  all  say 
that  nowadays.  But  why  aren't  you  true  to  your  theory  ?  Why  don't  you  let 
Adeline  marry  poor  Langdon  ?  " 

"  That  is  absurd!  "  said  the  socialist  peeress, — a  little  nettled;  for  no  one 
likes  to  be  twitted  with  turning  theories  into  action.  "  Nobody  is  talking  of 
marriage:  we  are  speaking  of  men  who  attain  power  without  the  hereditary  right 
to  it.  I  confess,  I  admire  self-made  men;  there  is  such  a  rugged  grandeur 
about  the  mere  idea  of  all  they  have  contested  with  and  conquered." 

Which  was  a  beautiful  absence  of  all  prejudice  on  her  ladyship's  part, 
slightly  nullified  in  its  weight  by  the  fact  that  she  had  a  month  before  half 
broken  her  daughter's  heart,  and  spent  all  her  most  bitter  and  deadily  court- 
liness of  insolence  and  opprobrium  on  that  daughter's  lover, — a  great  artist 
who  had  had  the  presumption  to  think  that  his  fine  celebrity  and  his  gallant 
love  might  mate  him  with  the  young  azure-eyed  aristocrat,  and  in  return  had 
been  stoned  and  pierced  with  a  great  lady's  polished  insults. 

"  Besides,"  she  pursued,  now  on  her  favorite  theme,  "  you  cannot  call  him 
a  self-made  man:  he  was  always  among  us,  always  at  the  best  houses,  entered 
Parliament  at  a  very  good  age,  has  always  known  everybody  and  been  seen 
everywhere.  I  remember  his  first  speech  so  well  !  It  was  short, — he  had  too 
much  tact  to  detain  the  benches  long,  but  so  pithy,  so  trenchant,  so  precise  to 
the  purpose,  so  admirably  uttered  !  I  remember  saying  to  poor  Sir  James  that 
very  night,  '  See  if  I  am  not  right;  we  shall  have  a  recruit  well  worth  studying 
and  retaining  there.'  And  he  did  see  I  was  right." 


344  OUIDA'S     WORKS. 

She  nestled  herself  among  her  soft  cushions  with  complacent  remembrance; 
she  had  been  the  first  to  discern  the  faint  beams  of  the  rising  sun. 

"  What  that  man  has  done  since  then  !  "  murmured  the  Countess  of  Clydes- 
more,  rather  to  herself  unconsciously  than  to  her  companions. 

At  that  instant  a  hand  thrust  aside  the  sacred  velvet  curtain  before  the  open 
folding-doors,  that  rarely  was  drawn  aside  save  by  the  few  privileged  comers 
who  were  made  free  of  the  guild:  the  subject  of  their  words  and  thoughts 
entered  the  boudoir.  He  was  just  then  a  guest  for  an  autumnal  week  at 
Lilliesford. 

Lady  Clydesmore  did  not  look  up;  a  slight  gloom  came  over  her  face,  and 
the  abrupt  rapidity  of  entrance  jarred  her  nerves.  Lady  Dorenavant  smiled  a 
bland  welcome. 

"Ah,  Mr.  Trevenna,  you  come  to  enliven  us!  "  He  laughed  a  little  as  he 
tossed  himself  down  into  a  low  easy-chair  beside  his  aristocratic  champion. 

"You  have  faith  in  my  powers  of  enlivening?  Well,  so  have  I,  I  think. 
I  actually  once  contrived  to  make  a  royal  dinner  only  half  as  dull  as  a  sermon! " 

"  You  happy  fellow!  "  murmured  the  young  duke.  "  What  specific  have 
you  against  dulness?" 

"  Don't  know,"  answered  the  popular  politician,  shrugging  his  shoulders 
and  hitting,  as  he  usually  did,  the  truth, — "  except  it  may  be  that  I  never  feel  a 
dull  dog  myself." 

"  But  then  that's  just  it:  how  is  it  you  don't?  " 

"  Ah!  that  is  just  it.  Can't  say.  Natural  constitution,  I  suppose,  and  a 
good  digestion;  good  conscience,  if  you  like  it  better, — that  sounds  more  pretty 
and  poetic.  Though  really,  as  a  practical  fact,  I  believe  it's  a  good  deal  easier 
to  carry  a  murder  comfortably  on  one's  soul  than  a  Lord  Mayor's  dinner  com- 
fortably on  one's  chest." 

"  You  speak  as  if  you  had  tried  both,"  said  the  languid,  disdainful  voice  of 
his  hostess  from  the  shadow. 

"  So  I  have.  I've  eaten  Corporation  turtle,  and  I've  murdered  many  a 
little  Bill, — hopeless  little  bills  that  scarcely  saw  the  light  before  I  strangled 
them.  But  I  can't  say  their  slaughter  was  heavy  to  bear,  whatever  the  debate 
upon  them  might  be.  Lady  Dorenavant,  what  are  you  reading  ?  Anything 
good  ? " 

"  An  old  acquaintance  of  yours,"  she  said,  handing  him  the  book. 

He  had  read  it,  but  he  turned  the  leaves  over  as  though  he  had  not,  lifting 
his  eyebrows  where  he  lay  back  luxuriously  coiled  in  the  depths  of  a  couch. 

"  Ah  !  poor  Chandos  !  Frightens  people  dreadfully,  doesn't  it  ?  Sort  of 
Buddhism, — eh  ?  sublimated  Cartesianism,  intended  for  the  thirtieth  century 
or  thereabouts  ?  Makes  a  science  of  history,  and  gives  a  sinecure  to  Deity  ! 
Believes  in  other  worlds,  but  smashes  Providence  as  a  used-up  Dens  er  machind; 


CHANDOS.  345 

utterly  contemns  the  body,  and  isn't  very  clear  about  the  soul.  That's  the 
style,  isn't  it  ?  " 

The  grand  dark  eyes  of  Lady  Clydesmore  loomed  on  him  from  her  corner 
in  the  shadow. 

"  You  travesty  what  you  have  not  read,"  she  said,  slowly  and  curtly.  "  The 
book  is  a  great  book." 

"  Sorry  to  hear  it  !  It  won't  bring  him  a  shilling,  then.  As  for  writing  all 
those  heterodox  before-your-time  speculation  and  philosophies,  it's  the  sheerest 
madness,  if  you  want  to  live  by  what  you  write,  as  of  course  he  does.  If  you're 
an  unfrocked  priest,  now,  or  a  curate  without  a  chance  of  promotion,  it's  all 
very  well  to  do  it:  you  have  a  piquance  about  you  from  having  stoned  your 
own  gods;  and  if  you  can't  be  a  success,  it's  just  as  well  to  go  in  for  the  other 
side  toto  corde,  and  come  out  in  full  bloom  a  martyrdom.  But  just  to  write  a 
'great  book,'  and  look  to  posterity  to  reward  you, — mercy  alive  !  I'd  as  soon 
sow  corn  in  the  sea,  or  try  to  get  a  ladder  to  the  stars  ! " 

"  I  can  believe  you,"  said  the  voice  of  his  hostess,  with  that  veiled  bitter- 
ness still  in  it;  "no  one  would  accuse  you  of  doing  anything  without  the 
certainty  of  present  reward." 

He  laughed  with  the  charming  good  humor  with  which  he  always  won  over 
the  most  sullen  and  angry  mob,  sooner  or  later,  to  his  side. 

"No:  I  don't  ' go  in  for  the  angels.'  Too  unsubstantial  and  too  solemn 
for  me.  Where's  the  use  of  working  for  posterity  ?  A  comet  may  have  sent 
the  earth  fizzing  into  space  before  it's  fifty  years  older.  Besides,  I've  an 
English  prejudice  that  real,  sensible,  practical  work  deserves  its  reward  and 
gets  it.  I  think  in  the  long  run  all  things  bring  in  their  net  value.  It's 
only -the  mortified  vanity  of  those  who  carry  bad  goods  to  market  that  makes 
them  start  the  hypothesis  that  they're  unsalable  because  they  are  too  superior." 

"  They  may  be  right  sometimes,  if  they  say — because  they  are  too  true  to  be 
welcome,"  said  the  Countess  of  Clydesmore,  in  that  slow,  languid,  yet  almost 
acrid  tone  with  which  she  had  spoken  throughout  from  her  distant  nook  of 
shadow. 

"  Oh,  yes,"  he  laughed,  carelessly  toying  with  the  book  he  still  held. 
"  Chandos,  here,  tells  a  good  deal  too  much  truth:  they'd  forgive  him  his  unortho- 
doxy  sooner  than  they'd  forgive  him  his  accuracy.  All  men  are  candid  when 
they're  in  extremis  and  have  nothing  left  to  lose, — bankrupts,  beggars,  mori- 
bunds,  authors  in  the  Index,  and  thieves  in  the  Old  Bailey  ! " 

"  You  are  complimentary  to  authors,"  laughed  Lady  Dorenavant. 

"  Never  like  them,"  returned  the  successful  politician.  "They  are  so  un- 
practical. If  they  write  fiction,  it's  puppets;  if  history,  it's  prejudice;  if  phi- 
losophy, it's  cobwebs;  if  science,  it's  mares'  nests:  let  them  take  what  they  will, 
it  must  be  more  or  less  moonshine.  Now,  if  I  ever  wrote  a  book " 


346  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

11  What  should  it  be  ?  "     asked  his  fair  partisan. 

"  Well,  it  should  be  what  everybody  should  like, — a  true  contemporary 
Chronique  Scandaleuse,  such  as  his  secret  police  summed  up  to  Louis  Quinze, 
every  day,  of  the  doings  of  Paris.  How  it  would  sell  ! — specially  with  a  tag  of 
religion  to  finish,  and  a  fine  blue-light  of  repentance  burning  for  the  British 
public  at  the  end  of  every  wickedness  !  It  would  sell  by  millions  where  this 
book,  that  my  Lady  Clydesmore  says  is  a  '  great  book,'  sells  by  tens." 

The  languid  grandes  dames  laughed  softly ;  it  was  the  fashion  to  admire  and 
to  quote  all  he  said  as  "  so  infinitely  humorous,"  "so  admirably  original  !" 
Yet  beneath  the  art-bloom  on  her  cheek  Lady  Dorenavant  felt  herself  turn  pale. 
There  was  a  family  secret  of  a  terrible  shame  to  her  house,  that  had  been  buried, 
as  they  had  thought,  five  fathoms  deep,  where  none  could  disinter  it;  and  John 
Trevenna  had  found  it  out,  and  had  let  them  learn  that  he  had  done  so.  All 
the  weight  of  her  vast  influence,  of  her  political  favor,  had  been  thrown  into  the 
scale  many  years  gone  by  to  purchase  silence;  yet  she  had  never  felt  secure 
that  her  bribe,  magnificent  and  mighty  in  profit  though  it  was,  had  availed. 
There  is  no  sign  and  seal  to  those  bargains,  and  the  tacit  bond  may  any  day  be 
broken  by  the  stronger  side. 

"A  religious  'tag'!  What  a  word!  "  smiled  a  radiant  blonde.  "I  thought 
you  were  never  irreverent  now  ?  " 

"  Never,"  he  responded,  promptly.  "  It  never  does  to  be  unorthodox  in  a 

country  where  the  Church  is  a  popular  prejudice 1  beg  pardon;  I  meant 

bulwark.  I  had  my  unregenerated  days,  I  know,  when  I  didn't  go  to  church; 
but  I  hadn't  heard  grace  said  before  dinner  by  an  archbishop  then;  that  does 
more  than  anything,  I  think,  towards  correcting  one's  soul,  if  it's  a  little  adverse 
tendency  towards  cooling  the  soup.  You  don't  talk  Pantheism  or  Positivism 
when  you've  once  stayed  with  a  primate.  But  I  didn't  come  to  chatter:  I  ven- 
tured into  this  sanctum  sanctorum  to  show  you  these." 

With  which  he  unfolded  some  afternoon  letters  he  had  in  his  hand,  and, 
lounging  comfortably  in  that  velvet  nest  by  the  side  of  the  queen  and  priestess 
of  his  own  especial  party,  went  deep  with  her  into  their  various  contents  and 
their  news  political, — as  deep,  at  least,  as  he  chose  to  go.  He  always  satisfied 
his  confidantes  that  they  knew  as  much  as  he  did;  but  he  always  spread  the 
surface:  he  never  showed  the  whole.  There  is  not  an  art  so  delicate  and  so  full 
of  use  as  that  art  of  apparent  frankness:  it  conciliated  the  very  women  who  had 
been  his  deadliest  foes,  and,  while  they  imagined  themselves  his  allies,  they  be- 
came at  his  fancy  his  dupes.  They  were  his  scouts,  his  sharpshooters,  his 
skirmishers,  his  spies,  those  dainty,  haughty,  high-bread  patrician  chatelaines; 
they  fetched  and  carried,  they  parried  and  bribed,  for  him;  they  played  into 
his  hands,  and  they  worked  out  his  will;  and  they  never  knew  it,  but  all  the 
while  thought  themselves  condescending  with  a  superb  grace  and  tact  to  secure 


__  CHANDOS.  347 

a  serviceable  recruit,  and  guessed  no  more  the  remorseless  and  vulgar  uses  to 
which  he  turned  them  than  the  sun  guesses  the  use  that  photography  makes  of 
his  glory  when  it  turns  his  rays  into  detectives  and  brings  them  as  witness  in  law- 
courts.  He  stayed  there  some  twenty  minutes;  the  boudoir  was  not  seldom  a 
cabinet  council-room  in  the  recesses,  and  all  the  ladies  in  it  now  were  for  him 
and  were  with  him.  He  never  sought  women, — not  a  whit;  they  must  come  to 
him,  must  need  him,  and  must  serve  him;  but  he  knew  how  to  turn  to  account 
better  than  any  man  living  all  their  armory  of  slender,  invincible,  damascened 
weapons, — the  better  because  no  glance  of  lustrous  eyes  ever  had  power  to 
quicken  his  pulse  one  beat,  because  the  softest  voice  that  ever  wooed  his  ear 
never  had  charm  to  lull  his  wisdom  for  a  second.  Love  was  a  trumpery  non- 
sense that  never  could  enter  the  virile  sagacity  of  Trevenna's  mind.  And  now, 
when  he  had  done  with  the  ladies,  he  went  to  play  rackets  with  the  young  Lord 
Lilliesford,  the  eldest  son  of  the  house. 

He  knew  how  to  do  this  sort  of  thing, — how  to  enter  with  infinite  glee  into 
a  boy's  sports,  yet  how  never  to  risk  losing  the  faith  he  had  impressed  men  with 
in  his  unerring  acumen  and  practical  talents.  Everyone  felt  the  contagion  of 
the  bright,  vivacious,  untiring  good  humor  which  could  make  a  leading  politi- 
cian love  a  lark  like  an  Etonian;  and  it  was  not  assumed  with  him.  He  was 
essentially  full  of  animal  spirits,  and  never  had  to  simulate  them  by  any  hazard. 
It  was  one  of  the  chief  secrets  of  his  social  success:  men  who  might  have  feared 
him  or  mistrusted  him  whilst  they  were  with  him  in  the  political  field  lost  their 
awe  or  their  distrust,  and  could  not  choose  but  warm  to  him,  when  they  saw 
him  taking  a  blind  fence  "  like  a  good  'un,"  telling  mischievous  stories  in  a 
smoking-room,  or  heartily  snowballing  public-school  lads  on  the  terraces  of 
some  famous  house. 

"  Look  at  him  playing  with  that  boy  !  What  a  capital  fellow  he  is  !  Goes 
in  for  it,  by  George,  as  if  he  hadn't  anything  else  to  live  for  !  "  said  a  peer, 
Lord  Dallerstone,  as  he  watched  the  science  with  which  Trevenna  caught  the 
ball  on  his  racket.  He  had  ceased  to  be  "Charlie,"  and  had  left  far  behind 
him  the  troubles  of  his  F.  O.  days  of  dandyism  and  "dead  money;"  but  he  had 
never  forgotten  Trevenna's  aid,  and  did  him  in  repayment  many  a  public  ser- 
vice with  most  loyal  gratitude.  The  popular  favorite  had  always  had  the  knack 
of  throwing  his  crumbs  upon  the  waters  that  they  returned  to  him  in  whole 
quarterns  of  wheaten  bread. 

Lady  Clydesmore  gave  a  careless  glance  at  the  game,  then  turned  away  with 
an  imperceptible  shudder.  The  haughty  grace  of  her  young  son,  so  like  her 
own,  had  caught  her  eyes,  and  she  held  him  in  a  bitter  aversion  for  his  father's 
sake. 

Not  that  Lord  Clydesmore  was  anything  save  a  gentle  and  generous  hus- 
band: he  was,  indeed,  nervously  afraid  of  his  wife.  But  she  had  let  dislike 


348  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

gather  and  gather  in  her  towards  him,  till  the  earl,  always  irritably  timorous  of 
her,  scarce  ever  now  entered  her  presence  in  solitude.  She  would  have  con- 
demned with  all  the  icy  severity  of  a  patrician  matron  the  errors  of  a  too  ardent 
passion,  the  devoted  self-abandonment  of  an  uncalculating  love;  but  she  placed 
no  check  on  the  silent,  unseen  indulgence  of  an  intense  abhorrence,  that  made 
her  husband  feel  like  a  whipped  hound  under  the  lash  of  her  unuttered  scorn, 
and  her  children  shrink  from  the  frozen  apathy  of  her  fair  face. 

"  There  are  serious  complications,"  said  the  earl,  musingly,  after  a  length- 
ened conversation  with  his  guest,  in  a  ride  which  had  succeeded  to  the  rackets. 
His  party  did  not  altogether  relish  union  with  the  Darshampton  representative, 
but  they  were  glad  of  his  alliance  and  dared  not  brook  his  opposition. 

"  I  don't  see  anything  that  need  disturb  us,"  said  Trevenna,  carelessly.  He 
made  no  solemn  mysteries  of  his  political  views;  he  always  showed  his  cards 
frankly, — as  frankly  as  the  Greek  shows  them  to  the  watching  gattrie  when  he 
knows  the  marks  upon  the  backs  of  them  are  only  to  be  traced  by  his  own  eye. 
"On  the  contrary,  when  the  House  meets,  we  shall  have  a  good  working 
majority  that,  well  handled,  should  keep  us  in  for  years.  If  there  be  no  internal 
dissensions  among  us,  there  can  be  positively  nothing  that  can  unseat  us  for 
sessions,  unless  very  unlooked-for  contingencies  arise.  You  know  we've  such 
a  good  cry: — we're  all  for  the  people  !  " 

He  laughed  a  little  as  he  said  it.  To  Trevenna's  acute  mind,  there  was 
always  a  good  bit  of  absurdity  in  the  political  dance  of  his  burattini,  and  while 
he  used  his  marionnettes  with  all  the  gravity  needful,  he  could  not  help  being 
tickled  at  the  gaping  national  audience  which  believed  in  them  and  never  spied 
out  the  strings. 

"  Their  interests,  indeed,  are  always  first  at  my  heart,"  said  the  earl,  who 
was  in  the  ministry  himself,  was  a  strict  Churchman,  and  was  considered  a  great 
philanthropist.  "The  country  trusts  no  one  better  than  yourself:  in  real  truth, 
there  are  few,  if  any,  to  whom  it  owes  more." 

"  You  do  me  much  honor  by  such  an  opinion,"  bowed  Trevenna,  who  man- 
aged the  noble  lord  as  he  liked.  "  It  is  my  highest  ambition  to  serve  the  nation 
to  the  best  of  my  insignificant  powers;  but  meanwhile  I  am  quite  content  to 
yield  the/<z.y  to  men  of  your  rank  and  weight." 

"  Sensible  fellow,"  thought  the  lord;  "  so  moderate  !  Who  can  be  so  blind 
as  to  accuse  him  of  Socialism  ?  " 

"  Pro  me  is  more  my  cry  than  pro  patrid.  I'm  a  selfish  man,"  laughed 
Trevenna,  with  that  confession  of  egotism  which  sounded  so  charmingly  frank. 
"I  don't  pretend  to  be  among  the  'idealists.'  Apropos,  have  you  read  that 
new  book  by  Chandos  ?  The  countess  thinks  very  highly  of  it." 

The  earl  reddened:  he  had  never  ceased  to  be  jealous  of  the  man  he  had 
supplanted, — of  the  man  he  knew  his  wife  still  loved. 


CHANDOS.  349 

"I  never  read  his  books,"  he  said,  frigidly.  "The  immorality  of  his  early 
life  finds  meet  issue  in  the  irreligion  of  his  later  years.  His  influence  is  widely 
fatal.  I  am  happy  to  think  your  acquaintance  with  him  has  been  long  at  an 
end." 

"  Oh,  we  were  old  comrades  in  my  wild  and  unconverted  days.  /  should 
never  have  dropped  him,  indeed,  for  old  acquaintance*  sake;  but  years  ago — 
time  of  his  crash — he  behaved  ungratefully  to  me,  very  badly,  on  my  word  ! — 
after  I'd  been  slaving  my  life  out  for  him,  too.  I'm  not  a  sensitive  man, — never 
was;  but  that  cut  me  up  a  good  deal." 

"Ah  !  I  am  not  surprised  to  hear  it.  It  is  singular  that  great  genius  is 
almost  always  companioned  with  so  much  depravity  !  " 

Trevenna  laughed. 

"  Thank  God,  he  didn't  give  me  genius, — only  talent.  Talent  wears  well, 
genius  wears  itself  out;  talent  drives  a  snug  brougham  in  fact,  genius  drives  a 
sun-chariot  in  fancy;  talent  keeps  to  earth  and  fattens  there,  genius  soars  to 
the  empyrean  to  get  picked  by  every  kite  that  flies.  Talent's  the  port  and  the 
venison,  genius  the  seltzer  and  souffles,  of  life.  The  man  who  has  talent  sails 
successfully  on  the  top  of  the  wave,  the  man  with  genius  beats  himself  to 
pieces,  fifty  to  one,  on  the  first  rock  ahead.  Ah  !  there's  our  very  man  of 
genius's  lost  Clarencieux.  Just  see  the  tops  of  the  towers.  Would  you  mind 
riding  over  ? " 

The  earl  gave  a  hurried  though  bland  dissent. 

"  Pardon  me:  pray  ride  there  if  you  wish;  but  I  have  promised  to  visit  a 
tenant  who  is,  I  sadly  fear,  dying.  We  are  close  to  his  farm  now.  Call  for  me 
as  you  come  back.  The  poor  man  begged  to  see  me;  and  there  are  high  and 
holy  duties  which  one  must  not  neglect,  even  when  they  are  irksome." 

"  High  and  holy  fiddlesticks,  my  friend  !  You're  a  very  poor  hypocrite,  but 
you're  a  very  good  card,"  thought  Trevenna,  as  they  parted.  Lord  Clydes- 
more,  with  his  irreproachable  moral  character,  great  wealth,  and  solid  standing 
in  public  life,  was  one  of  his  prize  puppets  in  the  ballet  that  he  made  all  his 
fantoccini  dance,  while  he  turned  the  handle  of  the  barrel-organ  to  what  tune 
he  would. 

Trevenna's  hatred  was  class-hatred.  Could  he  have  followed  the  bent  of 
his  mind,  he  would  have  had  as  little  scruple  and  as  much  zest  in  the  sweeping 
away  of  the  Optimates  as  Marius  had  in  their  slaughter.  He  would  have  held 
back  his  hand  from  their  extermination  as  little  as  did  the  ruthless  old  plebeian, 
hating  them  as  Marius  hated  the  men  who  had  worn  the  golden  amulet  and  the 
purple  robe  whilst  he  was  following  the  ploughshare  over  the  heavy  clods  of  the 
tillage.  This  animosity  was  strong  in  Trevenna;  nothing  could  cool  it,  nothing 
soften  it;  success  in  no  way  changed  it,  for  in  success  he  saw  that  these,  his 
born  foes  as  he  thought  them,  dreaded  him,  but  detested  him.  The  bitterness 


350  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

was  oddly  woven  in  with  the  brightness  and  the  vigor  of  his  nature,  otherwise 
too  healthy  and  too  well  balanced  to  cherish  passion;  but  it  was  deathless  with 
him.  Still,  he  was  too  acute  a  man  to  let  this  appear  in  his  public  or  private 
life:  he  appreciated  too  ably  the  temper  of  his  times  and  his  country  to  allow 
this  wholesale  enmity  to  be  betrayed.  Trevenna  would  have  enjoyed  to  be  the 
leader  of  a  great  revolution;  but  he  had  no  ambition  to  remain  a  popular 
demagogue  in  an  anti-revolutionary  nation.  He  considered  it  very  unpractical 
and  unprofitable,  and,  while  he  cared  not  one  whit  for  all  the  creeds  and  prin- 
ciples in  the  world,  he  cared  very  heartily  for  the  solid  advantages  and  the  real 
power  that  he  set  himself  to  win.  The  pure  impersonal  longing  of  a  Vergniaud  or 
a  Buzot,  the  sublime  devotion  of  a  Washington  or  a  Hampden,  were  utterly  in- 
comprehensible to  him.  Trevenna  was  too  thoroughly  English  to  have  a  touch 
of  "idealism,"  and  not  to  measure  all  things,  principles  included,  by  the  pocket. 
Therefore  he  rushed  into  no  extreme;  but,  whilst  at  Darshampton  he  went  as 
near  socialism  and  communism  as  was  needful  to  please  his  auditors,  and  went 
into  them,  moreover,  with  a  racy  relish,  he  was  careful  to  do  and  to  express 
nothing  which  should  terrify  the  bulk  of  the  Commons  or  disqualify  him  in  the 
country's  view  from  the  tenure  of  office.  Had  he  flung  himself  headlong  into 
the  cause  of  the  people  and  into  the  service  of  a  republican  code  he  would  have 
been  a  far  better  and  more  honest  man  than  he  was;  but  he  would  not  have 
been  so  clever,  and  he  would  not,  assuredly,  have  been  so  successful.  He  knew 
what  he  was  about  too  well  to  tie  himself  to  a  principle;  the  only  principle  he 
ever  consistently  followed  was  his  own  interest.  He  was  a  man  who  could  tell 
the  temper  of  the  hour  he  lived  in  to  a  miracle,  and  adapt  himself  to  it  with  a 
marvellous  tact  and  advantage.  They  who  do  this  are  not  the  highest  order 
of  public  men,  but  they  are  invariably  the  most  successful  and  most  popular. 
If  a  genuine  loyalty  to  any  creed  could  once  have  fairly  taken  hold  on  him,  it 
would  have  gone  far  to  redeem  him;  but  it  could  not.  His  hate  was  strong 
against  an  order,  certainly;  but  his  solitary  creed  was  a  very  simple  one, — his 
own  self-advancement. 

He  rode  now  by  himself,  on  a  ride  that  he  usually  took  whenever  he  was 
staying  at  Lilliesford:  he  rode  towards  Clarencieux.  A  few  miles  of  fair  speed 
brought  him  within  sight  of  the  magnificence  of  the  building,  with  the  glow  of 
the  sun  on  its  innumerable  windows,  and  the  upward-stretching  masses  of  the 
rising  woods  at  its  back.  It  was  grand,  historic,  inexpressibly  beautiful  in  the 
decline  of  the  day,  with  the  golden  haze  over  its  dark  sweep  of  endless  wood- 
land, and  the  rush  of  water  beneath  the  twilight  of  the  boughs,  the  only  sound 
on  the  air.  A  stranger  coming  thus  upon  it  would  have  paused  involuntarily  at 
the  solemnity  of  its  splendor  of  sea  and  land,  of  hill  and  vale:  Trevenna  checked 
.his  horse,  and  gazed  at  it  with  a  smile. 

" '  The  glory  has  departed,  and  his  place  shall   know  him  no  more,' "  he 


CHAN  DOS.  351 

muttered.  "  How  scriptural  I  grow  !  Ah  !  he's  gone  forever  !  And  /  could 
buy  that  now;  I  will  buy  it,  too,  just  to  cut  the  forests  down,  and  turn  the 
pictures  to  the  wall,  and  send  the  last  marquis's  coronet  to  the  smelting-shop. 
He  is  gone  forever,  and  I  come  here  as  a  Cabinet  minister.  Vengeance  is  a 
good  Madeira:  it  gets  mellower  by  keeping.  There  is  nothing  on  earth  so 
sweet,  except  its  twin — Success  !  " 

Seventeen  years  had  gone  by  since  he  had  first  taken  his  vengeance;  but 
whenever,  in  the  full  and  rapid  whirl  of  his  busy  life,  he  had  time  to  remember 
and  to  look  back, — which  was  but  rarely, — it  was  sweeter  than  of  old,  even  to 
him, — deeper,  richer,  fuller  of  flavor,  as  it  were,  like  the  wine  with  which  he 
compared  it.  The  farther  his  own  ascent  bore  him  up  to  the  heights  of  wealth 
and  power,  the  keener  was  the  pleasure  with  which  he  could  look  on  Claren- 
cieux.  There  had  been  a  woman-like  malignity  in  the  jealousy  he  had  once 
felt  for  its  owner;  there  was  a  woman-like  avidity  in  the  triumph  with  which  he 
now  gazed  at  the  stately  pile  where  he  had  used  to  be  a  nameless  and  a  penni- 
less man,  where  he  now  stood  a  successful  and  ambitious  victor,  while  its  last 
lord  was  exiled  from  his  inheritance  and  forced  down  into  bitterness  and 
poverty. 

A  laborer  near  him  was  working  at  a  sunken  fence  in  the  deer-forest.  The 
man  straightened  his  back,  and  shaded  his  eyes,  and  looked  at  him,  knowing 
his  face. 

Trevenna,  always  communicative  and  always  good-naturedly  familiar  with 
the  working-classes, — it  was  a  part  of  his  stock  in  trade, — nodded  to  him. 

"  Fine  day, — my  good  fellow.  Have  you  an  easy  time  of  it  on  these 
lands  ? " 

"  Main  and  easy,  sir,"  answered  the  man,  thrusting  his  spade  into  the  soil 
with  his  heel,  and  standing  at  leisure  for  a  talk.  "  There's  naught  to  complain 
of  hereabouts." 

"  Glad  to  hear  it,"  said  Trevenna;  though  he  thought  to  himself,  "  If  every- 
body gave  your  answer,  where  deuce  the  would  all  the  politics  and  our  trade 
be  ? "  "  So  you're  all  content,  are  you,  under  the  French  due  ?  " 

The  hedger  and  ditcher  took  his  spade  up  with  some  clods  of  earth  on  it, 
turned  them  thoughtfully,  as  though  there  were  consolation  in  the  act,  patted 
them,  and  looked  up  again.  "  The  duke's  a  good  master,  and  a  free  giver, — I 
ain't  a-saying  a  word  agen  him;  but " 

"  But  what  ?     What  else  the  dickens  can  you  want,  my  man  ? " 

The  laborer  lowered  his  voice,  and  uncovered  his  head.  "  Sir,  we  want 
him." 

Trevenna's  teeth  crushed  in  a  snarl  like  an  angry  dog's.  "  Him  ?  Whom  ?  " 
he  asked,  with  an  impatient  irritation. 

"  Him  as  we  have  lost  this  many  years,  sir,"  said  the  man   gravely  and 


352  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

gently,  leaning  his  arm  on  his   spade.     "We  ha'n't  forgot   him, — we   ha'n't. 
Not  none  on  us." 

"  Indeed,  my  good  fellow,"  laughed  Trevenna,  with  a  petulant  anger  in 
him  that  the  exiled  man  should  be  remembered  even  by  this  laborer  in  the  deer- 
forest,  "  you  are  uncommonly  loyal  for  nothing.  He  thought  deuced  little 

about  you." 

"  That's  as  may  be,  sir.  He  was  a  gay  gentleman,  and  had  many  things 
to  please  him,  and  that  like;  but  he  was  a  good  master  to  the  poor,  and  we  was 
proud  on  him,  we  was;  that's  just  it, — proud  on  him,"  continued  the  hedger 
and  ditcher,  with  a  steady  resolve -and  a  wistful  regret  commingled.  "We 
won't  see  his  like  again;  and  the  country-side  ha'n't  been  the  same  since  he  was 
took  from  us.  Old  Harold  Gelart,  he  died  ten  years  and  more  ago;  but  his 
death-word  was  for  him  as  we  lost.  '  Bring  him  back! '  he  cries;  '  bring  him 
back! '  and  he  looks  wild-like  as  he  says  it,  and  dies." 

The  speaker  stooped  and  thrust  his  spade  afresh  into  the  rich,  damp  earth: 
he  felt  a  choking  in  his  throat.  Trevenna's  thrust  the  box-spur  into  his  horse's 
flank,  and  urged  him  forward  with  a  snarl  at  the  beast  for  checking.  It  in- 
censed him  that  he  could  not  hurl  down  Chandos  from  this  last  throne  left 
him, — the  hearts  and  the  memories  of  his  people. 

The  laborer  looked  up  once  more,  touching  his  hat  with  an  eager  anxiety. 
"I  beg  pardon,  sir,  but — you  was  his  friend,  you  were:  can't  you  tell  me  ? 
A'n't  there  no  hope  we'll  ever  have  him  back  ? " 

Trevenna  laughed,  and  threw  him  down  a  half-crown. 

"  Not  the  faintest,  my  man.  When  you  see  those  towers  walk  out  and  sit 
in  the  sea  ! — not  till  then.  Beggared  gentlemen  don't  get  out  of  beggary  quite 
so  easily." 

And  he  rode  on  at  a  hand-gallop. 

"  Mercy  !  what  fools  those  clods  are  !  "  he  thought.  "  How  they  remem- 
ber !  Seventeen  years  !  Why,  in  the  world,  there,  it's  time  enough  for  us  to  recast 
Europe,  and  knock  down  kings,  and  pull  up  old  religions  and  plant  new  ones, 
and  bury  whole  generations  and  forget  'em  again,  and  cry,  '  Le  Roi  est  mort ! 
Vive  le  Roi!'  fifty  times  over;  and  here  are  these  dolts  under  their  forests 
sleeping  the  years  away  in  idiocy,  and  dreaming  of  a  prodigal  and  a  bankrupt 
whom  they  haven't  seen  for  half  a  lifetime." 

It  incensed  him  that  there  should  remain  to  the  disinherited  even  such 
shadowy  remnant  of  his  forfeited  royalty  as  lingered  in  the  remembrance  of 
these  peasantry.  He  could  not  forgive  the  throne  that  the  exile  still  held  in  the 
hearts  of  his  lost  people. 

One  other,  as  well  as  he,  thought  of  Chandos  in  that  moment.  The  mis- 
tress of  Lilliesford  sat  alone  in  her  writing-cabinet,  and  on  the  chillness  of  her 
face  there  was  the  mournful  agitation  which  trembles  on  the  cold  surface  of 


CHANDOS.  353 

waters  when  the  dead  float  below  them.  The  dead  were  rising  now  beneath 
her  icy  calm, — dead  words,  dead  lays,  dead  love.  In  her  hand,  just  taken  out 
of  a  secret  drawer,  were  some  faded  letters, — tender  notes,  short  and  graceful, 
such  as  were  written  by  those  who  love,  in  days  when  they  meet  wellnigh 
every  hour. 

The  wife  whom  the  world  quoted  for  her  haughty  honor,  her  unblemished 
name,  the  chaste  purity  of  her  proud  life,  looked  on  them  till  her  head  drooped, 
and  her  eyes  grew  dim  with  a  thirsty  pain,  and  her  lips  quivered  as  she  gazed. 
She  had  forsaken  him;  but  she  knew  now  that  she  had  erred  to  him.  She 
would  have  given  her  life  now  to  have  felt  his  kiss  once  more  upon  her  lips. 

Though  the  traffic  had  been  sanctioned  by  the  Church,  she  had  been  in  no 
sense  superior  to  any  courtesan  who  sells  her  beauty  for  men's  gold,  when  she 
had  sold  her  own  in  barter  for  the  rank  she  held,  for  the  things  of  wealth  that 
were  about  her,  for  the  possessions  of  a  husband  she  scorned  and  hated.  And 
in  that  moment  of  weakness  she  would  have  given  them  all  back  for  one  hour 
of  the  love  she  had  lost. 


CHAPTER    III 

"  HE   WHO    ENDURES   CONQUERS." 

UNDER  the  deep  leaves  of  Fontainebleau,  in  the  heart  of  the  forest,  in  the 
golden  pomp  of  early  autumn,  when  only  a  few  trees  were  bronzed  with  the 
reddening  flush  of  the  waning  summer,  there  stood  an  antique  wooden  building, 
half  lodge,  half  chalet,  all  covered  with  the  quaint  floral  and  faun  carvings  of 
the  Moyen  Age,  and  buried  away  beneath  dense  oak-boughs  and  the  dark 
spreading  fans  of  sea-pines.  It  was  old,  dark,  fantastic,  lonely;  yet  from 
under  its  low  peaked  roof  music  was  floating  out  like  a  Mass  of  Palestrina's 
from  within  a  chamber  dark  and  tranquil  as  an  oratory.  The  musicians  were 
seated  in  the  glow  of  a  western  afternoon  sun,  that  shone  all  amber  and  crim- 
son and  mellow  through  the  open  painted  panes.  They  were  strangely  dissimilar, 
yet  bound  together  by  one  love, — their  Art.  The  first  was  a  grand  old  Roman, 
like  a  picture  of  Bassano;  the  second  a  South  German,  with  a  fair,  delicate 
head,  spiritualized  and  attenuated  as  Schiller's;  the  third  was  a  little  nut-brown, 
withered,  silent  creature,  ugly  and  uncouth  as  Caliban ;  the  leader  was  a  crip- 
ple with  whose  name  the  world  had  come  to  associate  the  most  poetic  and 
ethereal  harmonies  that  ever  rebuked  the  lusts  and  the  greed  of  its  passions 
and  cares.  They  were  often  together,  these  four  brothers  in  art,  and  no  jeal- 
ousies ever  stirred  amidst  them,  though  they  all  served  the  same  mistress;  three 
of  them  implicitly  loved  and  implictily  followed  the  fourth,  though  he  never 

VOL.  III.— 12 


354  O  UIDAS     WORKS. 

asked  or  thought  of  mastery,  but  was  still  humble  in  his  great  powers  as  a  child, 
still  thought  the  best  he  could  reach  so  poor  beside  his  dreams  of  excellence. 
The  world  treasured  his  works,  and  paid  lavishly  with  its  gold  for  the  smallest 
fragment  of  his  creations,  the  slightest  and  the  briefest  of  his  poems  of  sound; 
but  this  brought  him  no  vanity,  no  self-adoration.  He  worshipped  his  art  too 
patiently,  too  perfectly,  ever  to  think  himself  more  than  a  poor  interpreter,  at 
his  uttermost,  of  all  the  beauty  that  he  knew  was  in  her.  Success-  makes  many 
men  drunk  as  with  eating  the  lotus-lily;  success  only  made  Guido  Lulli  scorn 
himself  that  he  could  not  tell  men  better  all  the  sublime  things  his  art  taught 
him. 

Their  music  filled  the  chamber  with  its  glory,  and  that  glory  flushed  his 
face  and  lit  his  eyes  as  it  had  always  power  to  do,  as  the  world  had  now  seen  it 
in  the  moments  of  his  truimphs,  until  it  had  learned  to  know  that  the  feeble 
visionary  whom  it  called  a  fool  was  higher  and  holier  than  it  in  all  its  stirring 
strength  and  wealth.  He  roused  to  life  the  beating  of  its  purer  heart;  he  led 
it  towards  God  better  than  any  priest  or  creed.  But  he  held  himself  throughout 
but  an  unworthy  priest  of  the  mighty  hierarchy  of  melody;  he  held  himself  but 
a  feeble  exponent  of  all  the  glory,  unseen  of  men,  that  with  his  dreams  was 
opened  to  him.  They  thought  and  called  him  great;  he  knew  himself  unwise 
and  faint  of  utterance  as  a  young  child. 

Against  the  casement .  leaned  one  whom  the  Hebrew  lad  Agostino  had 
likened  in  his  youth  to  David  of  Israel  in  fulness  of  royalty,  when  the  smile  of 
women  and  the  sun  of  Palestine  had  their  fairest  light  for  the  golden-haired, 
golden-crowned  king;  whom  the  young  Tuscan  Castalia  had  likened  now  to 
David  when  his  royalty  still  was  with  him,  but  when  the  treachery  of  men  had 
eaten  into  his  soul,  and  the  heat  and  burden  of  battle  darkened  his  sight,  and 
the  shadows  of  night  lengthened  long  in  his  path. 

Chandos  came  here  as  men  in  the  old  monastic  days  came,  war-worn  and  com- 
bat-wearied, into  the  hush  and  the  majesty  and  the  subdued  color-glow  of  the 
abbey  sanctuaries,  to  leave  their  arms  and  their  foes  without  for  a  while  and 
forgotten,  and  to  lie  down  to  rest  for  a  brief  hour  on  the  peaceful  altars  where 
in  the  silence  they  remembered  God. 

He  was  changed, — utterly  changed;  not  so  much  in  his  face  or  his  form; 
the  beauty  with  which  nature  had  dowered  him  so  lavishly  could  not  perish, 
except  with  death  itself;  and  though  the  brilliance,  the  carelessness,  the  gay 
and  cloudless  light  which  had  made  painters  take  him  as  the  Sun-god  were 
gone,  the  grave  and  serene  melancholy,  the  deep  and  weary  thought,  which 
were  upon  his  features  now  shadowed  them  indeed,  but  gave  them  a  yet  higher, 
a  yet  grander  cast:  it  had  the  power  of  Lucretius;  it  had  the  weariness  of  Mil- 
ton. Dead  in  him  forever,  lost  never  again  to  be  recovered,  were  the  bright- 
ness, the  splendor,  the  radiant  and  fearless  lustre,  of  his  early  years:  they  had 


CHANDOS.  355 

been  killed, — killed  by  a  merciless  hand, — and  could  no  more  revive  than  the 
slaughtered  can  revive  in  their  tombs.  Yet  not  wholly  had  calamity  conquered 
him;  and  form  the  black  depths  into  which  misery  had  thrust  him  to  die  like  a 
drowned  dog,  he  had  risen  with  a  force  of  resistance  that  in  some  sense  had 
wrung  a  victory  from  the  fate  that  sought  to  crush  him. 

In  the  old  court  of  the  Rue  de  Temple  he  had  accepted  adversity,  and  lived 
for  the  sake  of  the  honor  of  his  fathers,  of  the  dignity  of  his  manhood,  of  the 
heritage  of  his  genius.  From  that  hour,  though  he  had  longed  as  the  tortured 
long  for  death  many  a  time,  he  had  never  swerved  from  the  path  he  had  taken ; 
in  the  arid,  lifeless,  burning  desert-waste  around  him  he  had  gone  on,  resolute 
and  unbeaten,  wresting  from  its  very  loneliness  and  barrenness  the  desert-gifts 
of  strength  and  silence.  His  nature  was  one  to  loathe  the  burden  of  existence 
unless  existence  were  with  every  breath  enjoyment;  yet  when  every  breath  was 
pain  he  bore  with  it  as  men  whose  tempers  were  far  stronger  and  more  braced 
by  training  might  never  have  found  ability  to  do, — bore  with  it  for  the  sake  of 
the  loftier  things,  the  prouder  powers,  that  would  not  die  in  him,  and  that  naught 
except  dishonor  or  his  own  will  could  slay. 

The  little  gold  given  for  the  silver  collar  had  sufficed  to  keep  life  in  him  a 
few  days;  when  those  were  ended,  he  had  gone  to  the  house  at  which  the  French 
editions  of  his  works  had  been  produced,  and  asked  the  chiefs  of  it  simply 
for  work.  Perhaps  he  was  greater  when  he  said  that  word  than  he  had  been 
in  all  the  magnificence  of  his  joyous  reign.  The  heads  of  the  firm,  generous 
and  scholarly  men,  touched  to  more  pity  than  they  dared  express  (for  so  brief 
a  while  ago  they  had  known  him  as  the  darling  of  the  court  circle,  the  idol 
of  Paris  fashion  and  Paris  aristocracy),  eagerly  gave  what  he  sought, — 
classical  work  which,  though  but  the  labors  of  routine  and  of  compilation, 
still  brought  his  thoughts  back  preforce  to  the  Greek  studies  that  had  ever  been 
his  best-beloved  treasuries  of  meditation  and  of  knowledge.  He  labored  for 
his  bare  subsistence, — for  his  day's'  maintenance;  but  the  exertion  brought 
its  reward.  It  gave  him  time  to  breathe,  to  think,  to  collect  his  efforts  and  his 
energies;  for  his  intellect  seemed  dead,  and  his  thoughts  numb.  He  wondered 
if  it  were  true  that  the  world  had  told  him  so  brief  a  time  ago  that  he  had 
genius.  Genius  ! — his  very  brain  seemed  dull  as  lead,  hot  as  flame.  Yet  he 
took  the  sheer  laborious,  mechanical  work,  and  he  bent  himself  to  it;  he  bound 
his  mind  to  the  hard  mental  labor  as  a  galley-slave  is  chained  to  his  oar;  and 
he  who  had  never  known  an  hour's  toil  spent  day  after  day,  month  after  month, 
in  the  thankless,  unremitting  mental  travail.  It  brought  its  recompense:  his 
mind  through  it  regained  its  balance,  his  reason  its  tone;  the  compulsory  exer- 
tion did  for  him  what  nothing  else  could.  It  took  him  by  degrees  back  into 
that  impersonal  life  which  is  the  surest  consolation  the  world  holds;  it  revived 
the  lost  tastes,  it  reopened  the  deep  scholarship,  that  even  in  his  gayest  years 


356  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

had  been  one  of  his  best-loved  pursuits;  it  led  him  to  take  refuge  in  those  vast 
questions  beside  which  the  griefs  and  joys  of  life,  alike  are  dwarfed, — those 
resources  of  the  intellect  which  are  the  best  companion  and  the  truest  friend  of 
one  who  has  once  known  them  and  loved  them.  In  his  past  career  he  had 
never  exerted  all  the  powers  that  nature  had  gifted  him  with;  the  very  facility 
of  his  talents  had  prevented  it,  and  brilliant  trifles  had  rather  been  their  fruit 
than  anything  wider  or  weightier.  Now  in  the  treasuries  of  study  and  in  the 
solace  of  composition  he  alike  found  a  career  and  a  hope,  an  ambition  and  a 
consolation. 

The  ruin  that  had  stripped  him  of  all  else  taught  him  to  fathom  the  depths 
of  his  own  attainments.  He  had  in  him  the  gifts  of  a  Goethe;  but  it  was  only 
under  adversity  that  these  reached  their  stature  and  bore  their  fruit. 

When  the  world  had  forgotten  for  some  years,  or,  if  it  ever  remembered 
him,  thought  he  had  killed  himself,  it  learned  this  suddenly  and  with  amaze- 
ment. His  name  once  more  became  public, — never  popular,  but  something 
much  higher.  He  was  condemned,  reviled,  wondered  at,  called  many  bitter 
names;  but  his  thoughts  were  heard,  and  had  their  harvest.  Aristocratic  as 
his  tastes  were,  and  proud  though  he  had  been  termed,  he  had  always  had 
much  that  was  democratic  in  his  opinions;  for  he  had  ever  measured  men  by 
their  minds,  not  their  stations;  such  freedom  was  in  his  works,  and  they  had 
done  that  for  which  the  song  of  the  Venetian  youths  had  thanked  him.  Against 
much  antagonism,  and  slowly  in  the  course  of  time  he  won  fame.  Riches  he 
never  made;  he  was  poor  still;  but  he  was  nearer  the  fulfilment  of  the  promise 
of  his  childhood  now,  when  the  chief  sum  of  the  world  was  against  him,  than 
in  the  days  of  his  prosperity,  when  the  whole  world  lay  at  his  feet.  Happiness 
he  had  not;  it  could  be  with  no  man  who  had  such  losses  ever  in  his  memory 
as  his;  but  some  peace  came  to  him;  a  great  and  a  pure  ambition  was  his  com- 
panion and  his  consoler,  and  a  grander  element  was  woven  in  his  character  than 
fair  fortune  would  have  ever  brought  to  light.  England  he  never  saw.  The 
intercession  of  his  relations  or  his  acquaintance  might  with  ease  have  procured 
him  affluent  sinecures;  but  he  would  have  held  it  degradation  deep  as  shame 
to  have  taken  them.  His  cousin  of  Castlemaine  once  wrote  and  offered  one: 
he  simply  declined  it.  By  his  own  folly  his  ruin  had  been  wrought;  by  his 
own  labor  alone  would  he  repel  it  and  endeavor  to  repair  it.  He  accepted  pov- 
erty, and  lived  in  exile,  associating  with  many  of  the  greatest  thinkers  of 
Europe;  but  into  the  pale  of  the  fashionable  world  he  had  once  led  he  never 
wandered,  and  in  the  palaces  in  which  he  had  once  been  the  idol  of  all  eyes  he 
was  never  seen.  The  friends  of  that  past  time  knew  of  him  indeed  by  the 
intellectual  renown  he  had  won,  but  it  was  very  rarely  that  they  looked  upon 
his  face.  Cynic  he  could  not  grow;  he  did  not  curse  the  world  because  to  him 
it  had  been  base;  he  believed  in  noble  lives  and  staunch  fidelities,  though 


CHANDOS.  357 

treachery  had  trepanned  and  love  abandoned  him.  The  bitterness  of  Timon 
could  have  no  lodging  with  him;  but  an  unspeakable  weariness  often  came 
on  him. 

He  had  lost  so  much;  and  one  loss — that  of  Clarencieux — gnawed  ever  at 
his  heart  with  an  unceasing  pang.  There  were  times  when  he  longed  for  his 
perished  happiness  with  the  passion  with  which  an  exile  longs  for  the  light  of 
his  native  s-uns. 

He  listened  now  to  the  melodies  that  filled  the  chamber.  Lulli's  was  the 
sole  life  which  had  been  faithful  to  him,  save  that  of  the  dog,  buried  now 
under  Sicilian  orange-boughs,  in  the  grave  to  which  old  age  had  banished  it, 
but  lamented  and  remembered  with  more  justice  than  many  a  human  friend  is 
regretted  and  mourned.  The  music,  a  new  opera-overture  of  the  Provencal's, 
closed  with  its  noblest  harmonies,  reeling  through  the  air  like  a  young  Bacchus 
ivy-crowned.  Then  it  stayed  suddenly,  the  hands  that  drew  out  its  charmed 
sounds  pausing  as  moved  by  one  impulse;  three  of  them  bowed  their  heads. 
"  It  will  be  great,"  they  said,  reverently,  adding  no  other  word,  and  went  their 
way  silently  and  left  the  chamber.  Guido  Lulli  was  alone  with  his  guest. 
The  victorious  radiance,  the  sovereignty  in  his  own  realms,  that  had  been  on 
him  as  he  called  out  to  existence  the  supremacy  of  his  own  creations,  faded 
into  the  hesitating,  doubting  hope  of  a  child  who  seeks  the  praise  of  a  voice  he 
loves. 

"  And  you,  monseigneur  ? "  he  said,  appealingly.  "  Can  you  say,  too,  it 
will  be  great  ?  " 

Chandos  lifted  his  head. 

"  You  ask  me,  Lulli  ?  The  world  has  long  told  you,  and  truly,  that  you  can 
give  it  nothing  that  is  not  so.  You  surpass  yourself  here;  ft  will  be  noble 
music, — nobler  even  than  anything  of  yours." 

The  eyes  of  the  cripple  beamed.  The  world  had  long  crowned  him  with 
the  Delphica  laurus,  yet  he  still  came  with  the  humility  of  a  child  to  receive  the 
laurel  he  loved  best  in  the  words  of  his  old  master. 

"  The  world  may  have  told  me,  monseigneur,  but  that  were  nothing  unless 
you  spoke  also.  What  would  the  world  have  ever  known  or  heeded  of  me  without 
your  aid  ?  Known  of  me,  do  I  say  ?  It  is  not  that  I  heed;  it  is  my  works.  I 
shall  pass  away,  but  they  will  endure;  my  body  will  go  to  corruption,  but  they 
will  have  immortality.  I  thank  God  and  you,  not  the  world,  that  what  is  great 
in  me  will  not  perish  with  what  is  weak  and  vile." 

"  I  understand  you;  others  might  not,"  answered  Chandos,  as  he  looked  at 
the  delicate  kindling  face  of  the  only  man  who  had  given  him  back  fidelity 
and  gratitude, — a  face  that  time  had  changed  in  so  little,  save  in  the  white 
threads  that  gleamed  among  the  dark  masses  of  hair.  "  Men  prostitute  their 
genius  now,  as  the  courtesan  her  beauty;  they  think  little — think  nothing — of 


358  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

impersonal  things.  Hypocrisy  pays;  they  supply  it.  Were  blasphemy  the 
better  investment,  they  would  trade  in  it.  You  are  fortunate  in  one  thing; 
you  speak  in  a  language  that  cannot  be  cavilled  at  or  misunderstood." 

"  But  deaf  ears  were  turned  to  it  till,  through  you,  the  disbelievers  listened." 

"  Hush  !  Let  the  dead  bury  their  dead.  I  do  not  look  back;  I  wish  that 
no  one  should." 

"  But  I  cannot  forget  !     Such  debts  as  mine  are  not  scored  out." 

"  In  your  nature.  Yet  I  served  many  more  than  I  served  you.  You  are 
the  only  one  who  remembers  it." 

He  spoke  without  bitterness;  but  the  words  were  the  more  profoundly  sad 
because  there  was  no  taint  of  acrid  feeling  in  them.  Lulli  glanced  at  him  with 
an  anxious  reverence.  Though  he  was  famous  now  in  his  own  art,  and  though 
wealth,  or  what  seemed  so  to  his  simple  tastes  and  needs,  had  come  to  him 
with  the  applause  of  cities  and  the  praise  of  princes  and  the  renown  of  nations 
for  his  music,  he  felt  to  Chandos  the  same  fond,  faithful  loyalty  and  veneration 
as  when  he  had  been  a  dying  boy  on  the  bleak  hills  of  Spain.  In  truth,  the 
more  he  gained  from  the  world's  recognition,  the  more  his  gratitude  found  to 
owe. 

"  You  served  so  many  !  yes,"  he  said,  with  a  vibration  of  such  passion  as 
had  used  to  move  him  with  a  sudden  vehemence  when  he  thought  of  his  lost 
Valeria.  "  And  they  were  curs  who  tore  down  one  by  whom  they  had  been 
fed, — one  whom  they  had  fawned  on  for  a  word  of  notice!  The  vilest  of  them 
all,  what  is  he  now  ?  High  in  honor  among  men." 

A  darkness  passed  over  his  listener's  face,  a  gloom  like  night,  yet  a  disdain 
as  strong  as  it  was  silent, — such  a  look  as  might  come  upon  the  face  of  a  man 
who  saw  one  whom  he  knew  assassin  and  traitor  courted  and  adored  by  the 
peoples. 

"  Ah!  give  him  your  scorn  now.  One  day  you  shall  give  him  your  ven- 
geance! "  cried  the  musician,  with  that  passionate  desire  of  revenge  which  he 
could  never,  under  any  wrongs,  have  known  on  his  own  behalf,  but  which  he 
had  felt  for  Valeria,  and  which  he  felt  for  Chandos. 

Chandos'  head  drooped  slightly  where  he  sat,  and  into  his  eyes  came  the 
shadows  of  a  thousand  bitter  memories. 

"  Perhaps,"  he  said,  under  his  breath. 

The  evil  tempted  him;  if  ever  it  passed  into  his  hands,  its  widest  exercise 
could  be  no  more  than  justice.  In  his  dark  hours  there  were  times  when  no 
other  thing  looked  worth  the  living  for,  or  worth  the  seeking,  except  this, — 
vengeance  upon  his  traitor. 

Lulli  gazed  at  him  regretfully  and  with  a  self-reproach;  he  had  not  meant  to 
stir  these  deep-closed  poisonous  pools  of  deadly  recollection;  he  had  not  meant 
to  recall  a  past  that  was,  by  a  command  he  obeyed  with  the  docile  obedience 


CHANDOS.  359 

of  a  dog,  never  named  between  them.  His  music  was,  to  the  man  he  honored, 
as  the  music  of  the  young  Israelite  was  to  the  soul  of  the  great  stricken  king 
whom  men  forsook  and  God  abandoned.  His  conscience  and  his  love  alike 
smote  him  for  having  jarrred  on  these  forbidden  chords  and  wrought  harm 
instead  of  bringing  consolation. 

He  leaned  forward,  and  his  voice  was  infinitely  sweet. 

"  Forgive  me.  You  have  loved  truth  and  served  men  through  all,  despite 
all;  it  is  not  to  you  that  I  should  talk  of  such  a  tiger's  lust  as  vengeance,  though 
vengeance  there  were  righteous.  If  they  had  not  driven  you  from  your  para- 
dise, would  you  ever  have  been  your  greatest  ?  If  you  had  not  been  forced 
from  your  rose-gardens  out  into  the  waste  of  the  desert,  would  you  ever  have 
known  your  strength  ?  Till  you  ceased  to  enjoy,  you  were  ignorant  how  to 
endure." 

The  words  were  true.  The  bread  of  bitterness  is  the  food  on  which  men 
grow  to  their  fullest  stature;  the  waters  of  bitterness  are  the  debatable  ford 
through  which  they  reach  the  shores  of  wisdom;  the  ashes  boldly  grasped  and 
eaten  without  faltering  are  the  price  that  must  be  paid  for  the  golden  fruit  of 
knowledge.  The  swimmer  cannot  tell  his  strength  till  he  has  gone  through  the 
wild  force  of  opposing  waves;  the  great  man  cannot  tell  the  might  of  his  hand 
and  the  power  of  his  resistance  till  he  has  wrestled  with  the  angel  of  adversity 
and  held  it  close  till  it  has  blessed  him. 

Still,  the  thought  will  arise,  Is  the  knowledge  worth  its  purchase?  Is  it  not 
better  to  lie  softly  in  the  light  of  laughing  suns  than  to  pass  through  the  black- 
ness of  the  salt  sea-storm  out  of  pity  for  men  who  will  revile  the  pursuit  of  a 
phantom  goal,  that  may  be  but  a  mirage  when  all  is  over  ? 

This  thought  was  with  him  now. 

"  God  knows  ! "  he  said.  "  Do  not  speak  against  my  golden  days;  they  were 
very  dear  to  me.  I  think  I  was  a  better  man  in  them  than  I  have  ever  been  in 
my  exile.  A  happy  life, — a  life  that  knows  and  gives  happiness  as  the  sunlight; 
it  cannot  last  on  earth,  may-be,  but  it  is  life  as  no  other  is,  while  it  does." 

Lulli  was  silent.  The  yearning  regret  that  unconsciously  escaped  in  the 
reply  pierced  him  to  the  heart,  even  though  he,  to  whom  existence  had  been 
one  long  spell  of  physical  pain,  and  to  whom  all  strength  and  joy  were  unknown, 
could  but  dimly  feel  all  that  the  man  who  spoke  to  him  looked  back  to  with  so 
passionate  a  longing. 

"  The  revellers  in  Florence,"  he  murmured,  softly,  "  had  delight  and  glad- 
ness, and  made  of  life  an  unbroken  festa,  while  Dante  was  in  exile.  Who  thinks 
of  them  now  ? — even  of  their  names  ?  But  on  his  door  is  written,  '  Qui  nacqui 
il  divino  Poeta.'  " 

Chandos  rose  with  a  smile, — a  smile  in  which  there  was  a  weariness  beyond 
words. 


360  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

"A  tardy  and  an  empty  recompense  !  While  they  write  on  his  door  to-day, 
reviling  those  who  were  blind  in  his  generation,  they  repeat  in  their  own  times 
the  blindness,  and  the  persecution  to  free  thought,  by  which  the  poet  and  the 
thinker  suffered  then  and  suffer  still." 

Throughout  the  years  which  had  gone  by  since  the  fall  of  his  high  estate, 
no  lamentation,  no  recrimination,  had  ever  been  heard  to  pass  his  lips.  When 
the  tidings  floated  to  him  of  success  piled  on  success  that  his  enemy  and  his 
traitor  achieved,  he  listened  in  silence,  too  proud  to  condemn  what  was  beneath 
envy  and  beyond  vengeance.  Men  sought  oftentimes  to  make  him  speak  of 
the  past  and  speak  of  Trevenna;  they  never  succeeded.  He  held  his  peace, 
keeping  patience  with  a  force  of  control  which  amazed  and  bewildered  those 
who  had  known  him  as  an  effeminate,  self-indulged  voluptuary,  and  had  looked 
from  him  for  a  suicide's  story,  or,  at  best,  for  a  bitter  upbraiding  of  the  curse 
of  fate.  They  never  heard  a  word  from  him  either  of  regret  at  his  own  ruin  or 
of  anger  at  his  debtor's  success.  He  endured  in  as  absolute  a  silence  as  ever 
an  Indian  endured  when  bound  to  the  pyre.  To  two  only,  two  who  alone 
remained  to  him  out  of  the  throngs  who  had  once  thought  no  honor  higher 
than  to  claim  his  friendship,  did  he  ever  speak  either  of  his  fate  or  of  his 
foe;  and  to  them  he  spoke  but  reluctantly.  They  were  Lulli  and  Philippe 
d'Orvale. 

The  lustre  of  the  descending  sun  was  bright  through  all  the  forest-glades  as 
he  left  the  musician's  house  now,  and  went  alone  through  the  great  aisles  of  oak 
and  elm,  and  under  the  shadow  of  the  stone  boulders  and  rugged  masses  of  naked 
or  moss-grown  granite,  with  the  rush  of  falling  waters  thundering  now  and 
again  on  the  silence.  The  love  of  the  earth's  freshness  and  fragrance  and 
beauty  would  never  die  in  him;  he  had  too  much  of  Shelley's  nature.  The 
bleakness  of  poverty,  the  narrow  rigidity  of  want,  the  colorlessness  of  life  with- 
out the  glow  of  passion,  the  warmth  of  pleasure,  the  vividness  of  sensuous 
charms  and  sensuous  delights,  the  richness  of  luxury,  and  the  power  of  pos- 
session, all  these,  which  he  had  known  in  their  deprivation  and  their  misery, 
had  not  altered  this  in  him;  and  the  chief  solace  of  his  life  had  been  the  conso- 
lation that  he  had  been  able  by  his  temperament  to  find  in  the  antique  tran- 
quillity of  the  cities  of  Italy,  in  the  solemn  repose  of  mighty  Alps,  in  the 
changeful  loveliness  of  Southern  skies,  in  the  intense  splendor  of  Oriental 
landscape.  The  artist  and  the  poet  were  too  closely  blent  in  him  for  him 
ever  to  cease  to  heed  these  things;  and  yet  there  were  times  when  there  was 
in  them  for  him  an  anguish  that  seemed  to  pass  his  strength.  He  had  once 
looked  on  them  with  such  careless  eyes  of  sunlit  joy,  with  the  warmth  of  their 
suns  on  women's  cheeks,  and  the  laughter  of  idle  summer-day  love  on  their  air ! 
There  are  many  natures,  steel-knit,  Puritan,  austere,  narrow  in  limit  and  in 
sight,  which  never  know  what  it  is  to  enjoy,  and  never  are  conscious  of  their 


CHANDOS.  Ml 

loss;  but  to  his,  and  to  characters  like  his,  life  without  this  divine  power  of  en- 
joyment differs  in  little — differs  in  nothing  of  value— from  death. 

Now,  as  he  went  through  the  woodland  shades,  with  the  checkered  light 
across  the  moss  of  the  paths,  his  heart  went  back  to  the  time  of  his  youth,  the 
time  when  no  other  doubt  had  rested  on  him  in  such  forest-luxuriance  than 

to  ask, — 

Oh,  which  were  best,  to  roam  or  rest  ? 
The  land's  lap  or  the  water's  breast  ? 
To  sleep  on  yellow  millet-sheaves, 
Or  swim  in  lucid  shadows  just 
Eluding  water-lily  leaves? 
Which  life  were  best  on  summer  eves? 

It  might  be  true,  as  the  French  cripple  had  said,  that  he  was  greater  now 
than  he  had  been  then, — that  in  conflict  he  had  gained,  and  had  become  that 
which  he  would  never  have  done  or  been  in  the  abundance,  the  indolence,  the 
shadowless  content,  and  the  royal  dominion  of  his  epicurean  years.  But  for 
himself — in  many  moments,  at  the  least — the  vanity  in  all  things,  in  wisdom  as 
in  riches,  that  Ecclesiastes  laments,  smote  him  hard;  and  he  would  have  given 
the  fame  of  a  Plato,  of  an  Antoninus,  of  a  Dante,  of  a  Shakspeare,  to  have 
back  one  day  of  that  glorious  and  golden  time  ! 

The  sun  had  wellnigh  set;  here,  in  the  darkness  of  the  oak-glades,  there  was 
little  but  a  dusky,  ruddy  glow,  fitful  and  flamelike.  He  passed  slowly  onward; 
his  head  was  uncovered,  for  the  air  was  sultry,  and  such  breeze  as  arose  was 
welcome;  here  and  there  a  stray  lingering  sunbeam  touched  the  fairness  of 
his  hair;  otherwise  the  depth  of  the  forest-shadow  was  on  his  face,  that  wore 
ever  now,  though  it  was  serene  in  repose  and  its  smile  was  infinitely  sweet,  the 
weariness  and  the  dignity  of  pain  silently  borne,  which  long  ago  had  hushed 
with  their  royalty  of  resolve  and  of  suffering  the  hungry  crowd  gathered  in  the 
porphyry  chamber.  An  artist,  hidden  among  the  thickness  of  the  leaves, 
sketching  the  great  oak-trunks,  looked  up  as  his  step  crushed  the  grasses, — a 
swift,  slight,  breathless  look;  then,  as  though  he  saw  some  ghost  of  a  dead 
age,  the  painter  shivered,  and  let  fall  his  brushes,  and  cowered  down  into  the 
gloom  of  the  tall  ferns  with  the  shrinking  horror  of  a  frightened  hare. 

"Ah,  Christ  !"  he  murmured,  in  Spanish,  "how  weary  he  looks  of  his 
exile  !  and  how  king-like  in  his  dignity  still !  Misery  has  not  embittered  him. 
He  must  have  a  rare  nature.  If  I  had  found  strength  to  tell  him  all  that  night 
in  the  street,  how  would  it  have  been  now  ?  It  could  not  have  been  worse  with 
us;  and  it  was  an  Iscariot's  sin  only  to  know, — to  share  ! 

Chandos  passed  onward,  not  seeing  him  there  beneath  the  shelter  of  the 
spreading  ferns;  his  thoughts  were  sunk  far  in  the  past.  He  had  met  his  fate 
with  a  tranquil  endurance,  with  the  proud  and  uncomplaining  temper  of  his 
race,  which  had  in  all  centuries  risen  out  of  the  softness  of  voluptuous  in- 


362  QUID  AS     WORKS, 

dulgence  to  encounter  misfortune  grandly;  but  not  the  less  was  life  very  joy- 
less to  him,  and  the  bitterness  of  its  vain  toil  oftentimes  pursued  and  mocked 
him.  As  he  went,  on  the  silence  rang  the  clear  mellow  notes  of  a  hunting- 
horn,  and  the  echo  of  a  horse's  feet:  into  the  open  green  plateau  immediately 
below  the  rising  ground  on  which  he  was,  a  horseman  dashed  rapidly,  and 
reined  up,  looking  about  him, — a  court  guest,  by  the  court  hunting-dress  he 
wore,  with  its  scarlet  and  green  and  gold,  and  its  gold-handled  forest-knife. 

"  Hola!  has  the  Palace  party  passed  ? " 

As  he  glanced  up,  the  words  died  on  the  speaker's  lips;  for  the  first  time 
their  eyes  met  since  the  night  in  the  Rue  du  Temple.  In  the  red,  faint,  lower- 
ing light,  under  the  dense  shade  of  the  oak-boughs,  with  the  twilight  of  the 
autumn- bronzed  leaves  flung  heavily  down  between  them,  Travenna  saw  him 
where  he  stood  on  the  slope,  with  the  black  wall  of  foliage  behind  him,  and  a 
single  faint  ray  of  the  declining  sun  shed  full  across  his  eyes,  that  were  filling 
dark  as  night  with  the  sudden  upleaping  of  silent  passions,  of  thronging  mem- 
ories, of  unavenged  and  unextinguished  wrongs. 

When  they  had  last  met,  the  murderous  hand  of  his  traitor  had  flung  him 
down  on  the  blood-stained  stones  of  the  old  monastic  court,  and  had  left  him 
to  perish  as  he  might  in  the  heart  of  the  sleeping  city,  in  the  cold  of  the  winter's 
night.  When  they  had  last  met,  John  Trevenna  had  cursed  him  where  he  lay 
senseless,  and  had  wished  his  father's  soul  could  know  his  ruin,  and  had  be- 
lieved no  more  that  the  life  he  had  destroyed  would  ever  again  be  raised 
among  living  men,  and  gather  strength  to  vanquish  and  endure,  than  if  he  had 
struck  to  its  heart  with  a  knife  and  flung  the  corpse  out  to  the  river. 

For  the  first  moment  there  was  no  memory  on  either  save'  that  memory,  and 
Trevenna's  face  paled  and  lost  its  healthful  glow.  He  had  known  that  his  prey 
had  survived  to  bear  calamity  and  exile  and  follow  the  guidance  of  a  pure  and 
impersonal  ambition;  the  world  had  often  spoken  each  other's  names  on  their 
ears;  but  they  had  never  met  till  now, — now  when  the  form  of  Chandos  rose 
before  him  in  the  reddened  sullen  glow  of  the  dim  forest-aisles,  like  a  resurrec- 
tion from  the  grave.  And,  in  the  first  moment,  all  his  intensity  of  hate  revived 
in  its  ancient  lust,  burning  in  him  none  the  less,  but  the  more,  because  it  had 
wreaked  its  worst  to  |atiety.  He  hated  to  think  Chandos  lived;  he  hated  to 
know  he  had  not  sunk,  body  and  mind  into  debauchery  and  insanity;  he  hated 
the  very  beauty  that  he  knew  so  well  of  old,  because  years  and  pain  would  not 
destroy  it ! 

Then  the  insolence,  the  mockery,  the  audacious  greedy  exultation  of  his 
triumph  governed  him  alone;  the  pride  of  success  and  supremacy  made  him 
feel  drunk  with  the  joy  of  his  victory.  He  bowed  to  his  saddle  with  a  con- 
temptuous reverence. 

"  Ah,  beau  sire !  it  is  many  years  since  we  met.     We  said  once  we'd  see 


CHANDOS.  363 

which  made  the  best  thing  of  life,  you,  the  visionary,  or  I,  the  materialist.  I  think 
I've  won,  far  and  away,  eh  ?  The  fable  says  iron  pots  and  china  pots  can't 
swim  down  the  stream  together;  your  dainty  patrician  kuig's-pattern  Sevres 
soon  smashed  and  swamped  among  the  bulrushes;  my  nameless,  ugly,  battered 
two-penny  tin  pipkin  got  clear  of  all  shoals,  and  came  safe  into  port,  you  see. 
I  was  your  palace  jester  once:  what  do  you  think  of  my  success  now  ? " 

Chandos,  raised  above  him  by  the  rocky  slope  on  which  he  stood,  looked 
down  and  gazed  at  him  full  in  the  eyes:  for  the  instant,  Trevenna  would  have 
quailed  less  if  a  dagger  had  been  at  his  throat.  Neither  shame  nor  conscience 
smote  him;  but  for  the  instant  some  touch  of  dread,  some  throb  of  what  was 
wellnigh  fear,  came  to  him,  as  the  voice  that  had  used  to  be  so  familiar  on  his 
ear,  and  that  had  been  unheard  through  so  many  years  of  silence,  fell  on  his 
ear  in  the  hush  of  the  forest,  clear,  low,  cold  as  ice,  with  the  quiver  of  a  mighty 
passion  in  it. 

"  I  think  it  great  as  your  imfamy,  great  as  your  treachery;  greater  it  can- 
not be." 

Trevenna  laughed:  his  savage  mirth,  his  taunting  buffooney,  his  unreined, 
exulting  malice  of  triumph,  were  all  let  loose  by  the  scorn  that  cut  him  like  a 
scourage,  and  which  he  hated  because  he  knew  that,  however  high  he  rose,  how- 
ever proud  his  rank,  however  unassailable  his  station,  this  one  man  knew  all 
that  he  had  once  been,  knew  whose  hand  had  first  raised  him,  knew  that  he  was 
the  vilest  ingrate  that  ever  sold  his  friend. 

"Whew!"  he  cried;  "you  areas  haughty  as  ever.  How  do  they  stand 
that,  now  you're  only  a  heterodox  author  with  a  dubious  reputation  ?  You  are 
bitter  on  me:  well,  I  can  forgive  that.  'Tisn't  pleasant,  I  daresay,  to  have 
sparkled  like  a  firework  and  then  gone  out  into  darkness, — a  failure  !  But 
you'd  ten  years  of  it,  you  known;  and  it's  my  turn  now.  I'm  a  Right  Hon.  and 
a  millionnaire;  I'm  a  Cabinet  minister,  and  I'm  staying  at  court.  I  mean  to  die 
in  the  Lords,  if  I  don't  die  in  the  Lord;  and  I'm  only  waiting  for  the  '  mad 
duke's'  death  to  go  and  buy  Clarencieux.  When  I  retire  into  the  Peers'  Para- 
dise, I'll  take  my  title  after  it, — John  Trevenna,  Baron  Clarencieux  ?  Won't 
it  sound  well,  eh  ?  " 

With  a  single  leap,  light,  resistless,  unerring  as  in  his  earliest  years,  Chandos 
leaped  down  the  slope  on  which  he  stood,  his  face  darkly  flushed,  his  lips  set 
straight  and  stern  in  the  shado.wy  fiery  autumn  light;  with  the  swiftness  and 
force  of  a  panther's  spring  he  threw  himself  on  Trevenna,  swaying  him  back  off 
his  saddle  and  out  of  his  stirrups  to  the  ground,  while  the  horse,  let  loose  from 
the  weight  of  its  rider,  tossed  its  head  impatient  in  the  air  and  galloped  alone 
down  the  glade. 

"  You  make  me  vile  as  yourself  !  Dare  to  own  or  to  taint  Clarencieux,  and 
— as  we  both  live — I  will  kill  you  !  " 


364  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

The  words  were  low  breathed  in  his  foe's  ear  as  he  bore  him  backwards,  but 
the  more  deadly  in  meaning  and  in  menace  for  that;  then  he  shook  Trevenna 
from  him  and  left  him,  and  plunged  down  into  the  dark  thick  depths  of  the 
leaves.  He  knew  if  he  stayed  to  look  on  at  his  debtor  the  mere  brute  instincts, 
the  sheer  Cain-like  passions,  which  slumbered  in  all  would  conquer  him  and 
force  him  on  to  some  madness  or  some  crime.  The  voice  of  his  tempter  and 
betrayer  had  come  back  on  him  across  the  wide  waste  of  spent  and  desert  years, 
and  had  brought  the  passions  and  the  shame  and  the  despair  of  his  conquered 
ruin  fresh  on  him,  as  though  known  but  yesterday. 

"  Oh,  God  !  "  he  thought,  "  what  have  I  vanquished,  what  have  I  learned  ? 
This  man  makes  me  a  brute  like  himself;  one  trial,  and  my  creeds  and  my 
patience  and  my  strength  break  like  reeds  !  " 

For  Trevenna  had  been  the  bane,  the  temptation,  the  tyrant,  the  poisoner,  of 
all  his  life,  and  was  so  still.  Through  his  foe  even  the  pure  and  lofty  hopes 
which  had  alone  sustained  him  were  broken  and  polluted.  This  man  had  fame 
and  success  in  the  world  that  applauded  him  !  What  was  renown  worth,  since 
it  went  to  such  as  this  mocker  ? — a  crown  of  rotten  rushes,  an  empty  bladder 
blown  by  lying  lips,  a  meed  to  the  one  who  dupes  a  blind  world  best,  a  prize 
that  goes  to  the  stump-orator,  to  the  spangled  mountebank,  to  the  blatant  char- 
latan, to  the  trained  posture-maker  of  political  and  intellectual  life  !  What 
avail  was  it  to  labor  for  mankind,  when  this  ingrate  was  their  elected  leader, 
their  accepted  representative  ?  What  worth  to  toil  for  liberty  and  tolerance, 
when  the  one  whom  humanity  crowned  was  the  ablest  trickster,  the  adroitest 
mime,  the  cheat  who  could  best  hide  the  false  ace  in  his  sleeve  by  a  face  of 
laughing  candor  and  a  fraud  of  forged  honesty  ? 

Trevenna  had  robbed  him  of  all;  Trevenna  wellnigh  robbed  him  now  of  the 
only  solace  that  his  life  had  left.  The  success  of  his  traitor  made  him  doubt 
truth  itself. 


CHAPTER    IV. 

"QUI    A   OFFENSE    NE   PARDONNE   JAMAIS." 

"  CURSE  him  !  There  must  have  been  something  sorely  ill  managed  by  me 
that  he  ever  lived  after  that  night.  Curse  him  !  When  he  lay  in  that  garret 
dying,  who  could  dream  he  would  ever  rise  again,  unless  it  were  to  go  to  a 
madhouse?"  mused  Trevenna  before  the  fire  in  his  dressing-room  in  the 
palace.  He  had  been  slightly  bruised,  but  not  hurt;  and  he  had  told  the  court 
party,  whom  he  had  found  and  rejoined  as  soon  as  he  had  called  his  horse  to 
him,  that  an  oak  bough  had  struck  and  blinded  him,  so  that  he  had  fallen  out  of 


CHANDOS.  3G5 

his  saddle.  As  he  sat  now,  smoking,  with  his  costly  velvets  wrapped  around 
him,  with  all  the  elegance  and  luxury  of  a  palace  in  the  suit  of  chambers  allotted 
him  as  an  English  minister  and  a  guest  of  the  first  circle  of  autumn  visitors, 
there  was  something  of  irritation  and  impatience  even  amidst  his  triumphant 
reflections.  He  could  not  resent  the  force  used  to  him,  for  he  was  too  wise  to 
let  the  world  know  of  that  forest-meeting;  and  he  hated  to  think  that  his  intri- 
cate nets  had  had  a  single  loose  mesh,  by  which  his  prey  had  escaped  the  ruin 
of  mind  and  body  that  he  had  made  sure  would  accompany  the  ruin  of  peace 
and  pride  and  fair  fortune;  he  hated  to  think  that  while  Chandos  lived  there 
would  live  one  who  knew  him  as  he  was,  knew  what  he  had  been,  knew  the 
treacheries  by  which  his  rise  had  been  consummated,  knew  the  stains  that 
darkened  the  gloss  and  the  symmetry  of  the  splendid  superstructure  of  his 
success. 

They  had  never  met  until  now;  and  he  hated  to  feel  that  the  sting  of  his 
victim's  scorn  had  power  to  pierce  him;  he  hated  to  feel  that  a  ruined  exile 
could  quote  against  him  the  time  when  he — the  millionnaire,  the  minister,  the 
court  guest,  the  national  favorite — had  been  a  debtor  in  gaming-prisons,  an 
adventurer  without  a  sou. 

"  And  yet  I  don't  know,"  he  mused  on,  while  a  smile  came  about  his 
mouth,  and  he  gave  a  kick  to  the  ruddy  embers  of  the  fire.  "  I'm  not  sorry  he 
lives,  either:  if  he  were  dead  he  wouldn't  suffer,  and  if  he  were  dead  he 
wouldn't  see  me  rise  !  "  No  !  I  like  him  to  live.  He'd  have  missed  all  the  bit- 
terness of  it,  if  he'd  gone  in  his  grave  then.  How  I  sting  him  with  every  step 
I  get  !  How  his  heart  burns  when  he  reads  my  name  in  the  Cabinet  !  How 
it  must  ring  and  goad  and  taunt  and  madden  him  when  he  knows  I'm  in  his 
palaces,  and  have  got  his  prosperity,  and  have  won  my  way  to  the  proudest 
position  a  man  can  hold  in  England.  No  !  I'm  glad  he  lives.  Gad  !  I'll  ask 
him  to  Clarencieux,  one  day." 

And  he  plunged  his  hands  in  the  pockets  of  his  crimson  velvet  neglige,  and 
laughed  to  himself.  The  nation  would  have  been  something  amazed  if  it  had 
seen  its  astute  statesman  mockingly  exultant  over  his  triumphs  as  any  school- 
boy over  his  cricket-innings;  but  this  was  part  and  parcel  of  the  man's  jovial, 
malicious,  farcical,  racy  temper;  and  the  sweetest  morsel  in  all  his  triumphs 
was  that  each  step  and  each  crown  of  them  was — a  revenge. 

"  Mercy  !  what  a  fool  he's  been  !  "  he  thought.  "  Cared  for  nothing,  while 
he  had  the  power,  but  pleasure  and  revelry,  and  making  love  to  women,  and 
playing  Lorenzo  the  Magnificent,  and  now  solaces  himself  in  his  poverty  with 
turning  metaphysical  questions  inside  out,  and  brodant  sur  la  toile  ciaraignfa, 
as  they  say  here,  and  caring  for  the  future  of  the  world,  and  working  out  the 
scientific  laws  of  history  !  Mercy  !  as  if  it  mattered  to  us  whether  the  world 
goes  smash  when  we've  no  more  to  do  with  it !  However,  I  don't  understand 


366  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

him;  never  did.  A  man  who  cared  so  little  for  money  as  he  did  never  could 
be  quite  sane.  Even  now  he's  such  a  fool;  he's  never  said  to  me  the  one  thing 
he  might  say, — that  I  was  his  debtor." 

To  dream  that  there  might  be  a  generosity  too  proud  to  quote  past  services 
against  a  present  traitor  utterly  escaped  Trevenna:  he  was  far  too  practical  to 
have  glimpse  of  such  a  temper;  he  only  thought  the  man  a  fool,  a  wonderful 
fool,  who  forebore  to  taunt  him,  with  the  stone  that  lay  so  ready  to  his  hand,  in 
the  reproach,  "I  served  you." 

"No;  I'm  glad  he  lives.  It  would  be  Hamlet  with  the  part  of  Hamlet  left 
out,  if  he  didn't  exist  to  watch  my  triumph  ! "  he  mused,  clenching  the  matter 
in  his  own  mind,  and  getting  up  to  summon  his  valet  and  dress  for  dinner.  His 
momentary  bitterness  was  all  gone.  Here  he  was,  the  guest  of  a  sovereign, 
with  a  name  that  had  fame  in  the  Old  and  New  Worlds,  riches  as  much  as  he 
needed  them,  a  future  brilliant  as  his  present,  an  ambition  without  limit,  and  a 
station  that  enemies  and  friends  alike  must  envy.  He  was  content,  very  richly 
content,  as  he  sauntered  down  to  join  the  Palace  circle,  distinguished  as  the 
most  eloquent,  the  most  penetrating,  the  most  liberal,  and  the  most  promising 
statesman  of  the  English  Cabinet,  his  opinion  s,ought  by  princes  and  diplo- 
matists, his  words  heard  as  words  of  gold  breathed  from  the  lips  of  one  who 
would  probably  govern  in  the  highest  rank  of  all  in  the  future,  his  views  studied 
with  interest,  as  those  of  the  favorite  of  a  great  people,  even  his  mere  badinage 
graciously  sought  by  grandes  dames  who  once  denied  him  cards  to  their  recep- 
tions. The  high  orders  detested  him  still,  it  is  true;  but  they  feared  him,  and 
they  courted  him.  They  thought  they  propitiated  him  by  such  concessions. 
Never  was  error  wider  He  used  them,  and — despised  them. 

"  M.  Trevenna,  permit  my  congratulations  on  your  late  magnificent  coup 
d'etat,"  smiled  the  Comtesse  de  la  Vivarol,  who,  under  a  new  dynasty,  reigned 
in  the  court,  a  power  now,  as  she  had  earlier  been  a  beauty. 

He  bowed  his  thanks. 

"  You  do  me  much  honor,  madame.  I  trust  we  have  the  aid  of  your  favor- 
ing sympathies  ? " 

"  Personally,  yes;  scarcely  your  party.  You  are  all  so  decorous  and  so 
dull  in  your  Parliament.  Whoever  turns  the  handle,  the  organ  plays  the  same 
tunes." 

"  And  you  would  like  an  infusion  of  the  (a  ira  ?  Well,  I  should  not  object 
to  it,  myself;  but  I  shouldn't  dare  to  introduce  it.  I'm  very  prudent  !  " 

"  Indeed!    You  go  rather  far,  too,  at  Darshampton " 

Trevenna  shook  his  head. 

"  Darshampton  ?  They  will  tell  you  there  that  I  am  devoted  to  the  civil 
and  religious  institutions  of  the  nation.  Why,  I  have  built  a  church!  It  cost 
me  a  deal  in  painted  windows;  but  you  don't  know  what  it  has  done  for  me  in 


CHANDOS.  367 

reputation.  It's  made  two  spiritual  lords  believe  in  me,  and  given  me  postiche 
as  a  '  safe  man  '  in  perpetuity.  Really,  for  a  good  public  effect,  I  think  nothing 
is  better  than  a  church.  Men  think  you  have  such  a  thorough  conviction  of 
orthodox  truth,  if  you  adore  the  Lord  in  stucco  and  oak-carving!  " 

La  Vivarol  laughed. 

"  You  were  not  so  orthodox  once  ? " 

"  No;  but  I  am  now.  I  go  to  church  every  Sunday, — specially  when  I'm 
down  at  Darshampton.  To  be  unorthodox  is  like  walking  out  on  a  midsummer 
day  in  your  shirt-sleeves.  It's  refreshing  to  take  your  coat  off,  and  it's  very 
silly  to  cajry  a  lot  of  sheep's  wool  that  you  pant  under;  but  all  the  same,  no 
man  who  cares  what  his  neighbors  say  walks  abroad  in  his  waistcoat.  Ortho- 
doxy and  broadcloth  are  fallacies  d,  la  mode  :  if  you  air  yourself  in  heresy  and 
a  blouse,  the  parsons  and  tailors,  who  see  their  trades  in  danger,  will  get  a  writ 
of  lunacy  out  against  you. 

The  countess  looked  at  him  with  a  certain  meaning  in  her  brilliant  eyes. 

"  You  are  a  clever  man,  M.  Trevenna !  You  know  how  to  manage  your 
world.  But  does  it  never  tire  you,  that  incessant  promenade  in  such  unim- 
peachable broadcloth  ? " 

Trevenna  met  her  eyes  with  a  gleaming  mischief  in  his  own.  He  attempted 
no  concealment  with  her;  the  keen  wit  of  the  aristocratic  politician  would,  he 
knew,  have  pierced  it  in  an  instant;  and  she,  who  had  once  bidden  him  appren- 
dre  &  s'effacer,  alone  never  let  him  forget  that  she  had  known  him  when  he  was 
on  sufferance  and  obscure. 

"Tire?"  he  said  now;  "  no,  never  !  Who  tires  on  the  stage,  so  long  as 
they  clap  him,  and  so  long  as  it  pays  ?  It  is  your  dissatisfied,  unappreciated 
men  that  may  tire  of  their  soupe  maigrej  nobody  tires  of  the  turtle-soup  of 
success." 

"  Then  you  don't  believe  in  surfeits  ? " 

"  Not  for  strong  digestions." 

"Perhaps  you  are  right;  and  there  is  no  absinthe  that  produces  incessant 
appetite  so  well  as  intense  self-love." 

Trevenna  laughed  good-humoredly;  he  acknowledged  the  implication. 

"  Ah,  madame,  you  know  I  never  denied  that  I  was  selfish.  Why  should  I  ? 
If  one  don't  love  one's  self,  who  will  ?  And,  I  confess,  I  like  present  success. 
Immortality  is  terribly  dull  work;  a  hideous  statue,  that  gets  black  as  soot  in 
no  time;  funeral  sermons  that  make  you  out  a  Vial  of  Revelation,  and  discuss 
the  probabilities  of  your  being  in  the  regions  of  Satan;  a  bust  that  slants  you 
off  at  the  shoulders,  trims  you  round  with  a  stone  scallop,  and  sticks  you  up 
on  a  bracket;  a  tombstone  for  the  canes  of  the  curious  to  poke  at;  an  occa- 
sional attention  in  the  way  of  withered  immortelles  or  biographical  Billingsgate, 
and  a  partial  preservation  shared  in  common  with  mummies,  auk's  eggs,  snakes 


3G8  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

in  bottles  and  deformities  in  spirits  of  wine — that's  posthumous  fame.  I  must 
say  I  don't  see  much  fun  in  it." 

The  comtesse  smiled  a  gracious  amusement  over  her  fan. 

"  You  have  different  views  from  your  old  friend." 

"Who?  Chandos  ?  Poor  fellow!  he  was  always  eccentric;  lived  in  the 
empyrean,  and  had  ideas  that  may  be  practicable  in  the  millennium,  but  cer- 
tainly won't  be  so  before.  '  Great  wits  to  madness/  etc.  After  having  squan- 
dered all  that  made  life  endurable,  he  consoles  himself,  I  believe,  with  the 
belief  that  people  will  read  him  when  he's  dead.  What  a  queer  consolation! 
Stendahl  thought  the  same  thing:  who  opens  his  books  now  ?  " 

"  Though  you  despise  immortality,  M.  Trevenna,  it  seems  you  can  still 
grudge  it,"  said  La  Vivarol,  with  that  quick,  penetrative  wit  which  could  be 
barbed  as  an  arrow. 

Trevenna  felt  angry  with  himself  for  having  been  trapped  into  the  words. 

"  I  grudge  him  nothing,  madame,"  he  laughed,  good-humoredly, — "  least  of 
all  a  mummy-like  embalming  by  posterity's  bibliomaniacs.  Indeed,  now. I  am 
come  in  office^  I  shall  try  and  induce  him  to  accept  something  more  substantial. 
I  believe  he's  as  poor  as  Job,  though  he's  still  proud  as  Lucifer." 

"  He  had  somewhat  of  Job's  fortune  in  his  friends,"  said  the  comtesse,  with 
a  smile,  as  she  turned  to  others,  and  let  a  due  occupy  the  prie-Dieu  near  her, 
which  Trevenna,  at  that  sign  of  dismissal,  vacated. 

"  What  does  she  still  feel  for  him  ? — love,  or  hate  ?  I  can  understand  most 
things,"  thought  Trevenna,  "  but  hang  me  if  I  can  ever  understand  love, — 
past  or  present.  It's  a  Jack-in-the-box,  always  jumping  up  when  you  think  it's 
screwed  down.  It's  like  dandelion-seeds  for  lightness,  blowing  away  with  a 
breath,  and  yet  it's  like  nettles  for  obstinacy;  there's  no  knowing  when  it's 
plucked. up.  A  confounded  thing,  certainly." 

Like  a  wise  man,  he  had  taken  care  to  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  con- 
founded thing,  and,  in  consequence,  digested  all  his  dinners,  and  never  mud- 
dled any  of  his  affairs. 


CHAPTER  V. 

"NE    CHERCHER    QU'UN    REGARD,    QU'UNE    FLEUR    QU'UN     SOLEIL." 

IN  the  deep  gloom  of  an  antique,  forsaken,  world-forgotten  town  of  Italy, 
silent,  grass-grown,  unspeakable  desolate,  with  the  brown  shadows  of  its  ancient 
houses,  and  here  and  there  the  noiseless  gliding  form  of  monk  or  nun  flitting 
across  the  deserted  spaces,  a  head,  like  a  Guido  Aurora  in  its  youth,  like  a 
Guido  Magdalen  in  its  sadness,  leaned  out  from  the  archway  of  a  bridge- 


CHANDOS.  369 

parapet,  with  the  fair  warmth  of  the  cheek  and  the  chestnut  light  of  the  hair 
lying  wearily  on  the  pillow  of  the  rough-hewn  stone.  Fallen  so,  half  uncon- 
sciously, to  rest,  the  girl's  form  leaned  against  the  buttress  of  the  old  river-way 
that  spanned  tawny  shallow  waters  only  traversed  by  some  olive-laden  canal- 
boat,  whose  stripped  sails  flapped  lazily  in  the  sun;  her  brow  was  sunk  on  her 
hand;  her  eyes,  full  of  passionate  pain,  watched  the  monotonous  ebb  and  flow 
of  the  stream;  her  whole  figure  expressed  an  intense  fatigue;  but  on  her  face, 
with  all  its  brooding,  tired  suffering,  there  was  a  look  of  patient  and  unalterable 
resolve. 

"  So  endless  ! — so  endless  !  "  she  murmured  to  the  silence  of  the  waters. 
"  Surely  God  will  have  pity  soon  !  " 

There  was  only,  in  answer,  the  changeless,  sullen  ripple  of  the  river  far  below, 
— the  silence  that  seems  so  bitter  to  those  who  suffer  in  their  youth,  and  who 
think  some  divine  voice  will  surely  whisper  consolation, — the  silence  eternal,  in 
which  later  they  find  man  must  live  and  must  die. 

A  bent,  browned,  weather-worn  fruit:seller,  with  a  burden  of  melons  and 
gourds  and  figs  fresh  from  the  tree,  traversing  the  steep  incline  of  the  bridge, 
paused  and  looked  at  her.  She  was  very  poor,  and  she  was  old;  but  she  had  a 
tender  soul  under  a  rough  rind.  She  touched  the  girl's  fever-flushed  cheek  with 
the  cool  fragrance  of  a  bough  of  syringa,  and  spoke  very  gently  in  her  broad, 
mellow  peasant-dialect: — 

"  Poverina,  thou  art  tired.     Take  some  fruit." 

She  started,  and  looked  up;  but  there  was  almost  apathy  in  the  smile  with 
which  she  shook  her  head, — it  was  so  listless  in  its  melancholy. 

"You  are  very  kind;  but  I  want  nothing." 

"That  is  not  true,"  said  the  old  contadina.  "Thou  art  in  want  of  much; 
thou  art  too  weary  for  thy  youth.  Where  are  thy  friends  ? " 

"  I  have  none  ! "  The  answer  was  the  more  pathetic  for  the  proud,  re- 
strained sadness  with  which  it  was  given,  as  she  rose  from  her  leaning  attitude, 
impatient  of  pity,  though  not  ungrateful  for  it. 

"None  ?     Mother  of  God  !  and  so  young  !     Thou  art  seeking  some  one?" 

A  deep  flush  passed  over  her  face;  she  bent  her  head  in  assent. 

"  Ah  !  thou  seekest  those  who  love  thee  ?  " 

The  color  burned  deeper  on  her  cheek;  her  eyes  looked  down  on  the  water 
again  with  their  aching  pain. 

"  No,"  she  said,  simply.  "  I  only  seek  to  find  one;  and  when  I  have  found 
him,  and  heard  his  voice  once  more — to  die." 

She  spoke  rather  to  her  own  thoughts  than  to  the  peasant.  The  old  woman's 
deep-set  eyes  grew  very  gentle,  and  her  lips  muttered,  in  wrath, — 

"  Che — e — e  !  Is  it  so  with  thee  ? — anr'.  so  young  !  The  Madonna's  ven- 
geance fall  on  him,  then,  whoever  he  ty  ror  having  caused  thee  such  shame  !  " 


370  QUID  AS     WORKS, 

The  words  acted  like  a  spell;  she  lifted  herself  from  the  drooping  languor  of 
her  rest,  and  flashed  on  the  peasant  from  the  superb  darkness  of  her  eyes  an 
imperious  regal  challenge  of  rebuke  and  amaze.  Who  the  speaker  was  she  for- 
got; she  only  remembered  the  sense  that  had  been  spoken. 

"  Shame  ?  /  have  no  shame  !  My  only  glory  is  to  have  seen  and  known 
the  noblest  life  on  earth.  The  only  hope  I  live  for  is  that  I  may  be  worthy 
to  hear  his  words  once  more.  Vengeance  on  him  ?  God's  love  be  with  him 
always  ! " 

She  passed  onward  with  a  sovereign's  grace,  moving  like  one  in  a  dream; 
though  the  passion  of  her  words  had  risen  to  so  sudden  and  vivid  a  defence, 
she  seemed  to  have  little  consciousness  of  what  she  did,  whither  she  went. 
Then,  as  though  a  pang  of  self-reproach  moved  her,  she  turned  swittly  and 
came  back,  and  stooped  over  the  aged  contadina,  raising  the  fallen  fruit  with 
a  self-accusative  gentleness,  beseeching  even  while  it  still  was  so  proud. 

"  Forgive  me!  You  meant  kindness;  and  you  did  not  know.  I  was  un- 
grateful and  ungentle;  but  I  am  very  tired!  " 

Her  lashes  were  heavy  with  tears,  and  a  sigh  of  intense  exhaustion  escaped 
her.  The  peasant,  touched  to  the  quick,  forced  the  freshest  fruits  into  her 
hands. 

"Carissima  !     I  thought  nothing  of  it.     I  only  pitied  thee." 

At  the  word  the  haughty  rebellion  of  a  royal  nature  gleamed  in  the  sadness 
of  the  beautiful  eyes  that  looked  down  on  her. 

"  Pity  is  for  those  who  ask  alms  or  stoop  to  shame:  do  not  give  it  to 
me." 

"  But  art  thou  all  alone  ?  " 

"Yes;  all  alone." 

"Christ!  and  with  thy  beauty!  Ah!  insult  will  come  to  thee,  though  thou 
art  like  a  princess  in  her  exile;  insult  will  come,  if  thou  art  alone  in  the  wide 
world  with  such  a  face  and  such  a  form  as  thine." 

On  her  face  rose  a  look  of  endurance  and  of  resistance  far  beyond  her 
years. 

"  Insult  never  comes  except  to  those  who  welcome  it.  Farewell!  and  believe 
me  from  my  heart  grateful,  if  I  have  seemed  not  to  be  so  enough." 

And  she  went  on  her  way,  with  the  mellow  light  of  a  setting  sun  on  her 
meditative  brow,  and  the  shadow  of  the  gray  parapet  cast  forward  on  her 
path.  The  fruit-seller  looked  after  her  wistfully,  perplexed  and  regretful. 

"  The  saints  keep  her!  "  she  muttered  over  her  tawny  gourds  and  luscious 
figs.  "  She  will  need  their  care  bad  enough  before  she  has  found  out  what  the 
world  is  for  such  as  she.  Holy  Mary!  whoever  left  her  alone  like  that  must 
have  a  heart  of  stone." 

The  girl  passed  onward  over  tne  rise  and  descent  of  the  old  pointed  bridge; 


CHANDOS.  371 

there  was  the  flush  of  fever  on  her  cheek,  the  exhaustion  of  bodily  fatigue  in 
her  step;  but  her  eyes  looked  far  forward  with  a  brave  light,  resolute  while 
it  was  so  visionary,  and  her  lips  had  as  much  of  resolve  as  of  pain  on 
them.  In  one  hand  swung  a  pannier  full  of  late  summer  flowers,  woven  with 
coils  of  scarlet  creepers,  and  with  the  broad  bronzed  leaves  of  vine,  in  such 
taste  as  only  the  love  and  the  fancy  of  an  artist-mind  could  weave  them; 
in  the  other  she  held,  closely  clasped,  the  bough  of  blossoming  syringa  and  a 
book  well  worn,  that  she  pressed  against  her  bosom  as  she  went,  as  though  it 
were  some  living  and  beloved  thing.  There  was  an  extreme  pathos,  such  as 
had  touched  the  peasant-woman,  in  the  union  of  her  excessive  youth  and  her 
perfect  loneliness;  there  was  something  yet  higher  and  yet  more  pathetic  in  the 
blending  in  her  of  the  faith  and  ignorance  of  childhood  that  wanders  out  into 
the  width  of  the  world  as  into  some  wonder-land  of  Faery,  and  the  unwearying, 
undaunted  resolution  of  a  pilgrim  who  goes  forth  as  the  pilgrims  of  Christen- 
dom went  eastward  to  look  on  their  Jerusalem  once  and  die  content. 

The  bridge  led  down  across  the  river  into  a  wide  square,  so  still,  so 
deserted,  so  mediaeval,  with  its  vast  abandoned  palaces  and  its  marvellous 
church  beauty,  with  only  some  friar's  shadow  or  some  heavily-weight  mule 
crossing  it  in  the  light  of  the  Italian  sunset.  In  the  low  loggia  of  one  of  the 
palaces,  altered  to  a  posting-house,  a  group  was  standing,  idly  looking  at  the 
grass-grown  waste,  whilst  their  horses  were  changing.  They  were  a  gay,  rich, 
titled  set  of  indolent  voyagers  who  were  travelling  to  Rome  from  Paris,  and 
were  as  incongruous  with  the  monastic  silence  and  solitude  of  the  town  that 
lay  in  its  death-trance  as  a  Watteau  painting  in  a  Gothic  hall.  They  saw  her 
as  she  came  beneath  the  balcony,  with  the  book  against  her  bosom,  and  the 
abundance  of  the  flowers  drooping  downwards  in  rings  and  wreaths  of  color  as 
she  bore  them.  Murmurs  of  admiration  at  her  loveliness  broke  irresistibly 
even  from  the  world-sated  men  and  women  who  leaned  there,  tired  and  im- 
patient of  even  a  few  minutes'  dulness. 

"  The  old  traditions  of  Italia,  the  ideal  of  Titian  himself  !  "  said  one  of 
them.  "  Bellissima,  will  you  not  spare  us  one  of  your  lilies  ?  " 

She  looked  up;  a  flush  passed  over  her  face  at  the  familiarity  of  the  ad- 
dress, and  its  natural  pride  deepened;  she  paused,  and  glanced  at  the  women 
of  the  group. 

"  Those  ladies  can  have  them,  if  they  wish." 

"  But  must  not  I,  my  exquisite  young  flower-priestess  ?  "  laughed  her  first 
questioner. 

She  let  her  grave  luminous  eyes  dwell  calmly  on  him. 

"No,  signore,"  she  said,  simply;  but  the  brevity  of  the  words  rebuked  the 
insolent  ease  of  his  manner  better  than  any  lengthier  ones. 

One  of  the  women  leaned  down,  amused  at  her  companion's  rebuff  and 


372  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

mortification;  the  loggia  was  so  low  that  she  could  touch  the  flowers,  and  she 
drew  out  one  of  the  clusters  of  late  lilies. 

"  My  fair  child,  do  you  sell  these  ?  " 

The  color  deepened  on  her  face;  she  lifted  herself  with  a  haughty  grace. 
She  was  not  ashamed  of  having  sold  the  flowers,  but  she  was  ready  to  resist  to 
death  any  aggression  that  held  her  lowered  through  that  necessity. 

"  I  have  done,  signora." 

"  Then  you  will  sell  them  to  me,"  said  the  other,  as  she  dropped  into  the 
basket  a  little  gold  piece  and  took  up  the  blossoms.  A  hand  as  soft  as  her  own 
put  back  the  money  into  her  palm. 

"  I  have  sold  them  for  what  they  are  worth, — a  few  scudi;  I  give  them  to 
you  gladly,  and  I  do  not  take  alms  from  any." 

They  looked  at  her  in  wonder;  the  dignity  of  her  utterance,  the  purity  of 
accent,  the  royal  ease  in  her  attitude,  amazed  them.  An  Italian  child,  sell- 
ing flowers  for  her  bread,  spoke  with  the  decision  and  the  serenity  of  a 
princess. 

"  But  you  will  let  me  offer  it  you  as  a  gift,  will  you  not  ?  "  asked  the  aristocrat, 
with  a  smile,  in  the  languid,  careless  amusement  of  one  who  tired  of  her 
companions  and  impatient  of  detention,  beguiles  the  time  with  the  first  thing 
that  offers. 

She  shook  her  head. 

"  Would  you  take  gold  as  a  gift  yourself,  signora  ?  " 

The  great  lady  reddened  ever  so  slightly;  the  words  spoken  in  all  simplicity 
pricked  her.  It  was  rumored  by  her  world  that  empires  and  governments  had 
on  occasion  bought  her  silence  or  her  alliance  by  magnificent  bribes. 

"Pardieu,  my  loveliest  living  Titian!"  laughed  the  French  marquis  who 
had  first  addressed  her,  "  Madame  la  Comtesse  does  not  sell  flowers  in  the 
street,  I  fancy." 

Her  eyes  swept  over  him  with  a  tranquil  meditative  disdain. 

"  There  is  but  one  rule  for  honor,"  she  said,  briefly;  "and  rank  gives  no 
title  for  insolence." 

"  Fairly  hit,  Villeroy  !  "  laughed  the  great  lady,  who  had  recovered  her 
momentary  irritation.  "  My  beautiful  child,  will  you  tell  me  your  name,  at  the 
least  ? " 

"It  is  Castalia."  Where  she  stood  before  the  loggia,  with  a  troubled 
seriousness  in  the  gaze  of  her  brilliant  eyes  (for  the  tone  of  the  marquis  had 
roused  more  anger  than  his  mere  words),  her  -hand  moved  the  book  against 
her  heart.  "  If  I  were  to  ask  these  ?  "  she  mused.  "  It  is  only  the  nobles  who 
will  ever  tell  me;  it  is  only  they  who  can  be  his  friends.  I  have  never  found 
courage  to  speak  of  him  yet;  but,  until  I  do,  I  cannot  know." 

"  Castalia  ! "  echoed  the  aristocrat.     "  A  fair  name,  indeed, — as  fair  as  you 


CHANDOS.  373 

and  your  flowers.  You  will  not  let  me  repay  you  for  your  lilies;  is  there 
nothing  you  can  let  me  do  for  you  ?  " 

Castalia  looked  at  her  musingly;  the  words  were  gentle,  but  there  was 
something  that  failed  to  reassure  her.  She  stood  before  the  half-insolent 
admiration  of  the  men,  the  supercilious  admiration  of  the  women,  of  this  titled 
and  aristocratic  group,  with  as  complete  a  dignity  and  indifference  as  though 
she  were  a  young  patrician  who  received  them;  but  she  felt  no  instinct  of 
regard  or  of  trust  to  anyone  of  them.  Still  she  drew  nearer  the  loggia,  and 
held  out  the  book  reluctantly  to  her  questioner;  her  eyes  filled  with  an  earnest, 
terrible,  longing  wistfulness;  the  words  were  only  wrenched  out  with  a  great 
pang. 

"  Signora,  yes;  can  you  tell  me  where  he  is  ?  " 

Her  hand  pointed  to  the  name  on  the  title  page,  and  her  voice  shook  with 
the  intensity  of  anxious  entreaty  over  the  last  two  words. 

The  countess  glanced  at  the  volume,  then  let  it  fall  with  amaze,  as  she 
gazed  at  the  pleading,  aching  eyes  that'looked  up  to  hers. 

"  Chandos  !     Mon  Dieu  !  what  is  it  to  you  ? " 

"  You  know  him  ? "  There  was  the  tremulous  thirstiness  of  long-deferred, 
long-despairing  hope  in  the  question,  but  there  was  also  something  of  the 
passionate  jealousy  of  Southern  love. 

The  aristocrat  looked  at  her  with  searching,  surprised,  insolent  eyes,  in 
which  some  anger  and  more  irony  glittered,  while  she  turned  over  the  leaves  of 
the  book. 

"  It  is  '  Lucrece  ! '  "  she  murmured, — "  '  Lucrece  ! ' '  In  the  moment  her 
thoughts  went  backward  over  so  many  years  to  so  many  buried  hours,  to  so 
many  forgotten  things,  to  so  many  by-gone  scenes.  The  book  came  to  her  like 
a  voice  of  the  past. 

"  You  know  him  !  "     A  quivering  emotion  rang  in  the  voice. 

"  What  interest  has  he  for  you  ?  " 

The  lady  had  recovered  her  momentary  amazement,  and  the  smile  with 
which  she  spoke  thrilled  with  fire  and  struck  like  ice  the  heart  of  Castalia, 
though  that  heart  was  too  guileless  to  know  all  the  smile  meant.  But  the  an- 
guish of  a  hopeless  and  endless  search  was  stronger  on  her  than  the  sense  of 
insult;  her  eyes  filled  with  the  beseeching  misery,  like  a  wounded  animal's,  and 
her  hands,  as  she  drew  back  the  volume,  were  crushed  on  it  in  a  gesture  of 
agonized  supplication. 

"  You  know  his  name,  at  least  ?  Ah  !  tell  me,  for  the  love  of  pity,  where 
he  is  gone  !  " 

The  aristocrat  turned  away  with  a  negligent  cold  contempt. 

"  Your  friend  wanders  all  over  the  world;  if  you  want  to  discover  him,  you 
have  a  very  poor  chance,  and  one  I  am  scarcely  disposed  to  aid." 


374  O  UIDA '  S     WORKS. 

"  Chandos,  now  he  has  turned  philosopher,  retains  pretty  much  the  same 
tastes  he  had  as  a  poet,  I  suppose  ?  "  she  murmured,  with  a  smile,  to  one  of  her 
female  friends.  "The  girl  is  very  beautiful,  certainly;  but  how  shameless  to 
ask  us  !  It  is  scarcely  creditable  to  an  author  'who  writes  such  eloquent  periods 
on  Humanity  to  leave  her  to  starve  by  selling  lilies  !  " 

The  slight,  scornful  laugh  caught  Castalia's  ear,  as  the  cold  words  of  the 
first  phrases  had  stung  all  her  pride  and  killed  all  hope  within  her;  a  great 
darkness  had  come  over  her  face,  the  force  of  Italian  passion  gleamed  in  her 
eyes,  but  her  face  was  white  and  set,  and  her  lips  were  pressed  together  to  hold 
in  the  words  that  rose  to  them.  She  turned  away  without  another  entreaty; 
not  even  to  learn  of  him  would  she  supplicate  there.  The  marquis,  with  a  light 
leap,  cleared  the  loggia  and  gained  her  side.  He  was  young,  handsome,  and 
his  voice,  when  he  would,  was  sweet  as  music. 

"  You  seek  the  writer  of  that  book  ?  "  he  said,  gently  touching  the  volume. 

The  look  she  turned  on  him  might  have  touched  the  sternest  to  pity. 

"  Ah,  signore, — yes  !  "  . 

The  answer  broke  from  her  with  a  sigh  that  was  beyond  repression.  Her 
eyes  grew  dim  with  tears.  The  world  held  but  one  idea,  one  thought,  one  exist- 
ence, for  her,  and  her  love  was  at  once  too  utter  an  absorption  and  too  absolute 
an  adoration  to  be  conscious  of  anything  except  its  one  search. 

"  Come  with  me,  then,  and  I  will  tell  you  what  you  wish." 

A  radiance  of  joy  and  hope  flashed  over  the  sadness  of  her  face.  She  did 
not  know  how  dangerous  an  intensity  that  sudden  light  of  rapture  lent  her 
beauty;  she  only  thought  that  she  should  hear  of  him. 

"  1  will  come,"  she  said,  softly,  while  her  hand  still  held  the  book  to  her 
bosom;  and  she  went,  unresisting,  beside  him  to  the  place  to  which  he  turned, 
— a  solitary,  darkened  terrace,  heavily  overhung  by  the  stones  of  an  unused 
palazzo,  with  the  river  flowing  sluggishly  below. 

"Why  do  you  want  to  seek  him  ?"  her  companion  asked. 

In  his  heart  he  thought  he  knew  well  enough.  Her  lover  had  abandoned 
her,  and  she  was  following  him  to  obtain  redress  or  maintenance. 

Her  eyes  dwelt  on  the  water  with  the  earnest,  lustrous,  dreamy  gaze  that 
had  used  to  recall  so  vague  a  memory  to  Chandos. 

"Signore,  only  to  see  him  once  more." 

"  To  see  him  !    To  stir  him  to  pity,  I  suppose, — to  make  some  claim  on  him? " 

She  did  not  comprehend  his  meaning;  but  she  lifted  her  head  quickly  with 
the  imperial  pride  that  mingled  in  so  witching  a  contrast  with  her  guileless  and 
childlike  simplicity. 

"  Signore,  I  would  die  sooner  than  ask  his  pity;  it  would  be  to  ask  and  to 
merit  his  scorn.  Claim,  too  !  What  claim  ?  Have  subjects  a  claim  on  their 
king,  because  he  has  once  been  gentle  enough  to  smile  on  them  ?  When  I  find 


CHANDOS.  375 

him,  I  will  not  weary  him;  I  will  not  let  him  even  know  that  I  am  near;  but  I 
will  search  the  world  through  till  I  look  on  his  face  once  more,  and  then — the 
joy  of  it  will  kill  me,  and  I  shall  be  at  rest  with  my  mother  forever." 

He  looked  at  her,  mute  with  surprise.  If  she  had  been  attractive  in  his 
sight  before,  she  was  tenfold  more  so  now,  as  she  spoke  with  the  exaltation  of 
a  love  that  absorbed  her  whole  life,  making  her  unconscious  of  all  save  itself, 
and  the  mournful  simplicity  of  the  last  words  uttered  with  a  resignation  that 
was  content,  in  the  dawn  of  her  youth,  to  receive  no  other  mercy  than  death. 
He  was  amazed,  he  was  bewildered,  he  was  entranced;  he  felt  an  envious  pas- 
sion in  an  instant  against  the  one  for  whom  she  could  speak  thus;  but  compre- 
hend her  he  could  not.  He  was  shallow,  selfish,  a  cold  libertine,  and  at  once 
too  young  and  too  worldly  to  even  faintly  understand  the  mingling  in  her  nature 
of  transparency  and  depth,  of  tropical  fervor  and  of  utter  innocence,  of  fearless 
pride  against  all  insult  and  of  absolute  abandonment  to  one  idolatry.  He 
spoke  in  the  irritation  of  wonder  and  annoyance. 

"  The  author  of  '  Lucrece'  is  much  flattered  to  be  the  inspirer  of  so  tender  a 
love  !  I  am  afraid  he  has  been  but  negligent  of  the  gift." 

The  words  were  coarser  than  he  would  have  used  save  on  the  spur  of  such 
irritation;  their  effect  was  like  a  spell.  The  flush  that  was  like  the  scarlet 
depth  of  a  crimson  camellia  covered  her  face  in  an  instant,  her  eyes  darkened 
with  a  tremulous  emotion  that  swiftly  altered  to  the  blaze  of  Tuscan  wrath,  her 
lips  trembled,  her  whole  form  changed  under  the  sudden  change  of  thought; 
the  shame  of  love  came  to  her  for  the  first  moment,  as  the  lips  of  another  man 
spoke  it;  she  had  been  wholly  unconscious  of  it  before.  She  was  seeking  him 
as  devotees  sought  the  Holy  Grail,  as  a  stray  bird  seeks  the  only  hand  that  has 
ever  caressed  and  sheltered  it.  The  word  or  the  meaning  of  passion  had  never 
been  uttered  to  her  till  now.  An  intense  horror,  consumed  her, — horror  of  her- 
self, horror  of  her  companion;  she  shuddered  where  she  stood  in  the  hot  air, 
but  the  proud  instinct  of  her  nature  rose  to  sustain  herself,  to  defend 
Chandos. 

"  You  mistake,  signore,"  she  said,  with  a  calm  that  for  the  moment  awed 
him.  "  He  whom  I  seek,  I  seek  because  he  is  my  only  friend, — my  only  sov- 
ereign lord;  because  my  debt  to  him  is  a  debt  so  vast,  a  debt  of  life  itself  that 
life  can  never  pay.  He  was  never  negligent  of  me, — never;  he  was  but  too 
good,  too  generous,  too  gentle." 

He  looked  at  her,  perplexed  and  ncensed.  He  vaguely  felt  that  he  was  in 
error;  but  he  was  distant  as  ever  from  the  truth.  All  he  knew  was  that  he  had 
never,  in  the  whole  range  of  courts,  seen  loveliness  that  could  compete  with  the 
face  and  form  of  this  young  seller  of  the  Tuscan  lilies. 

"Forgive  me,"  he  murmured,  eagerly;  "I  meant  no  offence.  Only  to  look 
on  you  is  sufficient  to " 


376  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

"You  said  you  would  tell  me  where  he  is."  She  spoke  very  low,  but  her 
lips  were  set.  She  began  to  mistrust  him. 

"I  will;  but  hear  me  first.  He  whom  you  talk  of  is  very  poor;  he  is  no 
longer  young;  he  is  a  madman  who  spent  all  his  millions  in  a  day,  and  who 
always  played  at  his  fancy  with  women,  and  left  them.  He  is  not  worthy  of  a 
thought  of  yours." 

The  glorious  darkness  of  her  eyes  grew  like  fire;  but  she  held  her  passion 
in  rein. 

"  Keep  the  promise  you  made  me,"  she  said,  in  her  teeth.  "  Tell  me  of 
him." 

"  I  will.  One  moment  more.  He  cannot  care  whether  you  live  or  die,  or 
would  he  have  left  you  thus  ?  " 

It  was  a  random  blow,  essayed  at  hazard,  but  it  struck  home.  She  grew 
very  pale,  and  her  lips  shook;  yet  she  was  resolute, — resolute  in  her  proud 
defence  and  self-restraint. 

"  Signore,  there  was  no  cause  why  he  should  care.  I  was  but  as  a  broken 
bird  that  he  was  gentle  to;  he  had  a  right  to  leave  me, — no  right  to  think  of  me 
one  hour." 

He  repressed  an  impatient  oath.  He  could  not  understand  her,  yet  he  felt 
he  made  no  head  against  this  resignation  of  herself  to  neglect  and  to  oblivion; 
and  the  splendor  of  her  face  seemed  a  hundred  times  greater  because  of  this 
impotence  to  make  any  impress  on  her  thoughts. 

"  At  least,  if  he  had  had  the  heart  of  a  man,  he  could  never  have  forsaken 
or  forgotten  you,"  he  urged,  tenderly.  "  Listen.  I,  who  have  seen  you  but  a 
moment  ago,  give  you  too  true  a  homage  to  be  able  to  quit  your  side  until 
you  deal  me  my  fiat  of  exile.  In  the  world  there — the  world  of  which  perhaps 
you  know  nothing — I  have*riches  and  honors,  and  pleasures  and  palaces,  that 
shall  all  be  yours  if  you  will  have  them.  Come  with  me,  and  no  queen  shall 
equal  your  sway.  Come  with  me,  and  for  all  those  lilies  I  will  give  you  as 
many  pearls.  Come  with  me;  you  shall  have  diamonds  in  your  hair,  and  slaves 
for  your  every  wish,  and  I  the  chiefest  yet  the  humblest  of  them  all;  you  shall 
have  kings  at  your  feet,  and  make  the  whole  world  mad  with  one  glance  of 
those  divine  eyes.  Come  with  me.  He  never  offered  you  what  I  offer  you 
now,  if  you  will  only  trust  to  my  truth  and  my  love." 

He  spoke  with  all  the  hyperbole  that  he  thought  would  best  dazzle  and  en- 
trance one  to  whom  the  beauties  and  the  wealth  of  the  world  alike  were  un- 
known,— one  in  whom  he  saw  blent  the  pride  of  patricians  with  the  poverty  of 
peasants,— spoke  with  his  eyes  looking  eloquent  tenderness,  with  the  sun  on 
his  handsome  head,  with  the  mellow,  beguiling  music  in  his  voice.  For  all  an- 
swer where  she  stood,  her  eyes  dilated  with  abhorrent  scorn  and  slumbering 
fire;  she  shuddered  from  him  as  from  some  asp.  She  did  not  comprehend  all 


CHANDOS.  377 

to  which  he  wooed  her,  all  that  he  meant  to  convey;  but  she  comprehended 
enough  to  know  that  he  sought  to  bribe  her  with  costly  promises,  and  outraged 
her  with  a  familiarity  offensive  beyond  endurance. 

"No!  "she  said,  passionately,  while  the  liquid  melody  of  her  voice  rang 
clear  and  imperious, — "  no!  he  never  offered  me  what  you  offer  me, — insult. 
Neither  was  he  ever  what  you  are, — a  traitor  to  his  word!  " 

She  turned  from  him  with  that  single  answer,  the  blood  hot  as  flame  in  her 
cheek,  her  head  borne  with  careless,  haughty  dignity.  She  would  not  show 
him  all  she  felt;  she  would  not  show  him  that  her  heart  seemed  breaking, — 
breaking  with  the  bitterness  of  disappointment,  with  the  sudden  vivid  sense  of 
ineradicable  shame,  with  the  absolute  desolation  that  came  on  her  with  the  first 
faint  sickening  perception  of  the  meaning  and  the  tempting  of  evil. 

Mortified,  irritated,  incensed  at  defeat  where  he  had  looked  for  easy  victory 
and  grateful  welcome,  the  young  noble  caught  her  as  she  turned,  flung  his 
arms  about  her  ere  she  could  stir  and  stooped  his  lips  to  hers. 

"  Bellissima  !  do  you  think  I  shall  lose  you  like  that  ?  " 

Before  his  kiss  could  touch  her,  she  had  wrenched  herself  free,  flung  him 
off,  and  struck  him  across  the  mouth  with  the  bough  of  syringa.  The  blow  of 
the  fragrant  white  blossoms  stamped  him  coward  more  utterly  than  a  weightier 
stigma  could  have  stamped  it. 

Then  she  broke  the  branch  in  two,  threw  it  at  his  feet  as  a  young  empress 
might  break  the  sword  of  a  traitor,  and,  leaving  all  her  lilies  and  wealth  of  leaf- 
age scattered  there,  she  quitted  him  without  a  word. 

Bold  though  he  was,  her  pursuer  dared  not  follow  her.  She  looked  down  at 
the  water,  as  she  went  along  its  sullen  course,  with  a  smile,  and  leaned  her  lips 
on  the  book's  worn  page. 

"  He  touched  them  once,"  she  thought;  "  no  other  ever  should  while  that 
river  could  give  me  death  ! " 

A  deadly  horror,  a  tumult  of  dread  and  of  loathing,  were  on  her.  She  never 
rested,  all  tired  though  she  was,  till  she  was  far  out  of  the  town,  and  amidst  the 
vine-fields,  whose  leaves  were  bronzed,  and  whose  purple  and  amber  clusters 
were  swelling  with  their  richest  bloom,  near  the  vintage.  The  shadows,  and  the 
stone  wilderness,  and  the  contracted  air  and  space  of  cities,  were  terrible  to  her; 
mountain-winds  and  forest-fragrance  and  the  free  stretch  of  limitless  vision  had 
been  as  the  very  breath  of  life  to  her  from  her  infancy;  caged  in  the  darkness 
and  the  heat  of  cities,  she  would  have  died  as  surely  as  a  caged  mocking-bird 
dies  of  longing  for  the  South.  She  dropped  to  rest,  still  by  the  side  of  the 
water  under  the  shade  of  the  vines,  while  the  buildings  and  bridges  of  the  town 
sank  down  behind  a  cypress-crowned  crest  of  hills,  gray  with  olives,  or  bare 
where  the  maize  had  been  reaped.  The  browned  leaves  and  the  reddened  fruit 
hung  over  her;  the  water-flags  and  the  purling  stream,  narrowed  and  shallow 


378  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

here,  were  at  her  feet;  alone,  the  great  tears  rushed  into  her  eyes,  and  her  scarce- 
flown  childhood  conquered. 

"  Oh,  God  !  the  width  of  the  world  !  "  she  murmured,  while  one  sob  rose  in 
her  throat, — it  seemed  so  vast,  so  endless,  so  naked,  and  so  pathless  a  desert. 
This  was  the  world  to  which  she  had  used  to  look  as  the  redresser  of  her  wrongs, 
the  battle-field  of  her  victories,  the  fairy-realm  of  every  beauty,  the  giver  of 
such  golden  crowns,  such  hours  of  paradise  ! — this  world  that  seemed  so  full  of 
lives  rushing  to  their  tombs,  wherein  no  man  cared  for  his  brother, — where  all 
was  hard,  and  heated,  and  choked,  and  pitiless,  and  none  paused  to  think  of 
God  ! — this  world  in  which  there  was  but  one  life  for  her,  and  that  one  lost, — 
perhaps  lost  forever. 

This  boundless  width  of  the  world! — to  wander  through  it,  ever  seeking, 
never  finding,  wearing  the  years  away  in  fruitless  search,  pursuing  what,  like 
the  mountain-heights,  receded  farther  with  every  nearer  step,  looking  in  all  the 
multitudes  of  earth  for  one  face,  one  regard,  one  smile!  The  burden  lay 
heavy  on  her  young  heart,  and  the  heart-sickness  of  toil  without  end  was  on 
her  to  despair.  But  the  nature  in  her  was  brave  unto  death,  and  the  venera- 
tion she  bore  her  one  idol  enchained  and  possessed  her  whole  existence.  She 
had  a  child's  faith,  a  woman's  passion,  a  martyr's  heroism. 

She  looked  up  at  the  sunlight  through  the  mist  of  her  tears;  and  trust  was 
strong  in  her,  strong  as  the  anguish  that  made  her  fair  lips  white  and  hot  in  its 
pain  and  her  brief  life  seem  near  its  ending. 

"  He  is  poor, — he  has  suffered,"  she  mused,  recalling  the  words  that  had 
been  spoken  against  him.  "  He  is  so  great;  but  he  has  lost  his  kingdom. 
When  I  find  him,  then,  there  may  be  some  way  I  may  serve  him, — some  way 
as  slaves  serve." 

To  hear  that  he  had  want  and  sorrow  had  seemed  to  bring  him  nearer  to 
her,  had  bound  her  heart  closer  yet  to  one  who  was  not  less  a  sovereign  to  her 
because  a  sovereign  discrowned.  She  marvelled  what  his  history  could  be. 
All  of  glory,  of  dignity,  of  sacrifice,  of  desolation,  that  wronged  greatness  bears, 
thronged  to  her  thoughts  as  the  story  of  his  life.  She  knew  him  now  as  the 
unknown  man  of  whom  she  had  said,  on  the  faith  of  his  written  words,  that  he 
would  have  gathered  strength  from  any  fall;  and  she  knew  no  more  than  this. 
If  was  enough;  it  spoke  more  to  her  than  if  she  had  been  told  of  empires  that 
he  owned.  She  knew  the  kingdom  of  his  thoughts,  the  treasures  of  his  mind; 
through  his  words  he  had  spoken  to  her  long  ere  her  eyes  had  rested  on  him, 
and  she  had  revered  him  as  her  master  ere  ever  she  had  heard  his  voice,  as 
Heloise  had  revered  the  genius  which  roused  the  nations  and  shook  the  churches, 
ere  ever  Abelard  had  stood  before  her. 

It  bound  her  to  him  in  a  submission  absolute  and  proud  in  its  own  bondage 
as  was  ever  that  of  Heloi'se. 


CHANDOS.  379 

It  mattered  nothing  to  her  what  his  life  had  been, — a  reign  or  a  martyrdom, 
a  victory  or  a  travail;  what  he  was  was  known  J;o  her,  and  she  asked  no  more. 
Yet,  where  she  leaned  alone,  the  color  glowed  into  her  face;  she  shrank  and 
trembled  in  the  solitude  as  though  a  thousand  eyes  were  on  her;  for  the  first 
time  the  sense  of  shame  had  touched  her,  for  the  first  time  the  vileness  of  evil 
had  approached  her,  and  both  left  her  afraid  and  startled. 

"  They  spoke  as  though  it  were  sin  to  seek  him,"  she  thought.  "  Will  he 
be  angered  if  I  ever  find  him  ?  I  will  never  go  near  him,  never  ask  his  pity,  never 
let  him  know  that  I  am  by;  I  will  only  look  on  him  from  some  distance,  only 
stay  where  I  can  hear  his  voice  afar  off — if  I  live.  But  whenever  I  see  him 
the  joy  will  kill  me;  and  better  so,  better  far  than  to  risk  one  cold  word  from 
him,  one  look  of  scorn.  He  said  the  world  would  crush  me,  and  stone  me  like 
Hypatia.  The  world  shall  not;  but  one  glance  of  his  would,  if  it  ever  rebuked 
me  !  " 

A  shiver  ran  through  her  as  she  mused. 

She  had  cast  herself  on  the  desert  of  the  world  in  darkness,  as  the  lamps  of 
sacrifice  are  cast  on  the  stream  by  Indian  women  at  night.  All  was  strange  to 
her,  all  cold,  all  arid,  all  without  track  or  knowledge  or  light.  The  beauty  of 
her  voice  in  choral  service  and  the  flowers  that  she  gathered  from  forest  or 
river  were  all  her  riches,  and  hand  to  guide  her  she  had  none.  But  all  fear  for 
herself,  all  thought  for  herself,  were  banished  in  the  domination  of  one  supreme 
grief,  one  supreme  hope.  The  world  was  so  wide  !  When  would  she  find 
him  ? 

Her  tears  fell  heavy  and  f^st,  down  into  the  white  cups  of  the  faded  lilies 
at  her  feet.  The  world  was  so  wide,  and  she  was  so  lonely, — she  whose  heart 
ached  for  love,  whose  eyes  ached  for  beauty,  whose  youth  longed  for  happiness 
as  the  hart  for  the  water-springs. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

"NIHIL  HUMANI  A  ME  ALIENUM  PUTO." 

"  IF  you  would  but  come  back  to  us  !  "  Philippe  d'Orvale  spoke  softly,  as  a 
woman  speaks  in  tenderness.  He  stood  on  the  hearth  of  his  great  banqueting- 
room,  all  rich  and  dark  in  its  burnished  lustre  of  gold  and  scarlet,  like  an  old 
palace  chamber  of  Venice;  his  hair,  that  silky  lion's  mane,  was  white,  but  un- 
der it  the  brown  Southern  eyes  flashed,  full  of  untamed  fire,  and  from  the  depths 
of  the  luxuriant  snowy  beard  laughter  fit  for  Olympus  would  still  shake  the  silence 
with  the  ringing,  riotous  mirth  of  yore.  Now  those  eyes  were  grave  with  a  wist- 


380  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

ful  shadow,  and  the  voice  of  the  reckless  prince  Bohemian  had  a  silver  gentle- 
ness. "  If  you  would  but  come  back  to  us  !  "  he  said,  again,  as  he  had  said  it 
many  times  through  the  length  of  weary  years.  "  The  people  hunger  for  you. 
They  bear  patiently  with  me,  but  it  is  in  bitterness;  they  have  never  been  re- 
conciled to  my  rule,  though  its  yoke  is  light.  Come  back  !  It  is  unchanged;  it 
will  be  as  your  own:  it  should  be  your  own  at  one  word,  if  you  would  but 
let  me  ! " 

Where  Chandos  stood,  in  the  shadow  of  the  jutting  angle  of  the  alabaster 
sculpture  above  the  hearth,  a  shiver  shook  him  that  he  could  not  restrain,  like 
that  which  strong  limbs  give  irrepressibly  when  a  bared  nerve  is  cut  and  wrung. 
His  own  voice  was  very  low,  as  he  answered, — 

"To  thank  you  were  impossible;  I  have  found  no  words  for  it  through 
seventeen  years.  Your  friendship  may  well  avail  to  outweigh  a  whole  world's 
faithlessness.  But  to  accept  were  to  sink  myself  lower  in  my  own  sight  than 
my  worst  ruin  ever  sank  me.  Were  I  to  go  back  on  another's  bounty,  I  would 
give  the  men  who  still  remember  me  leave  to  stone  me  as  I  went,  and  curse  me 
in  my  father's  name." 

Philippe  d'Orvale's  superb  head  drooped  in  silence:  the  proud  noble  knew 
the  temper  that  denied  him,  and  honored  it,  and  could  not  dare  to  press  it  to 
surrender, — knew  that  denial  to  him  was  right  and  just,  even  whilst  his  heart 
longed  most  to  wring  assent.  That  denial  had  been  given  him  steadily  through 
the  long  course  of  seventeen  years, — given  by  one  who  had  once  never  known 
what  it  was  to  forbid  a  desire  or  control  a  wish, — by  one  to  whom  exile  was 
the  ceaseless  and  deadly  bitterness  that  it  was  to  Dante, — by  one  who  longed 
for  the  mere  sight  of  the  forest-lands,  the  mere  breath  of  the  forest-winds,  of 
the  birthright  he  had  lost,  as  the  weary  eyes  of  the  Syrian  Chief  longed  for  a 
sight  of  the  Promised  Land,  that  he  had  to  lie  down  and  die  without  entering, 
banned  out  to  the  last  hour. 

Chandos  saw  the  pain  on  him,  and  stretched  out  his  hand. 

"  My  best  friend,  if  I  could  take  such  charity  from  any,  it  should  be  from 
you.  But  you  must  feel  with  me  that  to  give  consent  to  what  you  wish  were  to 
lose  the  one  relic  of  my  race  I  have  striven  to  keep, — its  barren  honor." 

Due  Philippe's  mighty  grasp  closed  warm  and  firm  on  his,  though  his  head 
was  still  sunk. 

"  I  know  !  I  know  !  Yet  all  I  ask  is  leave  to  give  a  sovereign  back  his 
throne.  No  more  than  my  house  did  to  my  cousin  of  Bourbon." 

A  bitterness  and  weariness  exceeding  passed  over  Chandos'  face. 

"  And  the  sovereign  who  bartered  his  kingdom  for  ten  years'  mad  delight 
had  but  justice  done  him  when  it  was  swept  away  forever.  But  speak  no  more 
of  it,  for  God's  sake  !  I  am  weak  as  water,  here  \  " 

"Weak  !  and  yet  you  refuse?"    . 


CHANDOS.  381 

"  I  refuse,  because  to  accept  were  disgrace;  but  there  are  times  when  I  could 
wish  still  that — bearing  me  the  love  you  did — you  had  shot  me  like  a  dog,  while 
I  could  have  died  in  my  youth  !  " 

The  words  were  hushed  to  a  scarce-heard  whisper,  as  they  escaped  through 
his  set  teeth;  they  were  a  truth  rarely  wrung  from  him, — the  truth  that  through 
the  patience  and  the  peace  and  the  strength  he  had  forced  from  calamity, 
through  the  silence  in  which  he  had  borne  his  doom  and  the  high  ambition 
which  guided  and  sustained  him,  the  old  passionate  agony,  the  old  loathing  of 
life  that  was  pain,  would  break  with  a  resistless  force,  and  make  him  long  to 
have  died  in  that  golden  and  cloudless  light  of  his  lost  years, — died  ere  its 
suns  had  set  forever. 

"Weak!  This  is  rather  strength,  since,  wishing  this  thus,  you  still  have 
borne  against  it,  and  lived  on,  and  conquered!  " 

Chandos'  face  was  in  the -darkness  of  the  shadow  where  he  leaned;  and  as 
the  flame  of  the  hearth  shed  its  flickering  glow  on  it,  there  was  a  heart-sickness 
in  his  smile. 

'•'  I  have  no  strength!  A  foe's  taunt  can  make  a  brute  of  me,  a  friend's 
tenderness  unnerve  me  like  a  woman.  Sometimes  I  think  I  have  learned  nothing; 
sometimes  I  think  no  reed  was  ever  frailer  than  I.  A  while  ago  a  young  girl 
showed  me  '  Lucrece: '  I  knew,  as  I  saw  the  book,  what  Swift  felt  when  he 
shed  those  passionate  tears  for  the  genius  he  had  in  his  youth!  " 

"Yours  is  greater  than  in  your  youth." 

"Ah!  I  doubt  it.  Youth  is  genius:  it  makes  every  dawn  a  new  world, 
every  woman's  beauty  a  love-ode,  every  breath  a  delight.  We  weave  phi- 
losophies as  life  slips  from  us;  but  when  we  were  young  our  mere  life  was  a 
poem." 

Dark  hours  came  on  him  oftentimes;  the  Hellenic  nature  in  him,  that 
loved  beauty  and  harmony  and  the  soft  lulling  of  the  senses,  could  not  perish, 
and,  imprisoned  in  the  loneliness  and  colorless  asceticism  of  need  and  of  exile, 
ached  in  him  and  beat  the  bars  of  its  prison-house  in  many  a  moment.  He 
had  subdued  his  neck  to  the  yoke,  and  he  had  found  his  redemption  in  sub- 
limer  things  and  loftier  freedoms,  as  Boethius  under  the  chains  of  the  Goth 
found  his  in  the  golden  pages  of  the  "Consolations;"  but  there  were  times 
when  the  Greek-like  temper  in  him  still  turned  from  life  without  enjoyment,  as 
from  life  without  value. 

The  heart  of  Philippe  d'Orvale  went  with  him.  The  careless,  royal,  head- 
long levity  of  the  princely  Bohemian  had  made  of  life  one  long  unthinking 
revel.  Dynasties  and  creeds  and  nations  and  thrones  might  rock  and  fall, 
might  rise  and  totter,  round  him;  he  heeded  them  never,  but  drank  the  purple 
wine  of  his  life  brimming  and  rose-crowned,  and  learned  his  science  from  wo- 
men's eves,  and  sung  a  Bourbon  chant  while  others  grew  gray  in  the  gall  of. 


382  O  UIDAS     WORKS. 

state  harness,  and  shook  the  grand,  mellow,  rolling  laughter  from  his  colossal 
chest  at  the  vain  toil  of  the  heart-burning  world  around  him,  while  he  held  on 
his  gay,  endless,  Viking-like  wassail.  Of  a  truth  there  are  creeds  far  less  frank 
and  less  wise  than  his;  and  of  a  truth  there  are  souls  far  less  honest  and  bold 
and  bright.  He  would  have  lost  life  rather  than  have  broken  his  word;  and  no 
lie  had  ever  stained  his  fearless,  careless,  laughter-warmed  lips.  Of  a  truth 
the  mad  duke  had  virtues  the  world  has  not. 

His  eyes  dwelt  now  with  a  great  unspoken  tenderness  on  Chandos. 

"  Yet  you  are  greater  than  you  were  then,"  he  said,  slowly.  "  I  know  it, — 
I  who  am  but  a  wine-cup  rioter  and  loving  nothing  but  my  summer-day  fool- 
ing. You  are  greater;  but  the  harvest  you  sow  will  only  be  reaped  over  your 
grave." 

"  I  should  be  content  could  I  believe  it  would  be  reaped  then." 

"  Be  content,  then.     You  may  be  so." 

"  God  knows  !  Do  you  not  think  Marsy  and  Delisle  de  Sales  and  Linguet 
believed,  as  they  suffered  in  their  dungeons  for  mere  truth  of  speech,  that  the 
remembrance  of  future  generations  would  solace  them  ?  Bichat  gave  him- 
self to  premature  death  for  silence'  sake:  does  the  world  once  in  a  year  speak 
his  name  ?  Yet  how  near  those  men  are  to  us,  to  be  forgotten  !  A  century, 
and  history  will  scarce  chronicle  them." 

"  Then  why  give  the  wealth  of  your  intellect  to  men  ?  " 

"  Are  there  not  higher  things  than  present  reward  and  the  mere  talk  of 
tongues  ?  The  monstrari  digito  were  scarce  a  lofty  goal.  We  may  love  Truth 
and  strive  to  serve  her,  disregarding  what  she  brings  us.  Those  who  need  a 
bribe  from  her  are  not  her  true  believers." 

Philippe  d'Orvale  tossed  his  silvery  hair  from  his  eyes, — eyes  of  such  sunny 
lustre,  of  such  Southern  fires,  still. 

"  Ay  !  And  those  who  held  that  sublime  code  of  yours,  that  cleaving  to 
truth  for  truth's  sake,  where  are  they  ?  How  have  they  fared  in  every  climate 
and  in  every  age  ?  Stoned,  crucified,  burned,  fettered,  broken  on  the  vast 
black  granite  mass  of  the  blind  multitude's  brutality,  of  the  priesthood's  curse 
and  craft !  " 

"  True  !  Yet  if  through  us,  ever  so  slightly,  the  bondage  of  the  creeds' 
traditions  be  loosened  from  the  lives  they  stifle,  and  those  multitudes — so  weary, 
so  feverish,  so  much  more  to  be  pitied  than  condemned — becomes  less  blind, 
less  brute,  the  sacrifice  is  not  in  vain." 

Philippe  d'Orvale  shook  himself  like  a  lion  lashing  to  rage. 

"  In  your  sense,  no.  But  the  world  reels  back  again  into  darkness  as  soon 
as  a  hand  has  lifted  it  for  a  while  into  light.  Men  hold  themselves  purified, 
civilized;  a  year  of  war,  and  lust  and  bloodthirst  rage  untamed  in  all  their  bar- 
barism; a  taste  of  slaughter,  and  they  are  wolves  again  !  There  was  truth  in 


CHAN  DOS.  383 

the  old  feudal  saying,  '  Oignez  vilain,  il  vous  poindra;  poignez  vilain,  il  vous 
oindra.'  Beat  the  multitudes  you  talk  of  with  a  despot's  sword,  and  they  will 
lick  your  feet;  touch  them  with  a  Christ-like  pity,  and  they  will  nail  you  to  the 
cross." 

There  was  a  terrible  truth  in  the  words:  this  man  of  princely  blood,  who 
disdained  all  sceptres  and  wanted  nothing  of  the  world,  could  look  through  and 
through  it  with  his  bold  sunlit  eyes,  and  see  its  rottenness  to  the  core. 

Chandos  sighed  as  he  heard. 

"  You  are  right, — only  too  right.  Yet,  even  while  they  crouch  to  the  tyrant's 
sabre,  how  bitterly  they  need  release  !  even  while  they  crucify  their  teachers 
and  their  saviors,  how  little  they  know  what  they  do  !  They  may  forsake  them- 
selves; but  they  should  not  be  forsaken." 

Philippe  d'Orvale  looked  on  him  with  a  light  soft  as  women's  tears  in  his 
eyes,  and  dashed  his  hand  down  on  the  alabaster. 

"  Chandos,  you  live  twenty  centuries  too  late.  You  would  have  been 
crowned  in  Athens,  and  throned  in  Asia.  But  here,  as  a  saving  grace,  they  will 
call  you — '  mad  ! ' ' 

Chandos  smiled. 

"  Well,  if  they  do  ?  The  title  has  its  honors.  It  was  hooted  against  Solon 
and  Socrates." 

At  that  moment  they  were  no  longer  alone;  a  foreign  minister  entered  the 
reception-room.  Only  at  Philippe  d'Orvale's  house  in  Paris  was  Chandos 
ever  seen  by  any  members  of  the  circles  which  long  ago  had  followed  him 
as  their  leader.  With  the  statesmen,  the  thinkers,  the  scholars  of  Europe,  he 
had  association:  but  with  the  extravagant  and  aristocratic  worlds  where  he  had 
once  reigned  he  had  no  fellowship;  and  the  younger  generation,  who  chiefly 
ruled  them,  had  no  remembrance  and  but  little  knowledge  of  what  his  career 
once  had  been  in  those  splendid  butterfly-frivolities,  those  Tyrian  purples  of  a 
glittering  reign.  A  Turkish  lily,  when  all  its  pomp  of  color  and  of  blossom 
has  been  shaken  down  in  the  wind  and  withered,  is  not  more  rapidly  forgotten 
than  the  royalty  of  a  fashionable  fame  when  once  reverse  has  overtaken  it. 
But  his  name  had  power,  though  of  a  widely  different  sort;  and  its  influence 
was  great.  Science  saw  in  him  its  co-revolutionist  against  tradition;  weary 
and  isolated  thinkers  battling  with  the  apathy  or  the  antagonism  of  men  found 
in  him  their  companion  and  their  chief:  young  and  ardent  minds  came  in  eager 
gratitude  to  his  leadership;  the  churches  stoned,  the  scholars  reverenced  him; 
the  peoples  vaguely  wondered  at  him,  and  told  from  mouth  to  mouth  the 
strange  vicissitudes  of  his  life.  From  the  deep,  silent  heart  of  old  Italian 
cities,  where  many  of  his  years  passed,  his  words  came  to  the  nations,  and 
pierced  ears  most  dead  and  closed  to  him,  and  carried  far  their  seed  of  freedom, 
which  would  sink  in  the  soil  of  public  thought,  and  bear  full  harvest  only,  as 


384  OUJDAS     WORKS. 

Philippe  d'Orvale  had  said,  above  his  grave.  Men  knew  that  there  was  might 
in  this  man,  who  had  risen  from  a  voluptuary's  delight  to  face  destruction,  and 
had  forced  out  of  adversity  the  gold  of  strength  and  of  wisdom.  They  listened, 

even  those  who  cursed  him, — because  he  spoke  too  widely  truth.  They 

listened,  and  they  found  that  an  infinite  patience,  an  exhaustless  toleration,  a 
deep  and  passionless  calm,  had  become  the  temper  of  his  intellect  and  of  his 
teaching.  It  was  too  pure,  too  high,  too  profound  for  them,  and  too  wide  in 
grasp;  but  they  listened,  and  vaguely  caught  a  loftier  tincture,  a  more  serene 
justice,  from  him. 

The  career  which  his  youth  had  projected,  in  the  splendid  ideals  of  its  faith 
and  its  desire,  could  have  been  possible  only  in  the  ages  when  the  world 
was  young,  and  the  sceptre  of  a  king  could  gather  the  countless  hosts  as 
with  a  shepherd's  love  into  one  fold,  under  the  great  Syrian  stars, — when  the 
life  of  a  man  could  be  as  one  long  magnificence  of  Oriental  day,  with 
death  itself  but  the  setting  of  a  cloudless  sun,  and  the  after-glow  of  a  fame  a 
trail  of  light  to  nations  East  and  West.  The  dreams  of  his  youth  had  been 
impossible:  yet  one  thing  remained  to  him  of  them, — their  loyalty  to  men  and 
their  forbearance  with  them.  In  one  sense  he  was  greater  than  his  father  had 
been:  statesmen  mold  the  actions  of  the  Present,  but  thinkers  form  the  minds 
of  the  Future.  It  is  the  vaster  power  of  the  two. 

It  was  late  when  he  left  the  Hotel  d'Orvale.  He  had  spent  the  hours  with 
some  of  the  most  eminent  statesmen  of  the  continent.  All  men  of  mark  heard 
his  opinions  with  eagerness  and  with  deference:  a  man  who  had  in  him  the 
brilliance  of  a  Pericles,  and  who  lived  now  as  simply  as  an  anchorite,  who  had 
the  powers  that  could  have  ruled  an  empire,  and  who  was  content  with  the 
meditative  life,  the  impersonal  ambitions,  of  a  career  of  which  no  material  re- 
compense was  the  goal,  perplexed  them  and  impressed  them.  When  he  had 
had  the  opportunity,  he  had  never  sought  either  rank  or  state  power;  now  that 
his  intellect  was  his  only  treasury,  he  never  sought  to  purchase  with  it  either 
riches  or  the  revival  of  his  lost  dignities.  They  did  not  comprehend  him;  but 
the  absolute  absence  of  all  personal  ambition  impressed  them  in  one  who  when 
his  word  was  omnipotent  had  never  exercised  it  to  obtain  the  place  and  the 
power  which  made  up  their  own  aims,  and  who  now  gave  his  years  and  his 
thoughts  to  the  search  of  truth,  unheeding  what  it  brought  him.  They  won- 
dered that,  with  his  fame,  he  endeavored  to  attain  no  material  rewards,  no  po- 
litical influence:  in  that  wonder  they  missed  the  whole  key  of  his  character. 
He  had  been  too  proud  ever  to  be  attracted  by  the  vulgarities  of  social  dis- 
tinctions in  the  years  when  any  could  have  been  his  for  the  asking;  now  the 
same  temper  remained  with  him.  Then,  as  a  careless  voluptuary,  he  had  smiled 
at  and  pitied  those  who  wasted  the  golden  days  in  the  feverish  pursuit  of  ephem- 
eral renowns;  now,  as  a  great  writer,  he  had  the  same  marvel,  the  same  con- 


CHANDOS.  385 

tempt,  for  the  minds  which  could  stoop  their  mighty  strength  to  seek  a  mon- 
arch's favor  or  a  court's  caprice,  to  gain  a  Garter  ribbon  or  to  form  a  six-months' 
ministry.  The  strife  and  fret  of  party  had  little  more  dignity  in  his  eyes  than 
the  buzzing  and  pushing  of  bees  to  enter  a  honey-clogged  hive.  The  hero  of 
public  life  is  a  slave,  and  a  slave  who  must  wear  the  livery  of  conventional 
forms  and  expedient  fallacies.  Chandos  had  too  much  in  him  of  the  moqucur 
disdain,  of  the  unfettered  negligence,  of  his  earlier  years,  to  be  capable  of 
seeing  charm  in  that  gilded  servitude.  He  loved  freedom,  absolute  freedom: 
he  could  no  more  have  lived  without  it  than  he  could  have  lived  without  air. 

He  knew  that  it  was  well  that  there  should  be  men  who  would  harness  them- 
selves to  the  car  of  the  nations,  and^think  that  they  led  history,  while  they  were 
in  truth  only  the  driven  pack-horses  of  human  development  or  national  decad- 
ence; but  he  would  no  more  have  gone  in  their  shafts  than  an  eagle  will  wind 
a  windlass. 

As  he  went  now,  through  the  lateness  of  the  night,  with  the  fragrance  of 
the  Luxembourg  gardens  on  the  air,  his  thoughts  were  grave  and  far  away. 
The  name  of  Clarencieux  had  reawakened  in  him  the  old  anguish  of  longing  to 
be  once  more  beneath  the  shelter  of  the  familiar  roof,  the  green  leafage  of  the 
beloved  woods.  It  might  be  a  weakness,  he  knew  it;  but  the  longing  was  at 
times  an  agony  as  intense  as  Napoleon's  longing,  in  exile,  for  "the  mere  scent 
of  the  earth  in  Corsica."  To  live  far  sundered  from  the  home  of  his  fathers 
was  the  deadliest  divorce  in  all  his  losses;  years  could  do  nothing  to  temper  or 
to  soften  that  bitterness;  he  had  bartered  his  heritage,  and,  Esau-like,  knew  his 
self-wrought  disinheritance  eternal. 

The  stillness  of  the  night — so  late  that  the  crowds  had  thinned,  and  there 
were  but  little  noise  and  movement  even  in  the  greatest  thoroughfares — brought 
back  on  his  memory  the  nights  in  which  he  had  lain  dying  for  a  draught  of  cold 
water  in  the  dens  of  this  brilliant  city, — of  the  nights  when,  in  infamy  and 
shame  and  misery,  he  had  sought  to  kill  rememberance  and  existence  in  joyless 
vice  and  opiate  slumbers,  in  orgies  that  he  loathed,  in  drugged  sleep  that  lulled 
his  mind  into  an  idiot's  vacancy.  That  time  was  vague  and  unreal  to  him  as 
the  phantasma  of  fever  to  the  man  who  awakes  from  them;  but  he  never  looked 
back  to  it  without  a  shudder.  His  fall  had  been  so  vast,  and  the  plank  so  frail 
that  alone  had  arrested  his  headlong  reel  into  a  suicide's  grave  or  a  madman's 
darkness  !  All  men  had  forsaken  him  then,  save  one, — his  enemy, — forsaken 
him,  though  their  hands  were  full  of  his  gifts, — forsaken  him,  leaving  him  to  die 
like  a  dog.  But  he  had  not  in  return  or  in  revenge  abandoned  them:  he  knew 
the  terrible  truth  of  the  "  Qui  vitia  odit,  homines  odit,"  and  he  would  not  let 
hatred  of  their  ingratitude  dwell  with  him  and  turn  him  cynic,  for  he  cleaved  to 
them  in  tenderness  still.  Perhaps  in  this  yet  more  than  in  all  other  efforts  of 
his  later  life  he  kept  true  to  the  dreams  of  his  youth, — this  patience  with  which 

VOL.  Ill,— 18 


386  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

he  loved  men  and  believed  in  their  redeeming  excellence,  even  through  all 
which  might  have  bidden  him,  as  his  foe  had  once  bidden  him,  '•  curse  God 
and  die  !  " 

As  he  passed  now  through  the  richer  and  finer  quarters  towards  a  retired 
and  little-frequented  street  where  he  had  his  temporary  dwelling  in  the  centre 
of  Paris,  he  passed  close  by  the  gates  of  a-  ducal  mansion.  Before  them  stood, 
among  a  long  line,  a  carriage  handsomely  appointed,  with  powdered  servants 
and  laced  liveries  moving  to  and  fro.  An  English  minister  was  coming  out  to 
the  equipage,  with  some  light,  costly  furs  thrown  loosely  over  his  full  dress. 
They  looked  at  each  other  in  the  gas-light:  a  moment  was  enough  for  recog- 
nition. 

Trevenna  waved  his  hand  towards  his  carriage  with  a  laughing  smile. 

"  Ah,  mon  prince  ?  you  on  foot  ?  How  times  are  changed!  Get  in;  pray 
do.  I'm  very  forgiving,  and  I'll  give  you  a  lift  for  auld  lang  syne." 

Chandos  passed  on, — without  a  word,  without  a  sign, — as  though  he  had  not 
heard.  Yet  men  have  slain  their  foes,  in  hot  blood  and  cold,  for  less  than  this 
mocker's  baseness  and  outrage. 

The  petty  jeer  of  the  indignity  was  fouler  than  a  wrong  worthier  of  resent- 
ment. When  the  soldier  of  the  guard  spat  in  Charles  Stuart's  face,  the  insult 
was  the  worse  because  too  ignominious  for  scorn,  too  low  for  revenge. 

He  went  onward  down  into  the  solitude  of  the  tortuous  winding, — one  of 
those  streets  in  which  bric-a-brac,  and  priceless  china,  and  old  pictures,  and  old 
treasures  of  every  sort  are  heaped  together  in  little,  dark  unguarded  windows, 
and  are  only  told  from  the  shadows  by  the  shine  of  a  diamond  or  the  shape 
of  a  quaint  vase  forcing  itself  up  from  the  dimness  and  dust.  There  came 
feebly  towards  him  in  the  gloom  the  tall,  bowed  form  of  an  old  man,  with  white 
hair  floating  on  his  shoulders,  and  his  hands  feebly  stretched  before  him  in  the 
wavering,  uncertain  movement  of  the  blind.  The  figure  was  impressive,  with 
its  long,  flowing,  black  garments,  and  its  stern,  antique,  patriarch-like  look  so 
painfully  in  contrast  with  the  extreme  feebleness  of  excessive  age  and  that 
plaintive,  flickering  movement  of  the  hands. 

"  Oh,  my  God  !  "  he  was  muttering,  piteously,  "  where  is  he  ?  where  is  he  ? " 

The  grief  and  appeal  of  the  accent,  the  helplessness  of  the  sightless  action 
accompanying  it,  arrested  Chandos.  He  paused,  and  touched  the  blind  wan- 
derer on  the  arm. 

"  Whom  are  you  seeking  ?     Can  I  help  you  ? " 

The  old  man  stopped  his  slow  swinging  step,  and  caught  the  gentleness  of 
the  tone  with  the  quickness  to  sound  that  compensates  for  the  loss  of  sight  in 
so  many. 

"  I  search  for  my  dog,  sir,"  he  answered.  "  He  is  my  only  guide,  and  I 
have  lost  him." 


CHANDOS.  387 

"  Lost  him  ?     How  far  from  this  ? " 

"Some  way.  He  broke  from  me:  children  lured  him,  I  think.  He  was 
very  pretty,  and  the  life  he  led  with  me  was  but  dull.  It  is  natural  he  should 
forsake  me." 

Chandos  listened,  struck  by  the  accent:  he  had  known  what  it  was  to  have 
an  animal  the  sole  friend  left. 

"  Dogs  rarely  forsake  us.  I  should  hope  he  will  come  back  to  you.  You 
cannot  find  your  way  without  him  ? " 

The  other  shook  his  head  silently, — a  grand,  majestic,  saturnine  old  man, 
despite  the  decrepitude  that  had  bowed  his  back  and  the  melancholy  supplica- 
tion in  which  his- trembling  hands  were  outstretched. 

Chandos  looked  at  him  silently  also:  there  was  something  in  his  look  and 
in  his  manner  which  impressed  him  with  their  intense  sadness.  No  memory 
revived  in  him,  but  compassion  moved  him. 

"Tell  me  where  you  live:  I  will  see  you  home,"  he  said,  presently.  It  was 
not  in  his  nature  to  leave  anyone  so  aged  to  wander  wretchedly  and  uncer- 
tainly in  the  darkness  or  the  after-midnight.  Trevenna  would  have  enjoyed 
stealing  the  dog  away,  and  leading  the  harrassed  creature  round  and  round  in 
a  circle  by  a  thousand  mystifications;  but  to  Chandos  there  was  something  of 
positive  pain  in  the  sight  of  any  human  being  stranded  in  the  midst  of  that 
peopled  city  for  sheer  need  of  a  hand  stretched  out  to  him.  Men  had  been 
false  to  him;  but  he  remained  loyally  true  to  them. 

The  blind  man  turned  with  an  involuntary  start  of  wonder  and  of  gratitude. 

"  You  are  very  good,  sir!  Will  it  not  trouble  you  ?"  he  said,  hesitatingly. 
His  ear  told  him  that  the  voice  which  addressed  him  was  the  voice  of  a  person 
of  gentle  blood. 

"  Far  from  it.  Men  must  be  very  heartless  if  they  could  all  leave  you  to 
need  such  a  trifle  as  that." 

"  Men  owe  me  nothing,"  said  the  other,  curtly,  whilst  he  went  on  to  tell 
his  residence. 

Chandos  said  no  more,  but  went  thither,  slackening  his  pace  to  the  halting 
step  of  the  one  he  guided.  It  was  some  little  time  before  he  could  find  the 
place  he  was  directed  to;  when  he  did  so,  it  was  a  tall,  frowning,  ruined  house, 
jammed  amidst  many  others,  with  the  shutters  up  against  the  lower  windows, 
and  poverty  told  by  all  its  rambling  timbers. 

"  Open,  sir,  since  you  are  kind  enough  to  take  pity  on  me,"  said  the  blind 
man,  as  he  gave  him  a  key,  to  which  the  crazy  door  yielded  easily.  "  My 
room,  such  as  it  is,  is  the  first  on  the  fifth  story." 

It  was  a  miserable  chamber  enough,  bare  and  desolate,  with  a  rough  pallet 
bed,  and  an  unspeakable  nakedness  and  want  about  it.  A  little  lamp  burned 
dully,  and  threw  its  yellow  light  on  the  peculiar  and  striking  figure  of  the  man 


388  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

he  had  guided;  and  he  looked  at  him  curiously, — a  man  of  ninety  winters,  with 
the  dark  olive  of  his  skin  furrowed  like  oak-bark,  with  his  sweeping,  pointed 
beard  snow-white, — a  man  who  had  suffered  much,  needed  much,  endured  much, 
and  possibly  done  much  evil,  in  his  day,  yet  commanding  and  solemn  in  his 
excessive  years  as  the  figure  of  a  Belisarius  sightless  and  poverty-stricken  and 
forsaken  by  those  for  whom  he  had  given  his  life-blood.  He  turned  to  Chan- 
dos  with  a  stately  and  touching  action. 

"Sir,  who  you  are  I  cannot  tell;  but  from  my  soul  I  thank  you,  from  my 
heart  I  would  bless  you — if  I  dared." 

Chandos  lingered,  leaning  against  the  barren,  unsightly  wall.  .  He  might  be 
in  a  den  of  thieves,  for  aught  he  knew;  but  there  was  that  in  the  Israelite  (as  he 
justly  deemed  him)  that  moved  him  to  interest.  Since  the  glory  of  his  summer- 
day  world  had  closed  on  him,  he  had  gone  far  down  into  the  depths  of  human 
suffering  and  human  sin;  he  had  known  life  in  its  darkest  and  in  its  worst,  and 
he  evaded  nothing  to  which  he  could  bring  either  aid  or  consolation.  The 
mingled  infirmity  and  wisdom  of  his  glorious  manhood  had  been  to  abhor  and 
shun  every  sight  and  shape  of  pain;  since  he  had  tasted  the  bitterness  of  ruin, 
he  had  passed  by  no  pain  that  he  could  hope  to  succor. 

"  You  should  not  be  alone  at  your  years,"  he  said,  gently.  "  Have  you  noth- 
ing but  this  lost  dog  to  take  heed  of  you  ? " 

"  Nothing,  sir:  he  is  gone  now." 

"I  trust  not.  I  will  try  and  find  him  for  you.  Pardon  me,  but  at  your  age 
it  is  rare  to  be  wholly  solitary." 

"  It  is  ? "  said  the  blind  man,  with  a  sententious  melancholy.  "  I  thought  the 
reverse.  We  have  outlived  our  due  time.  We  have  seen  all  die  around  us; 
we  ought  to  be  dead  ourselves." 

Chandos  was  silent;  he  stood,  thoughtful  and  almost  saddened  by  the  Israel- 
ite's words.  He  was  alone  himself, — he,  for  whom  the  world  had  once  been 
one  wide  palace,  filled  with  courtiers  and  friends;  he  looked  to  be  so  alone  to 
his  grave. 

At  that  moment  there  came  the  rush  of  eager  feet,  the  panting  of  eager 
breath;  the  unlatched  door  of  the  room  was  burst  open.  A  little  dog  of  the 
Maltese  breed  scoured  across  the  floor,  and  leaped  on  the  old  man  with  frantic 
caresses;  its  desertion  had  been  but  for  a  moment,  and  its  conscience  and  its 
love  had  soon  brought  it  back.  The  Jew  took  it  fondly  in  his  arms,  and  mur- 
mured tender  names  over  it;  then  he  turned  his  blind  eyes  on  Chandos. 

"  Sir,  I  thank  my  little  truant  that  through  his  abandonment  I  learned  that 
one  man  lived  so  merciful  as  you." 

"There  are  many;  do  not  doubt  that.  Forgive  me  if  I  seem  to  force  your 
confidence,  but  I  would  gladly  know  if  I  can  aid  you.  Rich  I  am  not,  but  there 
might  be  ways  in  which  I  could  assist  you." 


CHAN  DOS.  389 

He  spoke  very  gently:  this  old  man,  grand  as  any  sculpture  of  Abraham  or 
Agamemnon,  in  his  extreme  loneliness,  in  his  extreme  poverty,  awoke  his 
sympathy. 

The  Hebrew  drew  his  bent  form  straight,  with  a  certain  unconscious  majesty. 

"Sir,  my  confidence  you  cannot  have;  but  it  is  only  meet  that  you  should 
know  I  am  one  who  often  has  worked  much  evil,  and  who  has  been  once 
branded  as  a  felon." 

Chandos  looked  at  him  in  silence  a  moment;  he  could  believe  that  evil  had 
left  its  trace  among  the  dark  furrows  of  the  sombre  and  stern  face  he  looked 
on,  but  criminal  shame  seemed  to  have  no  place  with  the  Jew's  patriarchal 
calm  and  dignity. 

"  If  it  be  so,  there  may  be  but  the  more  cause  that  you  need  aid.  Speak 
frankly  with  me." 

"  There  are  those  who  say  my  people  never  speak  except  to  lie,"  said  the 
Hebrew,  briefly.  "  It  is  untrue.  But  frank  I  cannot  be  with  you, — with  any. 
Could  I  have  be  been  so,  I  were  not  thus  now." 

"  How  ?     Did  you  refuse  the  truth,  or  was  it  denied  you  ? " 

"  Both.  I  heard  a  story  once, — whether  fact  or  romance  I  cannot  tell ;  it 
struck  me.  I  will  tell  it  to  you.  There  was  an  old  soldier  of  the  Grande 
Armee,  who  was  bidden  by  his  chief  to  execute  some  secret  service  and  never 
speak  of  it.  He  did  it;  his  absence  on  his  errand  was  discovered;  he  was  tried 
for  desertion  or  disobedience,  I  forget  which.  Napoleon  was  present  at  the 
trial;  the  accused  looked  in  the  face  of  his  master  for  permission  to  clear  him- 
self by  revealing  the  truth;  the  face  was  chill  as  stone,  mute  as  steel;  there 
was  no  consent  in  it.  The  soldier  bared  his  head  and  held  his  peace;  he  under- 
went his  chastisement  in  silence;  he  muttered  only  ever  after,  in  insanity, 
'  Silence  a  la  mort ! '  ' 

Chandos  heard,  moved  to  more  than  surprise.  He  saw  that  this  poverty- 
worn  blind  Hebrew  was  no  common  criminal  and  had  had  no  common  fate. 
He  leaned  forward  and  looked  at  him  more  earnestly. 

"  And  the  soldier's  doom, — was  that  yours  ?  "  he  asked. 

The  Jew  bent  his  snow-white  head,  pressing  the  little  nestling  dog  closer  to 
his  bosom. 

"  Much  such  a  one." 

"  You  were  of  the  army,  then  ?  " 

"No;  but  I  had  a  chief  as  pitiless  as  Napoleon.  No  matter  !  he  had  the 
right  to  be  so.  It  is  not  for  me  to  speak." 

The  words  were  spoken  with  the  patience  of  his  race,  and  infinite  pain 
passed  over  the  harsh,  saturnine  sternness  of  his  face. 

"  But  you  would  seem  to  say  that  by  silence  you  were  wronged.  Tell  me 
more  plainly." 


390  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

A  sigh  escaped  the  close-pressed  lips  of  the  aged  man. 

"  Sir,  you  have  been  good  to  me;  it  is  not  for  me  to  deny  what  I  can  justly 
tell.  That  is  not  much.  I  was  in  the  employ  of  an  Englishman;  we  drove  an 
evil  trade, — a  trade  in  men's  ruin,  in  men's  necessities,  in  men's  desperation. 
It  is  a  common  trade  enough,  and  there  are  hundreds  who  drive  in  their  car- 
riages, and  live  amidst  the  great,  who  have  gained  their  wealth  by  that  trade 
and  by  no  other.  I  was  a  hard  man,  a  shrewd,  a  merciless;  I  asked  my  pound 
of  flesh,  and  I  cut  it  remorselessly.  Life  had  been  bitter  with  me;  it  had 
baffled  me  when  I  would  have  done  righteousness;  it  had  denied  me  when  I 
would  have  sought  justice:  it  had  damned  me  because  of  my  wandering  race: 
with  the  book  of  my  religion  in  their  hands,  Christians  flouted  me  and  scourged 
me, — a  Jew  dog,  a  Jew  cheat,  a  Jew  liar  !  If  I  said  truth,  none  believed  me;  if 
I  did  honestly,  all  laughed,  and  thought  that  I  had  some  deeper  scheme  of  vil- 
lany  beneath.  I  would  have  acted  well  with  men,  but  they  mocked  me;  and 
then — I  took  my  revenge.  I  do  not  say  it  was  right;  but  it  was  human." 

He  paused;  the  died-out  light  began  to  gather  in  his  sunken  eyes,  the  mem- 
ories of  manhood  to  kindle  on  his  brown  and  withered  face;  his  voice  grew 
stronger  and  deeper,  as  it  thrilled  with  the  remembrance  of  other  days.  Chan- 
dos  stood  silent,  looking  on  him  with  a  strange  force  of  interest,  while  the  dull 
feeble  flickering  of  the  oil-flame  shed  its  faint  illumination  on  the  old  man's 
Syrian-like  form. 

"  I  was  sorely  tossed,  and  beaten,  and  reviled:  I  became  bitter,  and  keen, 
and  cruel.  I  was  like  iron  to  those  Gentiles  who  needed  me  and,  when  they 
needed,  cringed.  I  said  in  my  soul,  '  You  call  me  a  Jew  robber:  well,  you  shall 
feel  my  knife.'  And  yet  I  declare  that,  till  they  made  me  so,  I  had  served  men 
and  striven  to  make  them  love  me, — hard  as  it  is  for  a  poor  man,  and  a  Jew,  to 
gain  a  friend  among  Christians  !  They  have  stolen  our  God;  but  they  only 
blaspheme  in  his  name,  and  call  the  people  whose  creed  they  borrow  by  the  vil- 
est obscenities  of  their  streets  !  So  I  grew  like  a  flint,  and  I  checked  not  at 
cunning.  One  innocent  may  be  wrongly  suspected  until  he  is  made  the  thing 
that  the  libel  has  called  him.  I  was  a  usurer:  you  know  what  that  is, — a  man 
who  makes  his  gold  out  of  tears  of  blood,  and  fills  his  caldron  with  human  flesh 
till  its  seething  brews  him  wealth.  I  had  only  one  softness  in  me:  it  was  my 
love  for  my  wife." 

His -voice  quivered  slightly;  even  the  memory  of  the  dead  love  that  lay  so 
far  away  in  the  grave  of  buried  days  had  power  to  shake  him  like  a  reed. 

"  She  was  as  beautiful  as  the  morning,  twenty  years  or  more  younger  than 
I;  but  she  loved  me  with  a  great  love,  and  while  she  was  in  my  bosom  she 
made  me  seek  to  be  as  she  was.  Well,  she  died.  My  life  was  dark  as  mid- 
night, and  my  heart  was  ice.  For  a  while  I  was  mad;  when  my  senses  came  to 
me,  I  set  myself  to  the  lust  of  gold,  to  the  grinding  out  of  my  deadly  pain  on 


CHANDOS.  391 

the  lives  that  had  mocked  me.  Thus  I  became  evil,  and  men  crushed  me, — 
justly  then.  I  made  much  money,  and,  years  after,  I  lost  it,  in  schemes  in 
which  it  had  been  risked.  I  fell  in  the  straits  of  extreme  poverty;  in  them  I 
met,  in  the  dens  of  a  great  city,  an  Englishman  who  was  good  to  me  and 
succored  me.  Afterwards  we  entered  into  negotiations  together;  he  joined  my 
old  firm, — it  did  not  bear  my  name;  he  became  *'/.-  in  fact,  I  was  but  his 
manager,  clerk,  subordinate;  but  the  public  still  thought  me  the  principal. 
He  was  very  clever,  very  able;  he  knew  the  world  widely,  and  he  had  fashion- 
able acquaintances  by  the  hundred.  Between  us, — he  secretly,  I  openly, — we 
spread  our  nets  very  far;  we  drew  many  lives  into  the  meshes;  we  made  much 
money; — he  did,  at  least:  his  was  the  capital,  his  the  profit;  I  did  but  the  work 
at  a  salary.  We  were  always  strictly  to  the  letter  of  the  law;  but  within  the 
law  we  were  very  hard.  Oh,  God  !  now  that  I  am  blind  and  forsaken,  I  know 
it  !  Well,  meanwhile  my  son  had  come  home  to  me  from  Spain, — a  beautiful, 
gracious  child,  who  brought  his  mother's  look  in  his  eyes.  In  him  I  was  almost 
happy;  for  him  I  worked  unceasingly;  thinking  of  him,  I  did  my  master's 
bidding  with  alacrity  and  with  little  heed  for  those  who  suffered.  For  seven 
years  my  boy  grew  up  with  me  from  a  child  to  a  youth;  and  when  he  smiled 
at  me  with  his  mother's  smile,  I  would  have  coined  my  life,  if  I  could  have 
done  so,  to  purchase  him  an  hour's  pleasure.  And  in  those  seven  years  the  firm 
had  prospered  marvellously,  and  my  master — so  I  call  him — made  much  wealth 
from  it  in  secret.  At  the  time  of  the  eight  or  ninth  year,  when  my  son  was 
eighteen " 

He  paused;  though  his  eyes  had  no  sight  in  them,  he  veiled  them,  drooping 
his  head  in  shame  as  his  words  were  resumed. 

"  The  lad  erred, — erred  terribly.  I  cannot  speak  it  !  Dishonesty,  glossed 
over,  had  -been  round  him  so  long, — it  was  not  his  crime.  He  saw  us  thieve: 
how  could  he  learn  to  keep  his  young  hands  pure  ?  He  forged  my  master's 
name,  in  thoughtlessness,  and  thinking,  I  believe,  that  such  money  was  our 
common  due,  since  I  worked  for  it.  I  knew  then  a  worse  anguish  than  when 
my  darling  had  died.  My  master  found  it  out, — he  found  everything  out:  the 
boy  was  in  his  power.  He  could  have  sent  the  young  life  to  a  felon's  doom:  he 
was  merciful,  and  he  spared  him.  For  it  let  me  ever  hold  his  name  in  blessing." 

He  bent  his  head  with  a  grave,  reverential  gesture,  and  was  silent  many 
moments,  his  lips  mutely  moving,  as  though  in  prayer  for  the  benefactor  of  his 
only  son. 

"  He  spared  the  youth  always:  let  it  ever  be  remembered  by  me,"  he 
resumed,  while  his  voice  was  broken  and  very  faint.  "  To  purchase  his 
redemption,  to  repay  his  ransom,  I  gave  my  body  and  my  mind,  by  night  and 
by  day  to  travail.  I  did  iniquity  to  buy  my  son's  peace:  that  was  my  sin. 
My  master  was  lenient,  and  spared  him  from  accusation:  that  was  his  clemency. 


392  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

By  one  and  by  the  other  the  child  was  saved.  He  was  so  gentle,  so  loving, 
so  bright,  so  full  of  poetic  thoughts  and  noble  longing;  it  must  have  been  a 
mortal  fear  that  ever  drove  him  to  that  single  crime!  Or  rather,  I  have 
thought  later,  it  was  the  thoughtless  fault  of  a  child  who  did  not  know  the  error 
than  he  did.  Well,  my  master  had  been  pitiful  to  the  thing  I  loved.  I  owed 
him  my  life — more  than  my  life — for  that.  A  few  years,  and  the  test  came  to 
me.  I  have  said  inviolate  secrecy  was  kept  on  his  association  with  the  business 
that  I  conducted.  No  living  creature  guessed  it.  His  own  friends  by  the  score 
were  among  our  clients,  among  our  victims;  but  none  of  them  ever  dreamt  that 
he  had  anything  to  do  with  the  usury  on  which  they  heap  their  curses.  One 
night  he  had  visited  the  office  (a  thing  he  rarely  did),  and  had  taken  away  with 
him  the  title-deeds  and  family  papers  of  one  whose  extremity  of  need  had 
forced  him  to  lodge  them  with  me  as  security  for  an  immediate  loan.  That 
very  night  their  owner  came  down  in  hot  haste;  he  had  obtained' money  by  a 
sudden  and  a  marvellous  stroke  of  fortune,  and  was  breathless  to  recover  his 
pawned  papers  and  pay  back  the  loan.  The  deeds  were  not  there  !  To  say 
where  they  were  would  have  been  to  betray  my  master.  I  could  not  produce 
them;  I  could  not  explain  their  absence.  The  gentleman  was  very  fiery  and 
furious;  he  would  not  wait;  he  demanded  his  papers  back.  Give  them  I  could 
not,  and  I  had  neither  time  nor  means  to  communicate  with  my  master.  The 
gentleman,  hot-blooded  and  young,  gave  me  into  arrest  for  their  detention  and 
disappearance.  The  trial  ensued.  Since  my  arrest  I  had  watched  and  waited 
for  some  word,  some  sign,  from  my  master  which  should  tell  what  I  should  do. 
I  waited  in  vain:  none  came.  I  was  placed  in  the  dock,  and  tried  for  the  theft 
of  the  deeds.  My  counsel  were  bitter  toward  me,  because  I  would  not  be 
'frank  '  with  them  and  explain;  I  could  only  be  silent  unless  my  master  gave 
me  freedom  to  speak.  Ife  knew  he  could  trust  me.  Besides,  had  he  not  the 
lad's  fame  and  life  in  his  power?  He  was  there, — in  court, — listening.  I 
looked  at  him;  he  looked  at  me.  I  read  '  silence '  hidden  on  his  face,  as  the 
soldier  saw  it  on  Napoleon's.  It  was  enough.  I  was  silent.  It  was  his  due, 
and  my  right  of  obedience.  He  had  spared  my  son  in  his  error;  I  had  sworn 
to  keep  his  secret  till  death.  The  trial  took  its  course;  they  found  me  guilty. 
I  was  sentenced  to  ten  years'  penal  servitude.  It  was  a  grave  offence.  The 
deeds  were  gone:  they  were  never  found:  I  suppose  my  master  destroyed  them. 
It  was  a  fearful  loss  for  their  owner,  and  they  could  not  choose  but  judge  that 
I  had  held  them  back  or  burnt  them,  for  theft  or  for  the  sake  of  extortion.  I 
suffered  the  punishment;  but  I  never  broke  my  silence." 

There  was  a  sublime  simplicity,  an  inexpressible  grandeur,  on  the  old  man, 
as  he  spoke,  bowing  his  head  as  though  borne  down  by  the  weight  of  that  en- 
forced burden  of  silence,  stretching  out  his  trembling  hands  as  though  in  sup- 
plication to  God  to  witness  how  he  had  kept  his  oath. 


CHAN  DOS.  393 

Chandos,  where  he  stood  in  the  gloom  of  the  poverty-stricken  chamber,  un- 
covered his  head  with  a  reverent  action  before  the  sightless  gaze  of  the  blind 
man. 

"  Let  the  evil  of  your -life  be  what  it  may,  in  that  martyrdom  you  washed 
it  out  with  a  nobility  men  seldom  reach." 

His  words  were  low  and  heartfelt:  the  unconscious  dignity  of  the  self-de- 
votion and  of  the  fidelity  to  a  promised  word  was  too  lofty  to  his  thought  to 
be  insulted  with  an  offering  of  mere  pity. 

A  warmth  of  surprise  and  of  pleasure  passed  over  the  withered  olive  face  of 
the  Israelite, — though  it  faded  almost  instantly. 

"  It  was  duty,"  he  said,  simply, — "  the  duty  of  a  debtor." 

"  Rather  it  was  the  sacrifice  of  a  martyr.  But  he,  this  brutal  taskmaster, 
who  could  condemn  you  to  such  a  doom,  who  could  stand  by  and  see  you  suffer 
for  his  sake, — what  of  him  ?  " 

"  I  say  nothing  of  him:  he  is  sacred  to  me  !  " 

"  Sacred  !  though  he  cursed  you  thus  ?  " 

"  Sacred,  because  he  spared  my  son." 

Chandos  bent  his  head. 

"  I  understand  you;  I  honor  you.  But  it  was  a  terrible  ordeal.  Few  con- 
strue duty  so.  And  your  son, — what  of  him  ? " 

"  I  am  as  one  dead  to  him." 

Ignatius  Mathias  said  the  words  very  softly,  whilst  over  the  bronzed,  worn 
rigidity  of  his  patient  face  came  the  softer  look  which  it  only  wore  at  the 
thought  of  Agostino. 

"  Dead  to  him  ?     Is  he,  then,  so  ungrateful  ? ' 

The  Hebrew  shook  his  head  with  a  quick  negative  gesture  of  his  hands. 

"  He  is  never  ungrateful ;  he  felt  only  too  vividly,  and  he  loved  me  well. 
But  I  had  sent  him  out  of  the  country  before  this  happened, — sent  him,  my 
master  permitting,  to  people  of  mine  in  Mexico.  It  was  bitter  for  me  to  sever 
from  him.  But  the  lad's  spirit  was  broken;  I  knew  nothing  but  change  of 
scene  could  ever  restore  him.  Journals  did  not  reach  him  there  in  the  western 
country.  I  learned  that  he  was  recovering  health  and  courage,  and  was  prose- 
cuting a  career  for  which  he  had  from  childhood  shown  genius.  I  learned  that 
he  knew  nothing  of  my  arrest  and  of  my  trial:  I  thanked  God;  for  I  knew  how 
it  would  have  grieved  him.  He  might  have  done  something  very  rash,  had  he 
heard  that  I  suffered  or  was  accused.  As  it  was,  I  bade  them  tell  him  I  was 
dead.  It  would  cause  him  pain,  great  pain, — for  he  loved  me,  strange  as  it 
may  seem  that  he  should, — but  less  pain  than  the  shame  that  must  have  fallen 
on  him  with  the  other  knowledge.  It  was  weak  in  me,  perhaps,  but  I  could 
not  bear  that  my  only  son  should  think,  with  the  world,  that  I  could  be  guilty 
of  that  crime.  And  if  he  had  not  thought  it,  it  would  have  been  worse:  he 


394  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

would  have  been  galled  to  some  act  of  desperation.  He  heard,  as  I  say,  of  my 
death;  he  suffered,  but  less  than  he  would  have  suffered  knowing  the  truth, 
knowing  the  punishment  I  underwent.  Yet  the  deadliest  thing  in  my  chastise- 
ment was  that  I  could  never  look  on  his  face,  never  listen  to  his  voice,  never 
let  him  hear  that  I  lived!  " 

The  old  man's  voice  faltered  slightly;  even  his  strength,  that  had  been  like 
wrought  iron  to  endure,  and  that  had  held  his  soul  in  patience  for  so  long, 
could  not  look  back  at  that  time  of  torture  and  keep  its  force  unbroken. 

"  At  the  end  of  ten  years  I  was  liberated.  They  had  not  been  cruel  to  me 
as  a  convict.  They  pitied  my  age,  I  think,  though  at  first  they  had  little 
mercy,  because  they  held  me  a  Jew  thief.  I  was  free, — a  beggar,  of  course; 
and  at  eighty-four  years  one  cannot  begin  the  world  again.  Besides,  I  was  as 
one  branded:  go  where  I  would,  the  police  followed  me,  and  warned  others  of 
me;  I  was  a  leper  and  a  pariah  in  the  midst  of  men.  I  did  not  starve,  for 
my  people  are  good  to  the  helpless;  but  all  thought  me  guilty,  and  no 
creature  trusted  me.  I  heard  of  my  darling,  of  my  son:  he  was  pros- 
perous. He  was  achieving  fame  and  success  in  the  life  he  had  chosen;  he 
was,  I  hoped,  happy.  I  could  not  be  so  brutal,  so  selfish,  as  to  seek  him  out 
and  say,  '  Behold,  your  father  lives!'  when  he  must. have  found  in  his  father  a 
convicted  felon  just  set  free  from  his  public  punishment.  I  could  not  blithe 
his  youth  and  his  peace  by  rising  up  as  it  were  from  the  grave  and  forcing  on 
him  my  age,  my  poverty,  my  disgrace,  as  the  world  held  it.  He  had  mourned 
for  me,  and  ceased  to  mourn  long  before:  I  could  not  open  his  wounds  afresh; 
I  could  not  humiliate  him  with  a  criminal's  claim  on  him.  Not  that  I  wronged 
him  ever,  not  that  I  ever  doubted  him;  let  me  have  been  what  I  should,  I  knew 
his  heart  would  be  tender  to  me  and  his  roof  be  offered  me  in  shelter.  But 
because  I  knew,  I  could  not  bring  that  wretchedness  on  him;  I  could  not  injure 
him  in  the  world's  sight  by  standing  by  him  a  liberated  felon;  I  could  not  tor- 
ture him  by  showing  him  my  wrists,  on  which  the  chains  of  the  convict  gang 
had  weighed,  by  bidding  him  look  back  with  me  upon  my  prison-cell,  my 
prison-shame.  I  left  him  to  believe  me  dead.  I  never  looked  upon  his  face 
except  by  stealth.  I  never  listened  to  his  voice  except  standing  hidden  in  some 
dark  archway  to  hear  him  speak  as  he  passed  by  me  in  the  streets.  I  have 
watched  for  hours  under  the  shelter  of  green  leaves  to  catch  one  glance  of  him 
as  he  came  forth.  I  have  waited  for  a  whole  night  through,  in  storm  or  snow, 
to  see  him  leave  some  house  of  pleasure  or  some  labor  of  his  art.  It  was  my 
only  thought,  my  only  joy.  I  thanked  God  that  I  still  lived  in  the  days  when 
I  had  looked  a  moment  on  his  beauty.  And  now  that  too  is  gone.  I  am  blind, 
and  I  have  nothing  left  except  to  listen  for  the  echo  of  his  step! " 

Silence  followed  his  closing  words;  his  head  sank,  his  hands  were  pressed 
together  like  one  who  is  tortured  beyond  his  strength.  All  answer,  all  conso- 


CHAN  DOS.  395 

lation  seemed  mockery  beside  the  supreme  renunciation  and  desolation  of  this 
living  sacrifice  of  an  immeasurable  love,  that  gave  itself  to  martyrdom  without 
a  thought  of  its  own  devotion,  without  a  memory  of  the  vastness  of  its  own 
unasked  and  unrewarded  sacrifice. 

Veneration,  strong  as  his  pity,  moved  the  blind  man's  auditor  as  he  heard; 
the  heroism  of  the  abnegation  was  noble  in  his  sight,  with  a  nobility  that  no 
words  could  dare  taint  or  outrage  with  either  compassion  or  homage, — a  nobil- 
ity that  raised  the  Hebrew  outcast  to  a  loftier  height  than  the  great  of  the 
earth  often  reach,  than  the  sunlight  of  a  fair  fate  ever  "gives. 

"  Your  Psalmist  said  that  he  had  never  beheld  the  righteous  forsaken,  nor 
the  seed  of  the  virtuous  begging  their  bread,"  he  said,  slowly,  at  length. 
"  How  is  it  that  you,  then,  are  poor  ?  You  should  be  in  the  smile  of  your 
God." 

The  Israelite  sighed  wearily. 

"  It  has  ever  seemed  to  me  that  David  spoke  in  a  bitter  irony.  Yonder  in 
Syria,  as  here  among  us,  sin  throve,  doubtless,  and  loyal  faith  passed  unnoticed, 
unrecompensed  by  a  crust.  Yet  I  do  not  say  this  for  myself.  I  merited  all  I 
suffered.  I  was  merciless;  I  lived  to  want  mercy.  It  was  very  just." 

There  was  the  inexorable  meting  out  of  the  Mosaic  code  to  his  own  past, 
and  to  his  own  errors,  in  the  still,  calm,  iron  resignation. 

"  Moreover,"  he  added,  with  a  certain  light  and  hope  that  kindled  the 
faded  fire  of  his  sightless  eyes,  "  if  we  follow  duty  because  it  brings  us  gold 
and  peace  and  man's  applause,  where  is  there  effort  in  the  choice  of  it  ?  It  is 
only  when  it  is  hard  that  there  can  be  any  loyalty  in  acceptance.  Not  that  / 
should  speak  of  this.  I  loved  evil  and  avarice  and  cruelty  too  long,  and  fol- 
lowed them  too  fondly." 

"  At  the  least,  your  atonement  might  outweigh  the  crime  of  a  Cain  !  " 

The  Hebrew  sighed  wearily  again. 

"  Can  evil  ever  be  outweighed  ?  I  doubt  it.  We  may  strive  to  atone,  but 
we  can  never  efface.  The  past  work  spreads,  and  spreads,  and  spreads,  like  a 
river  broken  from  its  banks;  and  all  the  coffer-dams  we  raise  in  our  atonement 
cannot  stay  the  rushing  of  the  waters  we  have  once  let  loose.  Ah  !  if  when 
evil  is  begun  we  knew  where  it  would  stretch,  men's  hands  would  be  kept  pure 
from  very  dr^ad  of  their  own  awful  omnipotence  for  ruin  !  " 

The  words  died  faintly  away.  Remorse  had  too  wide  a  part  in  this  man's 
memories  for  any  thought  that  he  redeemed  his  past  crimes  by  his  present  sac- 
rifice to  have  power  to  enter  into  him  in  any  form  of  consolation. 

He  recovered  himself  with  an  effort,  raising  his  blind  eyes  as  though  he 
could  still  read  the  face  of  the  one  who  listened  to  him. 

"  Sir,  you  have  heard  me  with  a  gentle  patience.  I  thank  you.  I  never 
spoke  of  these  things  until  I  spoke  them  now  to  you.  Your  voice  is  sweet  and 


396  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

compassionate;  it  seems  to  me  as  though  I  had  once  heard  it  before  now. 
Will  you  tell  me  your  name  among  men  ? " 

"Willingly;  though  I  have  no  memory  that  we  have  ever  met  before.  My 
name  is  Chandos." 

A  change,  as  intense  as  though  some  sudden  pang  of  disease  had  seized 
him,  convulsed  the  Israelite's  whole  frame;  his  thin  withered  lips  closed  tight, 
as  though  to  hold  in  words  that  rushed  to  them;  his  hands  clenched  together. 
A  revulsion  passed  over  him,  as  if  the  whole  dark,  poisonous,  pent  tide  of  his 
past  years  swept  in,  killing  with  their  return  all  the  higher  and  better  thoughts 
that  but  now  had  ruled  him. 

"  Do  you  know  me  ?  "  asked  Chandos  in  surprise. 

The  Spanish  Jew  answered  with  an  effort,  and  his  voice  was  harsh  and  jar- 
ring:— "I  know  your  name,  sir;  all  the  world  does." 

Chandos  looked  at  him  with  awakened  curiosity:  the  agitation  which  this 
old  man  showed  at  his  recognition  was  scarcely  compatible  with  the  mere  scant 
knowledge  of  his  public  reputation.  Still,  no  remembrance  of  the  solitary 
morning  in  the  porphyry  chamber,  when  he  had  seen  the  Castilian,  came  to 
him.  In  that  terrible  hour  he  had  only  been  conscious  of  a  sea  of  unfamiliar 
faces, — thirsty  faces  eager  for  his  wealth,  strange  faces  forcing  themselves  in 
to  see  the  ruin  of  his  race,  and  hungry,  insolent  faces  gathered  there  to  be  the 
witnesses  of  his  abdication  and  his  fall.  He  remembered  them  distinctly  no 
more  than  Scipio  could  have  remembered  the  features  of  each  unit  of  the 
libellous  crowd  that  thronged  about  him  to  attain  his  honor  and  discrown  his 
dignity,  until  beneath  the  shadow  of  the  Temple  of  Jupiter  he  rebuked  them 
with  one  word, — "  Zama." 

"  If  you  know  my  name,  then,"  he  said,  after  a  slight  pause,  "  I  hope  you 
will  let  it  be  a  guarantee  to  you  that  I  will  do  my  utmost  to  serve  you,  if  you 
will  but  show  me  the  way.  You  interest  me  powerfully,  and  I  honor  you  from 
my  heart.  Can  I  not  help  you  ?  " 

The  old  man  turned  away,  and  leaned  over  the  lamp,  so  shading  it  that  the 
light  burned  low:  he  had  learned  the  marvellous  self-guidance  of  the  blind  in 
those  matters,  and  knew  by  its  warmth  that  the  flame  was  high  and  fell  upon 
his  face. 

"No  one  can  help  me,  sir.     That  I  may  be  forgotten  is  all  I  ask." 

"  Do  you  mistrust  my  willingness,  then  ?  I  hope  not,"  said  Chandos, 
gently.  He  noted  the  harsh,  abrupt  change  in  the  Jew's  manner;  but  he 
thought  rt  might  be  but  the  weariness  and  waywardness  of  old  age  and  long 
and  bitter  endurance. 

'•I  mistrust  you  in  nothing,"  said  the  Hebrew,  while  his  voice  was  very  low. 
"But  I  need  no  aid:  my  people  will  not  let  me  want.  I  thank  you  for  your 
goodness;  and  I  bid  you  remember  me  no  more." 


CHANDOS.  397 

There  was  a  mingled  austerity  and  appeal  in  the  tone  that  gave  it  a  singular 
vibration  of  feeling;  in  it  there  was  something  like  the  thrill  of  shame. 

Chandos  lingered  a  moment  still ;  he  was  loath  to  leave  the  old  and  sight- 
less sufferer  to  his  solitude,  yet  he  saw  that  his  presence  was  unwelcome  now, 
however  gratitude  forbade  the  Israelite  to  say  it. 

"But  your  people  forsake  you,"  he  persisted,  gently;  "you  have  but  a  dog 
for  your  friend.  I  have  known  what  such  solitude  is;  I  would  gladly  aid  you 
in  yours.  Will  you  not  trust  me  with  your  name,  at  the  least  ? — or  your  son's 
name  ?  " 

The  Hebrew  turned  resolutely  away,  though  his  voice  trembled  as  he  re- 
plied,— 

"  My  son's  will  never  pass  my  lips.  Mine  was  buried  forever  in  my  felon's 
cell.  I  have  told  you — I  am  dead  !  Leave  me,  sir;  and  believe  me  an  ingrate, 
if  you  will.  I  have  been  many  things  that  are  worse." 

Chandos  looked  at  him  regretfully,  wonderingly;  he  was  loath  to  quit  the 
chamber  in  which  so  strange  and  so  nameless  a  tale  had  been  unfolded  to  him. 

"  There  is  nothing  worse;  but  I  shall  credit  no  evil  of  you,"  he  answered; 
"  and  when  you  need  friendship  or  assistance,  think  of  my  name,  and  send  to 
me." 

There  was  no  reply:  the  face  of  the  blind  man  was  turned  from  him.  He 
waited  a  moment  longer,  then  went  out,  and  closed  the  narrow  door  of  the 
room,  leaving  the  Hebrew  to  his  loneliness. 

He  would  willingly  have  done  more  here,  but  he  knew  not  how. 

The  little  dog,  sole  companion  of  the  Castilian's  solitude,  nestling  to  him, 
as  the  door  closed,  with  caressing  fondness,  felt  great  tears  fall  slowly  one  by 
one  upon  its  pretty  head,  and  lifted  itself  eagerly  to  fondle  closer  in  the  old 
man's  bosom.  But  Ignatius  Mathias  paid  it  no  heed;  he  had  no  answering 
word  for  it:  his  hands  were  wrung  together  in  an  agony. 

"  Oh,  God  ! "  he  murmured,  "  and  I  lent  my  aid  to  rob,  to  ruin,  to  destroy 
him  !  Oh,  God  !  why  could  I  not  die  before  he  heaped  the  fire  on  my  guilty 
head,  with  his  gentle  words,  with  his  pitying  mercy  ?  " 


CHAPTER    VII.  ^ 

"  PALE   COMME   UN   BEAU   SOIR  D'AUTOMNE." 

As  Chandos  descended  the  staircase,  he  paused  to  ask  a  woman,  who 
seemed  mistress  of  the  house,  the  Hebrew's  name.  She  gave  him  the  alias  by 
which  the  old  man  was  known  there.  It  told  him  nothing:  the  real  name 
would  scarcely  have  told  more.  The  whole  time  of  his  adversity  was  almost  a 


398  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

blank  in  his  memory,  blotted  out  at  the  moment  of  his  suffering  by  that  suffer- 
ing's sheer  intensity,  and  effaced  yet  more  utterly,  later  on,  by  the  gambler's 
orgies  into  which  for  a  year  he  had  sunk  without  an  effort  at  redemption.  It 
seemed  to  him  sometimes  now  that  the  cloudless  life  he  had  led  ere  then  must 
have  been  the  golden  and  lotus-steeped  dream  of  some  summer  night:  of  the 
darkness  which  had  followed  on  its  ending  he  had  barely  more  recollection 
than  a  man  has  of  the  phantasma  of  fever.  Between  the  night  when  he  had 
first  learned  his  irreparable  losses  and  that  on  which  he  had  been  struck  down 
by  his  foe  in  the  court  of  the  Temple,  all  was  a  blank  to  him,  from  which  a  few 
broken  points  of  terrible  remembrance  alone  stood  out, — the  sole  measure- 
marks  in  that  wide  waste  of  desolation. 

The  stairs  were  narrow  and  crooked,  ill  lit  by  a  dusky  oil-lamp  flickering 
low  in  its  socket.  Something  in  the  house  had  seemed  familiar  to  him,  and  as 
he  passed  downward  he  knew  it  again.  It  was  the  place  in  which  he  had  lain 
dying  and  unconscious,  with  the  winter  stars  looking  down  through  the  broken 
garret-roof,  and  the  dog's  fidelity  alone  watching  beside  him.  He  shuddered 
as  he  recalled  it;  for  the  moment  the  thought  stole  on  him,  would  it  not  have 
been  better  that  his  life  should  have  ended  there  ?  The  richness  and  the  frailty 
of  his  nature  alike  had  needed  light  and  color,  and  the  sweetness  of  delight, 
and  the  vivid  hues  of  beauty  and  of  pleasure.  Now  that,  like  Adam,  he  had 
long  toiled  alone  in  the  bleak  and  barren  earth  of  his  exile,  like  Adam  he 
might  have  gathered  the  bitter  wisdom  of  far-reaching  knowledge;  but  also, 
like  Adam,  the  gates  of  Paradise  had  closed  on  him  forever.  He  was  a  wan- 
derer, and  without  joy;  there  were  times,  as  he  had  said  that  night,  when  he 
wished  to  God  that  it  had  been  given  him  to  die  in  his  youth. 

As  he  passed  now  down  the  stairs,  the  black,  sweeping  folds  of  a  woman's 
dress  touched  him:  he  paused  to  give  her  space.  In  the  gleam  of  the  lamp- 
light a  face,  still  beautiful,  though  haggard  and  darkened,  was  turned  on  him: 
it  was  the  face  of  Beatrix  Lennox. 

She  started,  and  a  gentler,  better  look  shadowed  and  softened  her  features. 

"  You!" 

She  knew  him, — knew  him  as  soon  as  her  eyes  lighted  on  him  in  that  dusky 
yellow  gloom, — this  woman  who,  in  the  midst  of  reckless,  sensuous,  unscrupu- 
lous, world-defiant  life,  had  borne  him  a  tenderness  silent  as  death,  pure  as  light 
His  face  was  graven  on  her  heart, — that  face  which  she  had  first  known  in  all 
the  splendor  and  all  the  radiance  of  its  earliest  manhood, — which  she  had 
recognized  once  in  the  blackness  of  the  stormy,  snow-veiled  winter  night, — 
which  she  knew  now  in  the  dignity  and  the  sadness  of  its  later  years. 

He  paused  a  moment,  surprised  and  uncertain.  All  that  past  time  was  so 
dim  to  him,  all  remembrance  of  her  had  been  so  merged  in  the  misery  he  had 
endured  on  the  night  of  their  last  parting,  when  he  had  learned  that  the  one  he 


CHANDOS.  399 

then  loved  had  forsaken  him,  and  had  been  so  swept  away  in  the  blank  of  star- 
vation and  of  bodily  illness  which  had  succeeded  it,  that  he  had  little  memory 
of  all  he  had  owed  her  in  that  wintry  midnight  when  she  had  found  him  sinking 
into  the  sleep  of  death.  It  was  confused,  and  it  made  indistinct  even  his  knowl- 
edge of  her  as  she  stood  beside  him  now,  after  the  passage  of  so  many  years. 
Her  eyes,  once  so  victorious  in  their  empire,  so  unsparing  in  their  sorcery, 
dwelt  on  him  with  an  extreme  desolation. 

"  Ah  !  you  have  forgotten  me  ?  Well  you  may:  even  Death  forgets  me,  I 
think." 

Her  voice,  so  liquid  and  so  silver-sweet,  stirred  his  memory  as  the  features 
in  their  change  could  not  do.  He  took  her  hands  in  his. 

"  Forgotten  ?  Never.  Do  not  so  wrong  my  gratitude.  Some  part  of  my 
life  seems  a  blank  to  me;  but  that  life  lived  in  me  at  all  was  owing  to  you. 
And  now  that  we  meet,  how  can  I  thank  you  ?  There  are  no  words  for  such  a 
service." 

She  smiled,  though  her  eyes  still  dwelt  on  him  with  that  desolate  and  long- 
ing look. 

"  Is  it  so  great,  a  service  to  save  life  ?  Mercy  were  rather  the  other  way. 
Yet  perhaps  not  for  you;  you  have  made  a  noble  use  of  adversity.  But  it  was 
little  enough  /did.  I  would  have  served  you,  God  knows;  but  the  power  was 
never  mine." 

He  looked  at  her  with  a  pang  at  his  heart.  All  the  companions  of  that  joy- 
ous royalty,  in  which  Fortune  had  seemed  but  the  slave  to  obey  his  wish  and  to 
crown  his  desire,  were  dead  or  lost,  forgotten  or  unknown  to  him,  now;  and 
her  voice  struck  chords  long  unsounded  and  better  left  in  peace, — awoke  mem- 
ories of  a  world  abandoned  forever,  of  a  youth  forever  gone.  Those  long  nights 
of  pleasure,  those  dazzling  eyes  of  women,  those  chimes  of  laughter  without  a 
care,  those  flower-smothered  Cleopatran  revels,  those  hours  of  careless  joyance 
that  had  not  a  thought  of  the  morrow, — how  far  away  they  seemed  !  He  stood 
looking  down  on  her  in  the  sombre  shadow  of  the  wretched  staircase,  his 
thoughts  rather  in  the  past  than  with  her.  He  did  not  know  that  she  loved  him, 
— he  had  never  known  it, — loved  him  so  that  she,  the  reckless  and  lawless 
Bohemian,  would  for  his  sake,  had  it  been  possible,  have  led  the  noblest  life 
that  ever  woman  led  on  earth, — loved  him  so  that,  through  that  purer  love  hating 
herself,  she  would  no  more,  in  the  days  of  her  beauty,  have  wooed  him  to  her 
than  she  would  have  slain  him,  no  more  have  offered  him  her  tenderness  than 
she  would  have  offered  him  hemlock, — loved  him  too  well  ever  to  summon  him 
amidst  her  lovers. 

"  How  is  it  that  we  have  never  met  ?  "  he  asked  her, — "  never  met  until  in 
such  a  place  as  this  and  at  such  an  hour  ?  " 

She  smiled.     She  had  looked  on  his   face  many  and   many  a  time,  unseen 


400  OUIDA'S     WORKS. 

herself;  she  had  suffered  for  him  in  his  bitterness,  she  had  gloried  in  his  en- 
durance, though  she  had  never  gone  nigh  him,  but  rather  withdrawn  herself 
from  every  chance  of  recognition. 

"  You  have  never  seen  me  ?  I  have  been  long  dead,  you  know.  Women 
die  when  their  beauty  dies.  Come  within:  I  have  one  word  to  say  to  you." 

She  turned  into  a  chamber  somewhat  lower  on  the  staircase,  poor,  dark, 
chilly,  in  the  feeble  light  of  flickering  candles. 

"  You  live  here  ? " 

When  he  had  known  this  woman,  she  had  commanded  what  she  would  from 
peers  and  princes,  who  had  been  only  too  proud  to  be  allowed  the  honor  of 
ruin  for  her  sake. 

She  flung  off  her  the  heavy  folds  of  her  cloak;  and,  as  the  richer  hues  of 
the  dress  beneath  were  dimly  caught  in  the  faint  light,  there  was  something 
still  of  the  old  regality  which  had  made  Beatrix  Lennox  the  fairest  name  and 
the  haughtiest  queen  in  the  whole  of  the  dauntless  army  of  the  Free  Com- 
panions. 

"  No;  I  am  not  quite  so  bad  as  that  yet.  I  came  here  to-night  to  see  one 
who  is  dying  fast,  with  not  a  living  soul  to  tend  him. 

"  Ah  !  you  belied  the  charity  of  your  heart,  then  ?  at  least  you  know  the 
mercy  of  human  pity  still,  as  you  knew  it  once  for  me." 

"  Hush  !  Charity  ?  Mine  ?  You  do  not  know  what  you  say.  Is  repent- 
ing of  a  millionth  part  of  a  torrent  of  evil — charity  ?  The  man  who  dies  there 
was  my  victim.  Years  ago  I  drew  him  on  till  he  fooled  away  everything  he 
owned  for  my  sake.  I  cared  no  more  for  him  than  for  the  sands  of  the  sea; 
but  it  amused  me  to  watch  how  far  his  folly  would  go.  He  loved  his  wife;  I 
made  him  hate  her.  He  had  ambition;  I  made  him  scoff  at  it.  He  had  riches; 
I  made  him  squander  them  for  an  hour's  caprice  of  mine.  He  had  honors;  I 
made  him  trail  them  in  the  mud,  like  Raleigh's  cloak,  that  I  might  set  my  foot 
on  them.  Well,  then  I  flung  him  away  like  a  faded  flower,  like  a  beryl  out  of 
fashion;  and  I  find  him,  years  after,  dying  in  want  and  shame.  Call  mine 
charity  ?  Call  me  a  murderess,  rather  !  " 

There  were  no  tears  in  her  eyes;  but  there  were  more  intense  misery  and 
remorse  in  the  calm  words  than  ever  tears  yet  uttered. 

He  looked  on  her  with  infinite  compassion. 

"/  call  you  nothing  harsh:  you  were  at  least  my  savior." 

Her  beautiful,  dark,  wild  eyes  gazed  at  him  with  gratitude,  in  which  no 
acceptance  of  the  forgiveness  of  herself  mingled. 

"  Ah,  Chandos,  I  am  heart-sick  of  the  world's  babble  about  your  sex's  tempt- 
ing. It  is  we  who  tempt  you ;  it  is  we  who  blindfold  you, — we  who  are  never 
satisfied  till  we  have  won  your  lives  to  break  them, — we  who  curse  you  in  sin 
and  in  pleasure,  in  license  and  in  marriage, — we  who,  if  we  see  you  at  peace, 


CHANDOS.  401 

think  our  vanity  is  at  stake  till  we  drive  peace  away  !  The  moralists  rant  of 
us  as  martyrs  !  They  little  know  that  our  mockery  of  love  destroys  a  thousand- 
fold more  lives  than  it  has  ever  blessed." 

She  spoke  with  passionate  bitterness.  He  answered  nothing;  he  felt  the 
truth  of  her  words  too  well;  and  yet  with  the  thoughts  of  love  there  stole  on 
him  one  freshj  one  soft  memory, — that  of  the  child  Castalia. 

Beatrix  Lennox  roused  herself  with  the  smile  which  even  in  its  sadness  had 
something  of  the  sorcery  that  nature  had  given  her  and  that  death  alone  could 
take  away. 

"  Forgive  me  !  It  was  not  to  speak  of  these  things  that  I  brought  you  here. 
It  was  but  to  ask  you,  have  you  found  yet  who  is  your  worst  foe  ? " 

"  Yes;  I  was  my  own." 

"  Well,  you  were — because  you  loved  others  better  than  you  loved  yourself. 
But  that  is  not  my  meaning.  Long  ago,  did  you  ever  receive  an  anonymous 
letter  that  warned  you  against  John  Trevenna  ? " 

His  face  darkened  at  the  name.  He  paused,  silent  for  a  moment.  She 
gave  him  no  time  to  reply. 

"  If  you  did,  I  wrote  it." 

"  You  ?  " 

He  looked  at  her  in  surprise. 

"  I  !  I  dared  not  warn  you  more  openly;  I  was  in  his  power,  as  he  had  so 
many  in  his  power.  I  knew  that  he  hated  you  terribly,  bitterly.  There  was 
something  between  you  he  never  pardoned.  Why  was  it  ?  What  wrong  had 
you  ever  done  him  ?  " 

"  None:  I  only  served  him." 

"  Ah  !  then  it  was  that  he  could  not  forgive  !  I  knew  it  as  women  know 
many  things  men  never  dream  that  they  even  divine.  I  knew  it  by  a  thousand 
slight  signs,  a  thousand  half-betrayals,  which  escaped  his  caution  and  your 
notice,  but  which  told  his  secret  to  me.  As  for  its  root,  I  knew  nothing.  It 
was  jealousy;  but  whether  simply  of  your  social  superiorities,  or  whether  com- 
plicated by  more  personal  antagonism,  I  cannot  tell.  I  used  to  fancy  that  some 
woman  might  be  the  cause  of  the  envy.  Where  tares  grow  to  choke  the  wheat, 
it  is  always  our  hands  that  sow  them  !  " 

"  A  woman  ? "  He  thought  of  the  words  that,  long  years  before,  had  been 
spoken  by  the  old  man  whom  his  adversity  had  slain.  "  There  was  no  love- 
feud  between  us;  and  I  doubt  if  love  ever  touched  him:  he  was  not  one  to 
harbor  it." 

"  An  egotist  can  always  love  well  enough  to  deny  what  he  loves  to  another. 
Be  the  cause  what  it  will,  he  hated  you, — hates  still,  I  have  no  doubt,  though 
the  world  has  found  out  an  idol  and  a  celebrity  in  him.  Ah,  Heaven  !  what  a 
travesty  of  all  justice  is  that  man's  success  !  " 


402  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

"  It  is  the  due  of  his  intellect." 

It  was  not  in  him  to  disparage  the  merits  or  the-  attainments  of  his  foe. 
She  looked  at  him  with  a  wonder  in  which  mingled  something  of  impatience, 
more  of  veneration. 

"  Ah,  Chandos,  how  can  the  world  understand  you  ?  You  speak  well  of 
your  worst  traitor  !  " 

"  I  but  give  him  the  due  of  his  abilities:  you  would  not,  surely,  have  me  do 
less  ? " 

"  But  you  know  he  is  your  vilest  enemy." 

"Yes;  he  has  declared  himself  so." 

"  And  still  you  give  him  generous  words  ? " 

"  Words  ?  What  are  words  ?  If  it  ever  came  to  deeds,  I  might  prove 
little  better  than  he  in  brute  vengeance." 

The  animal  lust,  the  evil  leaven,  which  lie  in  the  loftiest  and  the  purest 
forms  of  human  nature,  ready  to  rouse  and  steep  themselves  in  Cain's  revenge, 
were  on  him  as  he  spoke.  He  knew  how  this  man's  outrage  had  power  to 
move  him;  he  knew  how  if  vengeance  ever  came  into  his  hand  he  would  have 
passion  in  its  using,  beside  which  all  the  tolerance  and  self-knowledge  gathered 
from  suffering  would  break  like  reeds,  would  crumble  as  ashes. 

She  watched  him  still  with  that  same  blent  wonder  and  reverence  in  her 
aching  eyes. 

"  Chandos,  for  less  than  this  Iscariot's  crime  men  have  cursed  their  foes 
living  and  dying;  and  you — you  still  are  just  to  him  !  " 

A  look  that  had  for  the  moment  the  old  proud  disdain  of  his  earlier  years 
passed  over  his  features,  even  while  his  teeth  set  and  his  hand  clenched. 

"  Because  the  man  is  vile,  would  you  have  me  sink  so  low  myself  as  to  deny 
his  meed  of  intellect,  and  decry  his  success,  like  a  mortified  woman  who  depre- 
ciates her  rival  ?  He  is  famous,  and  his  intellect  deserves  his  fame.  But 
think  me  none  the  better  that  I  say  so.  There  are  times  when  I  could  find  it 
in  me,  if  a  reckoning  came  between  us,  to  wring  life  out  of  him  as  I  might 
wring  it  out  of  any  snake  that  poisoned  me." 

There  was  the  vibration  of  intense  passion  in  the  words,  though  they  were 
low-spoken.  As  the  evil  influence  of  Trevenna  had  betrayed  his  youth  and 
drawn  his  manhood  to  its  ruin,  so  it  entered  him  now  and  filled  him  with  the 
virus  of  brute  longing,  and  shook  to  their  roots  the  proud  patience  and  the 
pain-taught  self-discipline  which  he  had  learned  in  the  years  of  his  exile. 
There  were  times  when  remembering  the  friendship  and  the  gifts  he  had  lav- 
ished on  this  man,  and  remembering  the  taunts,  the  mockery,  the  hatred,  the 
injury  with  which  he  had  in  turn  been  requited,  he  could  have  gone  back  to  the 
old  barbaric  weapons,  and  dealt  with  the  traitor  hand  to  hand,  blow  for  blow. 

The  venom  of  envy  could  never  enter  him;  but  he  would  have  been  more 


CHAN  DOS.  403 

than  human  if,  through  these  many  years  of  loss,  and  weariness,  and  divorce 
from  all  he  had  once  loved  and  owned,  the  triumphant  passage  of  the  man  who 
would  but  for  his  aid  have  been  obscured  in  a  debtor's  prison,  the  plaudits  that 
the  world  bestowed  on  the  man  whom  he  knew  base  as  any  assassin  who  slew 
what  had  saved  and  succored  him,  had  not  possessed  an  exceeding  bitterness 
for  him, — had  not  sickened  him  oftentimes  of  all  hope  or  belief  in  justice, 
earthly  or  divine.  Once  Trevenna  had  hoped  to  wreck  his  genius  as  well  as  his 
peace,  his  intellect  as  well  as  his  fortune,  his  soul  as  well  as  his  beauty  and  his 
heritage.  Once  Trevenna  had  loved  to  think  that  this  well-planned  murder 
would  kill  in  its  victim  all  higher  instincts,  all  likeness  of  honor,  and  all  purity 
of  conscience:  it  was  possible  that,  even  at  the  end,  his  wish  might  find  fruition, 
— that,  under  the  weight  of  accumulated  wrongs,  long-chained  passions  and 
long-strained  endurance  might  give  way  and  find  their  fall  in  dealing  retribution, 
which,  just, in  its  chastisement,  would  still  be  the  forbidden  justice  of  some  in- 
voluntary and  avenging  crime.  Some  thought  of  this  passed  over  the  mind  of 
the  world-worn  and  reckless  Bohemian  who  gazed  at  him.  She  stooped  for- 
ward eagerly,  and,  in  the  yellow  shadows,  the  softened  emotion  that  was  upon 
it  lent  the  fairness  of  other  years  to  her  face. 

"  Chandos,  whatever  he  be,  he  is  beneath  you.  An  evil  impulse  wrung 
from  you  is  more  than  all  his  baseness  is  worth.  He  has  robbed  you,  I  believe, 
of  much;  but  his  worst  robbery  will  be  if  ever  he  wrenches  from  you  your 
better,  your  nobler  nature." 

An  impatient  sigh  escaped  him. 

"  That  is  to  speak  idly.  I  am  no  better  than  other  men;  and  I  am  no  demi- 
god, to  rise  above  all  natural  passions  and  see  evil  triumph  unmoved.  It  were 
a  poor,  paltry  vanity  to  point  at  his  successes  and  tell  men  they  were  unjust  be- 
cause the  winner  of  them  was  my  foe.  He  is  famous;  let  them  make  him  so. 
But  not  the  less,  if  ever  the  power  of  chastisement  come  into  my  hands,  shall  I 
hold  the  widest  as  his  due.  Robbed  me,  you  say  ?  Yes,  I  believe  now  that 
half  my  ruin  was  robbery,  or  little  better;  but  the  theft  was  wisely  to  windward  of 
the  law.  If  he  thieved  from  me,  there  was  no  proof  of  it." 

She  shook  her  head. 

"  He  was  too  keen,  too  prudent,  too  wise.  Devour  your  substance  I  know 
that  he  did;  but  he  would  have  ever  been  mindful  of  Bible  precedent,  and  would 
only  have  taken  your  inheritance  by  persuading  you  to  disinherit  yourself  for 
some  pottage  of  pleasure  or  of  indolence.  Men  who  break  laws  are,  at  their 
best,  but  half  knave,  half  fool:  he  is  too  able  to  be  numbered  among  them. 

"Doubtless!  the  world's  greatest  criminals  are  those  who  never  stand  in  a 
dock,"  he  answered  her,  as  his  mind  went  back  to  the  story  of  the  blind  Hebrew. 
"  There  is  a  man  here,  a  Jew,  whose  history  tells  that  he  rejects  all  assistance, 
almost  all  sympathy;  but  he  merits  both.  Will  you  see  him  if  it  be  possible  ?  " 


404  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

"Surely, — for  you.  A  blind  Jew?  I  have  noticed  him  as  I  passed;  but  I 
am  no  fit  missionary  of  consolation  to  any  living  thing!  /,  Beatrix  Lennox!  " 

"  Well,  you,"  he  said,  gently, — "  you  are  here  on  an  errand  of  mercy  to- 
night." 

She  flashed  on  him  a  glance  almost  fierce,  had  it  not  been  so  melancholy. 

"  Grand"  chose  !  I  am  here  because  one  whom  I  murdered  lies  dying,  with- 
out a  creature  to  tend  his  death-bed.  A  noble  mission,  truly!  Ah,  Chandos, 
I  am  not  one  of  those  miserable  cravens  who,  having  given  all  -the  flower  of 
their  years  to  the  working  of  evil,  buy  a  cheap  virtue  back  by  insulting  a  God 
they  disbelieved  in  over  their  revels  with  the  offer  of  the  few  tame,  barren,  un- 
tempted  years  they  have  left  them!  That  is  a  wretched  travesty,  a  terrible 
blasphemy:  do  not  think  I  stoop  to  it.  But  yet  you — you  who  know  human 
nature  so  well,  and  are  so  gentle  to  it,  though  it  basely  abandoned  you 
— you,  who  have  the  heart  of  a  poet  and  the  tolerance  of  a  philosopher — 
will  believe  me  when  I  tell  you  that  there  are  times  when  I  hate  myself  more 
utterly  than  any  ever  hated  me,  justly  though  they  had  cause  ?  You  will 
know  that  there  may  be  so  vast  an  evil  in  us  and  yet  that  there  may  linger 
some  conscience  ? "  Her  words  swept  on,  without  waiting  for  answer.  "  You 
never  knew  my  story.  None  will  ever  know  it, — as  it  was.  I  was  sold  into 
marriage,  almost  in  childhood,  as  slave  girls  are  sold  to  a  harem.  Well,  if  I 
hated  my  bondage  as  they  hate  theirs,  where  was  the  wonder  ?  whose  was  the 
sin  ?  But  that  matters  nothing.  Those  who  err  can  always  find  apology  of 
their  error;  I  will  be  no  such  coward.  Still,  it  was  through  this  that  John 
Trevenna  had  his  hold  on  me.  My  husband  " — her  dark,  imperial  face  still 
flushed  and  the  long  hazel  eyes  still  flashed  at  the  words — "  held  his  wife's 
charms  only  as  his  property,  to  turn  to  such  account  as  he  would.  He  was 
very  poor,  very  extravagant  He  found  that  rich  men,  fashionable  men,  admir- 
ing me,  gave  horses  and  carriages,  and  venison,  and  game,  and  dinners,  and 
invitations  to  great  houses,  and  anything  and  everything,  and  would  play  on  in 
our  drawing-rooms  at  whist  and  billiards  till  the  stakes  and  the  bets  rose  to 
thousands  and  tens  of  thousands.  You  can  guess  the  rest.  I  was  his  decoy- 
bird.  What  a  school  of  shamelessness  for  a  girl  not  twenty  !  How  I  loathed 
it !  how  I  loathed  it ! — only  the  more  because  it  was  glossed  over  with  fashion. 
Well,  Trevenna  had  immense  sway  over  Colonel  Lennox;  he  had  it  over  every- 
one, when  he  cared  to  attain  it.  He  saw  my  hatred  of  the  part  I  was  driven  to 
play;  he  contrived  to  lighten  it.  He  never  hinted  any  love;  it  served  to  give 
me  confidence  in  him;  he  was  the  only  man  who  never  spoke  of  it  to  me,  never 
so  much  as  whispered  a  thought  of  it.  He  earned  my  gratitude  by  freeing  me 
from  my  husband's  persecution;  but  he  made  me  understand  that,  in  return,  I 
must  serve  him  by  acquainting  him  with  all  the  embarrassments,  all  the  weak- 
nesses, of  the  innumerable  men  about  me.  I  was  glad  to  comply:  the  terms 


CHAN  DOS.  405 

seemed  light,  and,  mind  you,  they  were  only  tacitly  offered.  I  bought  my  free- 
dom by  being  his  tool.  I  did  not  know  I  did  harm  then:  I  have  believed,  since, 
that  I  did  more  than  when  I  allured  them  by  my  coquetries  that  my  husband 
might  win  their  gold  at  pool  or  at  cards.  That  was  how  I  came  into  Trevenna's 
power;  that  was  why  I  dared  not  write  more  openly  to  you  of  a  hatred  I  had 
fathomed,  though  he  had  never  uttered  it.  Forgive  me  Chandos,  if  you  can 
for  so  much  weakness,  so  much  selfishness  !  " 

He  had  listened,  absorbed  in  the  history  she  told,  in  the  dark  and  cruel  pres- 
sure which  had  been  upon  one  whom  the  world  had  held  so  heartless,  so  reck- 
less, so  wayward,  so  dazzling  a  lionne:  he  started  at  the  last  words  like  one 
whose  dream  is  broken. 

"  Forgive  !  I  have  nothing  to  forgive.  I  had  no  claim  that  you  should  care 
for  my  friends  or  my  foes.  And  this  was  the  way  he  gained  his  power  !  My 
God  is  it  possible ?  " 

He  did  not  end  his  words;  the  thought  swept  past  him,  extravagant  and 
vague,  were  the  taskmaster  of  Beatrix  Lennox  and  the  taskmaster  of  the  Cas- 
tilian  Jew  one  and  the  same?  She  looked  up;  she  saw  his  face  darken;  she 
heard  his  breath  catch  as,  for  the  first  time,  the  possibility  that  his  enemy  was 
the  tyrant  whose  hand  had  lain  so  heavy  on  the  Hebrew  flashed  on  him. 

"  What  is  it  ?  " 

"  Your  words  have  brought  a  strange  fancy  to  me;  that  is  all.  A  ground- 
less one,  perhaps,  yet  one  I  must  follow." 

She  rose;  and  her  deep,  sad  eyes  dwelt  on  him  with  a  love  that  she  had 
never  had  let  him  read, — she  in  whose  hands  love  had  been  but  a  net  and  a 
snare." 

"  Follow  it,  then,  and  God  speed  you  !  It  is  of  your  enemy,  of  my  bond- 
master?" 

He  bent  his  head  in  silence.  Thoughts  had  rushed  in  on  him  with  so 
sudden  and  so  passionate  a  force  that  to  frame  them  to  words  was  impossible; 
they  were  baseless  and  shapeless  as  a  dream,  but  they  came  with  an  irresistible 
might  of  conviction.  He  waited  a  moment,  with  the  mechanical  instinct  of 
courtesy. 

"  Can  I  not  aid  you  ?  The  dying  man  whom  you  spoke  of,  can  I  do  noth- 
ing for  him  ?  "  . 

She  gave  a  gesture  of  dissent,  almost  savage, — if  the  softness  of  her  inal- 
ienable grace  could  have  ever  let  her  be  so. 

"  Why  always  think  of  others  instead  of  yourself  ?  You  had  never  been 
ruined  but  for  that  sublime  folly  !  No;  you  can  do  nothing  for  him.  He  will 
be  dead  by  the  dawn.  I  killed  him.  I  never  cared  for  him;  but  I  do  care 
that  you  should  not  look  on  my  work.  It  has  been  thoroughly  done:  no 
woman  ever  wrecks  by  halves." 


406  OUIDA'S     WORKS. 

There  was  in  the  half-ironic,  half-scornful  calmness  of  the  words  a  grief 
deeper  than  lies  in  any  abandonment  of  sorrow.  He  stooped  over  her  an 
instant,  touched,  and  forgetting  his  own  thoughts  in  hers. 

"I  no  not  say,  Feel  no  remorse;  for  that  were  to  say,  Deny  the  truest  of 
your  instincts.  But  you  were  cruelly  wronged,  cruelly  driven.  There  is  much 
nobility  still,  where  so  much  tenderness  lingers.  Farewell:  we  shall  meet 
again  ?  " 

She  looked  at  him  with  that  long,  lingering  look  that  had  so  hopeless  a 
melancholy. 

"Ah!  I  do  not  know.  Death  will  be  here-to-night;  perhaps  he  will  be 
gentle  and  generous  for  once,  and  take  me  with  him, — at  least,  if  his  promised 
sleep  have  no  awakening.  There  is  the  fear, — the  old  Hamlet-fear,  never  set 
at  rest  either  way  !  " 

He  left  her,  and  she  leaned  a  while  against  the  bare  table,  her  hands 
clenched,  in  the  still  rich  masses  of  her  hair,  her  lips  pressed  in  a  close  weary 
line,  her  eyes  filling  slowly  with  tears. 

"  Ah!  "  she  mused,  in  the  aching  of  her  heart,  "  have  nine-tenths  of  us  ever 
any  real  chance  to  be  the  best  we  might  ?  If  I  had  lived  for  him,  if  he  had 
ever  loved  me,  or  one  like  him,  no  woman  would  have  been  truer,  gentler, 
purer,  stronger  to  serve  him,  or  more  utterly  under  his  law  and  at  his  feet, 
than  I!" 

He  left  her,  and  went  again  upward  to  the  Hebrew's  chamber.  A  strange 
instinct  of  vengeance,  a  sudden  impulse  of  belief  urged  him  on.  Though  no 
hint  had  been  dropped  that  the  Jew's  tyrant  was  the  enemy  of  his  own  life,  a 
conviction  strong  as  knowledge  had  centred  in  him  that  the  man  spoken  of 
wasjohn  Trevenna.  He  thrust  the  door  open  hurriedly,  and  entered;  the 
little  lamp  still  burned  dully  there,  but  the  blind  Israelite  and  the  dog  were 
both  gone.  Standing  alone  in  the  desolation  of  the  narrow  chamber,  he 
could  almost  have  believed  that  the  tale  he  had  heard  had  been  a  dream  of 
the  night,  and  the  antique  form  of  the  old  man  but  one  of  its  sleep-born 
phantoms.  There  had  passed  but  the  space  which  he  had  spent  with  Beatrix 
Lennox  since  he  had  been  told  the  recital :  yet  either  answer  was  purposely  de- 
nied to  his  questions,  or  the  refuge  the  Jew  had  sought  amidst  the  people  of 
his  nation  was  too  secret  to  be  unearthed,  for  no  search  and  no  inquiry  brought 
a  trace  of  him;  he  was  lost,  with  the  vague  outline  of  his  history  left  unfilled, 
lost  in  the  wide  wilderness  of  a  large  city's  nameless  poverty.  With  its  mem- 
ory upon  him,  Chandos  went  out  into  the  gray,  subdued  light  of  the  now- 
breaking  dawn;  the  thoughts  which  had  moved  him  had  stirred  depths  which 
time  had  long  sealed.  For  many  years  he  had  striven  to  put  from  him  the 
remembrance  alike  of  his  wrongs  and  of  his  losses;  he  had  believed  the  first 
to  be  beyond  avenging,  as  the  latter  were  beyond  redemption;  he  had  striven 


CHANDOS.  407 

to  live  only  the  impersonal  life  of  the  thinker,  of  the  scholar,  to  leave  behind 
him  alike  the  unnerving  weight  of  regret  and  the  baneful  indulgence  of  a  vain 
suspicion.  But  here  the  things  of  those  dead  days  had  risen  and  forced  them- 
selves on  him;  to  his  mind  came  what  until  then  had  not  touched  him, — the 
belief  that  his  foe  had  dealt  him  wider  treachery  than  the  mere  treachery  of 
friendship, — that  Trevenna  had  done  more  than  leave  him  unwarned  in  a 
dangerous  downward  course,  but  had  robbed  him  and  trepanned  him  under  the 
smooth  surface  of  fair  and  honest  service.  The  utter  extravagance  and  heed- 
lessness  of  his  joyous  reign  had  left  him  no  title  to  accuse  another  of  causing 
any  share  of  the  destruction  which  followed  on  it;  and  the  organization  of  his 
mind  was  one  to  which  such  an  accusation  could  but  very  slowly,  and  only  on 
sheer  certainty,  suggest  itself.  Yet  now,  looking  backward  to  innumerable 
memories,  he  believed  that,  in  the  pale  of  the  law,  his  traitor  had  been  as 
guilty  of  embezzlement  as  any  within  the  law's  arraignment;  he  believed  that 
his  antagonist  had  tempted,  blinded,  robbed,  and  betrayed  him  on  a  set  and 
merciless  scheme. 

Recalling  the  points  of  the  Spanish  Jew's  relation,  slight  and  nameless  as 
the  recital  had  been  in  much,  something  that  was  near  the  actual  truth  came 
before  his  thoughts.  He  remembered  how  heavily  the  claims  of  a  money- 
lender's house  had  pressed  on  him  for  obligations  in  his  own  name,  and  for 
those  where  his  name  had  been  lent  to  others.  If  his  foe  and  the  Hebrew's 
tyrant  were  one,  how  vast  a  network  of  intrigue  and  fraud  might  there  not  have 
been  wound  about  him!  It  was  but  imagination,  it  was  but  analogy  and  pos- 
sibility, that  suggested  themselves  vaguely  to  him:  yet  they  fastened  there, 
and  an  instinct  for  the  "  wild  justice  "  of  revenge  woke  with  it,  passionate  and 
unsparing.  To  fling  his  foe  down  and  hold  him  in  a  death-gripe  as  the  hound 
pulls  down  the  boar,  with  a  longing  as  intense  upon  him  in  its  dominion  as  it 
was  on  David  of  Israel  when  the  treachery  of  men  and  the  triumph  of-  evil- 
doers broke  asunder  his  faith  and  wrung  the  fire  of  imprecation  from  his  lips. 

As  he  looked  back  on  all  he  had  suffered,  all  he  had  lost,  all  he  had  seen 
die  out  from  him  forever,  and  all  that  forever  had  forsaken  him,  he  felt  the 
black  blood  of  the  old  murderous  instinct  latent  in  all  human  hearts  rise  and 
burn  in  him:  utterly  foreign  to  his  nature,  once  grafted,  it  took  the  deadlier 
hold. 

"  Oh  God  ! "  he  said,  half  aloud,  in  his  clenched  teeth,  as  he  passed  the  en- 
trance of  the  miserable  house,  "  shall  his  crimes  never  find  him  out  ? " 

These  crimes  had  given  his  betrayer  a  long  immunity;  they  had  given  him 
a  lifetime  of  success;  they  had  given  him  riches  and  favor  and  the  fruition  of 
ripe  ambitions;  they  had  given  him  the  desire  of  his  heart  and  the  laurels  of 
the  world: — would  the  time  ever  come  when  they  should  be  quoted  against  him 
and  strip  him  bare  in  the  sight  of  the  people  ?  The  bitterness  of  unbelief,  the 


408  QUID  AS     U'ORKS. 

weariness  of  desolation,  fell  on  Chandos  as  the  doubt  pursued  him.  He  had 
cleaved  to  honor  for  its  own  sake,  and  had  loved  and  served  men,  asking 
no  recompense;  but  he  remained  without  reward.  Pursuing  fraud,  and  tyranny, 
and  the  wisdom  of  self-love",  and  the  tortuous  roots  of  unscrupulous  sagacity, 
his  enemy  prospered  in  the  sight  of  the  world,  and  put  his  hand  to  nothing  that 
ever  failed  him.  There  was  a  pitiless,  cold,  mocking  sarcasm  in  the  contrast, 
which  left  the  problem  of  human  existence  dark  as  night  in  its  mystery,  which 
shook  and  loosened  the  one  sheet-anchor  of  his  life, — his  loyalty  to  truth  for 
truth's  own  sake. 

The  heart-sickness  of  Pilate's  doubt  was  on  him;  and  he  asked  in  his  soul, 
"What  is  truth?" 

As  he  passed  out  into  the  narrow -arched  doorway,  some  young  revellers 
reeled  past  him, — handsome,  dissolute,  titled  youths,  who  had  been  flinging 
themselves  in  the  air  in  the  mad  dances  till  the  dawn,  at  a  ball  of  the  people, 
dressed  as  Pierrots  and  Arlequins.  They  were  going  now  to  their  waiting  car- 
riages, talking  and  laughing,  while  the  sound  of  their  voices  echoed  through 
the  stillness  of  the  breaking  day  in  disjointed  sentences. 

"Castalia!  Beau  nom  !  Selling  lilies  with  a  face  like  a  Titian: — how 
poetic  !  " 

"  Very.  But  somebody,  apparently,  had  left  her  to  the  very  dull  prose  of 
wanting  her  bread, — a  common  colophon  to  our  idyls  !  " 

"  Wandering  with  a  few  flowers;  and  Villeroy  could  neither  tempt  her  nor 
trap  her  !  He  must  have  been  very  bete  !  Or.  she " 

"  A  Pythoness.  He  is  terribly  sore  on  the  subject.  Pardieu  !  I  wish  we 
had  her  here  !  Women  grow  dreadfully  ugly." 

They  had  passed,  almost  ere  the  sense  of  the  words  had  reached  his  ear 
and  pierced  the  depth  of  his  thoughts:  involuntarily  he  paused  where  he  stood 
in  the  entrance. 

"  Castalia  !  " 

He  murmured  the  name  with  a  pang;  the  indefinite  words  he  had  heard 
suggested  so  terrible  a  fate  for  her;  and  his  heart  went  out  to  her  in  an  infinite 
tenderness, — that  beautiful  child,  brilliant  as  any  passion-flower,  desolate  as  any 
stricken  fawn  ! 

"  Who  is  she  ?  " 

Beatrix  Lennox,  standing  unseen  near  him,  heard  alike  the  revellers'  words 
and  his  echo  of  the  name. 

He  started  and  turned  to  her. 

"  She  whom  they  spoke  of  ?  I  do  not  know;  at  least,  I  hope  to  Heaven 
I  do  not ! " 

"  But  the  one  who  is  in  your  thoughts  ?  " 

She,  who  loved  him,  had  caught  the  softness  of  his  voice  and  its  eager 


CHANDOS.  409 

dread  as  he  had  repeated  the  name  that  had  suddenly  floated  to  his  ear  in  the 
depths  of  Paris.  He  paused  a  moment;  then  he  answered  her: — 

"  You  have  a  woman's  heart;  if  it  can  feel  pity,  know  it  for  her.  She  is 
nameless,  motherless,  friendless;  and  I  could  only — as  a  harsh  mercy,  yet  the 
best  left  to  me — leave  her." 

Her  face  grew  paler;  her  lips  set  slightly. 

"  You  loved  her,  Chandos  ?  " 

A.n  impatient  sigh  escaped  him. 

"  No  !  at  least  those  follies  are  dead  with  my  youth.  If  we  had  met 
earlier ' 

Her  eyes  dwelt  on  him  with  a  passionate  sadness. 

"  Love  is  not  dead  in  you ;  it  will  revive,"  she  said  simply.  "Tell  me  of 
her." 

"There  is  nothing  to  tell.  Her  parentage  is  unknown;  she  lives  below 
Vallombrosa,  and  has  but  this  one  name, — Castalia.  She  will  have  the  beauty 
and  the  genius  of  a  Corinne;  and  she  lies  under  the  ban  of  illegitimacy,  with 
no  haven  except  a  convent." 

"  But  if  she  be  the  one  of  whom  those  youths  spoke  ?     The  name  is   rare." 

He  stayed  her  with  a  gesture. 

"  Hush  !  do  not  hint  it !  If  harm  reacli  her,  I  shall  feel  myself  guilty  of 
her  fate." 

Her  voice  sank  very  low. 

"  What,  then  ?  you  only  forsook  her  when  you  had  wearied  of  her  ? " 

"No:  you  mistake  me.  No  man  could  weary  of  that  exquisite  life;  and  it 
is  as  soilless  as  it  is  fair.  I  meant  but  this: — I  believe  her  young  heart  was 
mine,  though  no  love-words  passed  between  us;  and  I  have  doubted  sometimes 
if  my  tardy  mercy  were  not  a  cold  and  brutal  cruelty.  Because  passion  has 
no  place  in  my  own  life,  I  forgot  that  regret  could  have  no  place  in  hers." 

He  spoke  gravely,  and  his  memory  wandered  from  his  listener  away  to  that 
summer  eve  when  some  touch  of  the  old  soft  folly  had  come  back  on  him  as 
his  lips  had  met  Castalia's, — away  to  the  hours  when  the  lustrous  ejpquence  of 
her  beaming  eyes  had  reflected  his  thoughts,  almost  ere  they  had  been  uttered, 
in  that  pure  and  perfect  sympathy  without  which  love  is  but  a  toy  of  the  senses, 
a  plaything  of  the  passions. 

Beatrix  Lennox  looked  at  him  long  in  silence. 

"  She  is  dear  to  you  ?  "  she  said,  at  length. 

He  smiled,  very  wearily. 

"  If  I  let  her  be  so,  it  would  be  the  sure  signal  for  her  loss  to  me." 

He  had  lost  all  that  he  had  ever  cherished.  Then,  bending  his  head  to  her 
in  farewell,  he  went  out  into  the  dawn  alone. 

Beatrix  Lennox  stood  in  the  dark  and  narrow  entrance,  watching  him  as  he 


410  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

passed  away  in  the  twilight  of  the  dawn,  through  which  the  yellow  flicker  of  the 
street-lights  was  burning  dully.  Her  black  robes  fell  about  her  like  the  laces 
of  Spanish  women;  her  face  was  very  pale,  for  there  was  no  bloom  of  art  on  its 
cheeks  to-night,  and  her  large  eyes  were  suffused  with  tears  over  the  darkness 
of  their  hazel  gleam.  There  was  beauty  still  in  her, — the  beauty  of  an  autumn 
evening,  that  had  the  faded  sadness  of  dead  hopes  and  the  tempest-clouds  of 
past  storms  on  its  pale  sunless  skies  and  on  the  red  fire  of  its  fallen  leaves. 

"  He  loves  her,  or  he  will  love,"  she  murmured,  in  her  solitude.  "  I  will 
seek  out  this  child,  and  see  if  she  be  worthy  of  him.  Ah  !  no  woman  will  be 
that !  A  great  man's  life  lies  higher  than  our  love,  loftier  than  our  reach." 


A  few  hours  later,  in  the  writing-cabinet  of  her  Roman  villa  a  famous 
diplomatist  sat, — one  who  wove  her  fine  nets  around  all  the  body  politic  of  the 
continent,  who  schemed  far  away  with  Eastern  questions  and  Western  com- 
plications, who  had  her  hand  in  Austria,  her  eyes  on  Syria,  her  whisper  in  the 
Vatican,  her  sceptre  in  the  Tuileries,  her  allies  among  the  Monsignori,  her 
keys  to  all  the  bureaux  secrets,  her  subtle,  vivacious,  deleterious,  dangerous 
power  everywhere. 

She  was  a  terrible  power  to  her  foes,  a  priceless  power  to  her  party.  Those 
brilliant  falcon  eyes  would  pierce  what  a  phalanx  of  ministers  could  not  over- 
come; that  unrivalled  silver  wit  could  consummate  what  conferences  and  coa- 
litions failed  to  compass;  that  magical  feminine  subtlety  could  dupe,  and  mask, 
and  net,  and  seduce,  and  wind,  and  unravel,  and  give  a  poison  drop  of  treachery 
in  a  crystal-clear  sweetmeat  of  frankness  and  compliment,  and  join  with  both 
sides  at  once,  and  glide  unharmed  away,  compromised  with  neither,  as  no  male 
state-craft  ever  yet  could  do.  The  only  mistake  she  made  was  that  she  thought 
the  growth  of  the  nations  was  to  be  pruned  by  an  enamelled  paper-knife,  and 
the  peoples^that  were  struggling  for  liberty,  as  drowning  men  for  air,  were  to  be 
bound  helpless  by  the  strings  of  Foreign  Portfolios.  But  the  error  was  not  only 
hers;  male  state-craft  has  made  it  for  ages. 

Now  it  was  of  an  idle  thing  she  was  speaking.  One  of  her  attendants  stood 
before  her,  a  slight,  pale,  velvet-voiced  Greek,  long  in  her  service,  and  skilled 
in  many  tongues  and  many  ways.  He  was  reciting,  with  his  finger  on  a  little 
note-book,  the  heads  of  some  trifling  researches, — very  trifling — he  thought 
them,  he  who  was  accustomed  to  be  a  great  lady's  political  mouchard. 

"  Still  wandering;  close  on  Venetia;  will  soon  want  food;  takes  no  alms: 
left  Vallombrosa  two  months  ago;  is  known  only  by  the  name  of  Castalia; 
parentage  unknown;  reared  by  chanty  of  the  Church ;  supposed  by  the  peas- 


CHAN  DOS.  411 

ants  to  have  fled  to  a  stranger  who  spent  the  spring  there  in  a  villegiatura. 
That  is  all,  madame." 

She  listened,  then  beat  her  jewelled  fingers  a  little  impatiently. 

"  That  is  not  like  your  training, — to  bring  me  an  unfinished  sketch." 

"There  is  nothing  to  be  learned,  madame." 

The  amused  scorn  of  his  mistress's  eyes  flashed  lightly  over  him. 

"If  a  thing  is  on  the  surface,  a  blind  man  can  feel  it.  Go;  and  tell 
me  when  you  come  back  both  the  name  of  this  stranger  and  the  name  of  her 
mother." 

"  It  is  impossible,  madame." 

She  gave  a  sign  of  her  hand  in  dismissal. 

"You  must  make  impossibilities  possible,  if  you  remain  with  me." 

The  voice  was  perfectly  gentle,  but  inflexible.  Her  servant  bowed,  and 
withdrew. 

"She  is  belle  & faire  peur.  I  will  know  what  she  is  to  him,"  murmured 
Heloise  de  la  Vivarol. 

The  fair  politician  had  not  forgotten  her  oath. 

Two  weeks  later,  the  Greek,  who  dared  not  reappear  with  his  mission  unac- 
complished, sent  his  mistress,  with  profound  apology  for  continued  failure,  a 
trifle  that,  by  infinite  patience  and  much  difficulty,  had  been  procured,  with 
penitent  confession  of  its  theft,  from  a  contadina  of  Fontane  Amorose, — a 
trifle  that  had  been  taken  from  the  dead  and  secreted  rather  from  superstitious 
belief  in  its  holy  power,  than  from  its  value.  It  was  a  little,  worn,  thin,  silver 
relic-case:  on  it  was  feebly  scratched,  by  some  unskilful  hand,  a  name, — 
"  Valeria  Lulli." 


CHAPTER   VIII. 

"  RECORD    ONE    LOST    SOUL    MORE." 

IN  his  atelier,  early  in  the  next  day,  an  artist  stood  painting.  His  studio 
looked  on  part  of  the  Forest  of  Fontainebleau.  The  garden  was  very  tranquil 
below;  and  the  light  within  shone  on  casts,  antiques,  bronzes,  old  armor,  old 
cabinets,  and  half-completed  sketches,  all  an  artist's  picturesque  lumber.  He 
had  a  fair  fame,  and,  though  not  rich,  could  live  in  ease.  He  did  not  care  for 
the  gay  Bohemianism  of  his  brethren;  he  had  never  done  so,  A  sensitive, 
imaginative  man, — poet  as  well  as  painter, — of  vivid  feeling  and  secluded 
habits,  he  preferred  solitude,  and  made  companions  of  his  own  creations.  He 
stood  before  one  now,  lovingly  touching  and  retouching  it, — a  man  with 
Southern  blood  in  every  line  of  his  limbs  and  his  features,  with  a  head  like  a 


412  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

Murillo  picture,  and  a  rich  Spanish  beauty  that  would  have  been  very  noble, 
but  for  a  look  of  wavering  indecision  and  a  startled,  timorous,  appealing  glance 
too  often  in  his  eyes. 

It  was  not  there  now;  he  was  smiling  down  on  his  picture  with  a  blissful 
content  in  its  promise.  It  had  the  pure,  clear,  cool  color  of  the  French  school, 
with  the  luxuriance  of  an  overflowing  fancy  less  strictly  educated,  more  abun- 
dantly loosened,  than  theirs;  it  was  intensely  idealic,  far  from  all  realism, 
withal  voluptuous,  yet  never  sensual.  The  type  of  his  nature  might  be  found 
in  the  picture;  it  was  high,  but  it  had  scarcely  strength  enough  in  it  to  be  the 
highest.  Still,  it  was  of  a  rare  talent,  a  rare  poetry,  and  he  might  well  look  on 
it  contented;  he  only  turned  from  it  to  smile  more  fondly  even  still  in  the  face 
of  a  young  girl  who  leaned  her  hands  on  his  shoulder  to  look  at  it  with  him, — 
a  girl  with  the  glow  in  her  laughing  loveliness  that  was  in  the  warm  autumnal 
sunlight  without,  the  loveliness  rich  and  full  of  grace  of  a  Spaniard  of  Mexico. 

"You  are  happy,  Agostino,  with  it  and  with  me  ? "  she  asked,  in  a  caressing 
murmur,  with  her  ripe  scarlet  lips,  that  had  the  bloom  of  their  earliest  years  on 
them,  close  against  his. 

There  was  a  passionate  love  in  his  eyes,  and  there  was  something  of  as  pas- 
sionate a  regret,  as  he  answered  her: — 

"  Mi  querida!  you  and  it  give  me  all  the  happiness  I  ever  know." 

And  that  was  much,  in  such  moments  at  least,  with  the  gloriousness  of  his 
own  art  on  the  canvas  before  him  in  a  shape  that  men  would  admire  and  honor, 
and  that  spoke  to  his  heart  more  sweetly  than  it  could  ever  speak  to  theirs,  and 
against  his  cheek  the  full  and  fragrant  lips  of  a  woman  he  had  loved  at  a  glance 
with  a  Southern  fervor,  and  won  at  a  sharp  cost  that  heightened  the  joy  of  pos- 
session. In  that  moment  at  least  the  artist,  the  lover,  was  happy. 

As  he  stood  before  his  picture,  in  the  peace  of  the  early  day,  the  door 
opened,  a  light  quick  step  trod  on  the  oak  floor. 

"  Ah,  cher  Agostino  !  how  go  the  world  and  the  pictures  ?  You  and  La 
Seiiora  are  a  study  for  one  ! " 

The  painter  started,  with  a  sudden  shiver  that  ran  through  all  his  limbs;  a 
deathly  pallor  came  under  the  warm  olive  tint  of  his  cheek;  he  stood  silent, 
like  a  stricken  man.  The  Spanish  girl,  who  had  hurriedly  moved  from  his 
embrace,  with  a  blush  over  her  face,  did  not  see  his  agitation;  she  was  looking 
shyly  and  in  wonder  at  the  stranger  who  entered  so  unceremoniously  on  their 
solitude. 

"  Haven't  seen  you  for  some  time,  my  good  Agostino,"  pursued  John  Tre- 
venna,  walking  straight  up  towards  the  easel,  without  taking  the  trouble  to 
remove  his  hat  from  over  his  eyes  or  his  cigar  from  between  his  lips, — bright, 
quick,  good-humored,  careless,  and  easy,  as  he  was  everywhere,  sauntering 
up  the  body  of  the  Commons,  chatting  at  a  cover-side,  discussing  foreign 


IT  is  IMPOSSIBLE,  MADAME."— Page  411,  Vol.  III. 


CHANDOS.  413 

questions  in  a  Legation,  or  playing  billiards  with  a  duke.  "  What  are  you 
doing  here  ? — anything  pretty  ?  Queer  thing,  Art,  to  be  sure  !  Never  did 
understand  it, — never  should.  Let  me  see:  a  young  lady  without  any  drapery, 
— unless  some  ivy  on  her  hair  can  be  construed  into  a  concession  to  society  on 
that  head. — and  a  general  atmosphere  about  her  of  moist  leaves  and  hazy  un- 
comfortableness.  Now  you've  'idealized'  her  into  something,  I'll  be  bound, 
and  will  give  her  some  sonorous  Hellenic  title,  eh?  That's  always  the  way. 
An  artist  gives  his  porter's  daughter  five  francs  and  a  kiss  to  sit  to  him,  dresses 
her  up  with  some  two-sous  bunches  of  primroses  from  the  Marche  des  Fleurs, 
paints  her  while  they  smoke  bad  tobacco  and  chatter  argot  together,  and  calls 
her  the  Genius  of  the  Spring,  or  something  as  crack-jaw.  Straightway  the  con- 
noisseurs and  critics  go  mad:  it's  an  'artistic  foreshadowing  of  the  divine  in 
woman; '  or  it's  an  '  idealic  representation  of  the  morning  of  life  and  the  bud- 
ing  renaissance  of  the  earth;'  or  it's  a  'fusion  of  many  lights  into  one  har- 
monious whole;'  or  it's  some  other  art-jargon  as  nonsensical.  And  if  you  talk 
the  trash,  and  stare  at  the  nude  'Genius,'  it's  all  right;  but  if  you  can't  talk 
the  trash,  and  like  to  look  at  the  live  grisette  dancing  a  rigolboche,  it's  all  wrong, 
and  you're  '  such  a  coarse  fellow  ! '  That's  why  I  don't  like  Art;  she's  such  a 
humbug.  '  Idealism  !  '  Why,  it's  only  Realism  washed  out  and  vamped  up 
with  a  little  glossing,  as  the  raw-boned,  yellow-skinned  ballet-hacks  are  dressed 
up  in  paint  and  spangles  and  gossamer  petticoats  and  set  floating  about  as  fairies. 
'Idealism  ! ' — that's  the  science  of  seeing  things  as  they  aren't;  that's  all." 

With  which  Trevenna,  with  his  glass  in  his  eye  and  his  cigar  in  his  teeth, 
completed  his  lecture  on  art,  hitting  truth  in  the  bull's  eye,  as  he  commonly 
did,  refreshing  the  Hudibrastic  vein  in  him  for  his  compulsory  hypocrisies  by 
a  sparring-match  with  other  people's  humbugs.  He  lied,  because  everybody 
lied,  because  it  was  politic,  because  it  was  necessary,  because  it  was  one  of  the 
weapons  that  cut  a  way  up  the  steep  and  solid  granite  of  national  vanity  and 
social  conventionalities;  but  the  man  himself  was  too  jovially  cynical  (if  such 
an  antithesis  may  be  used)  not  to  be  naturally  candid.  He  would  never  have 
had  for  his  crime  the  timorous  Ciceronian  euphemism  of  Vixerunt ;  he  would 
have  come  out  from  the  Tullianum  and  told  the  people,  with  a  laugh,  that  he'd 
killed  Lentulus  and  the  whole  of  that  cursed  set,  because  they  were  horribly  in 
the  way  and  were  altogether  a  bad  lot.  He  held  his  secret  cards  closer  than 
any  man  living;  but  all  the  same  he  never  pandered  with  his  actions  under 
specious  names  to  himself,  and  he  had  by  nature  the  "cynical  frankness"  of 
Sulla.  Indeed,  this  would  sometimes  break  out  of  him,  and  cleave  the  dull  air 
of  English  politics  with  a  rush  that  made  its  solemn  respectabilities  aghast, — 
though  the  mischief  happened  seldom,  as  Trevenna,  like  Jove,  held  his  light- 
ning in  sure  command,  and  was,  moreover,  the  last  man  in  the  universe  to  risk 
an  Icarus  flight. 


414  GUI  DA'S     WORKS. 

Meanwhile,  as  the  great  popular  leader  uttered  his  diatribe  against  art, 
standing  before  the  easel,  puffing  smoke  into  the  fair  face  of  a  young  Dryad, 
who  might  justly  have  claimed  sisterhood  with  Ingres'  creations,  the  painter  had 
remained  silent  and  passive,  his  Rubens  head  bent  down,  on  his  face  a  still, 
cold,  gray  look,  like  that  of  a  man  about  to  faint  from  physical  pain;  the  lids 
drooped  heavily  over  his  eyes;  his  limbs  trembled;  he  stood  like  a  slave  before 
his  taskmaster.  The  girl  had  left  them  at  a  murmured  word  in  Spanish  from 
him,  and  they  stood  alone.  Trevenna  dropped  himself  into  the  painting-chair 
with  his  easy  familiarity,  which,  though  sometimes  polished  and  toned  down  by 
the  life  he  led  and  the  circles  he  frequented,  had  all  its  old  bon-camarade  in- 
formality: a  looker-on  would  have  said  it  was  the  brilliant  minister,  the  moneyed 
patron,  who  came  on  a  good-natured  visit  to  the  foreign  artist. 

"  You  are  not  lively  company,  cher  Agostino,  nor  yet  a  welcoming  host," 
he  resumed.  "  Didn't  expect  to  see  me,  I  daresay  ?  I  haven't  much  time  to 
run  about  ateliers;  still,  as  I  was  staying  at  the  court,  I  thought  I'd  give  you 
a  look.  So  you've  married,  eh  ?  Very  pretty  creature,  too,  I  daresay,  for  men 
who  understand  that  style  of  thing;  myself,  I'm  a  better  judge  of  a  bouillabaisse 
than  of  a  mistress.  Married,  eh  ?  You  know  what  Bacon  says  about  marriage 
and  hostages  to  fortune,  don't  you  ?  " 

The  artist's  dry  lips  opened  without  words;  his  eyelids  were  raised  for  a 
moment,  with  a  piteous,  hunted  misery  beneath  them;  he  knew  the  meaning  of 
the  question  put  to  him. 

"  Don't  know  very  well  what  Bacon  meant,  myself,"  persued  Trevenna, 
beating  a  careless  tattoo  with  the  mahl-stick.  "  Wives  and  brats  are  hostages 
most  men  would  be  uncommonly  glad  to  leave  unredeemed,  I  fancy, — goods 
they  wouldn't  want  to  take  out  of  pawn  in  a  hurry,  if  they  once  got  rid  of  'em. 
So  you've  married?  Well,  I've  no  objection  to  that,  if  you  see  any  fun  in  it: 
/shouldn't.  You  learned  one  piece  of  wisdom:  you  never  try  dodging  now. 
Quite  right.  Wherever  you  might  go,  /should  know  it." 

The  man  who  stood  before  him,  like  a  slave  whom  the  bloodhounds  have 
run  down  and  brought  back  to  their  bondage,  shuddered  as  he  heard. 

"Oh,  God!"  he  murmured,  "can  you  not  spare  me  yet?  I  am  so  nameless 
a  thing  in  the  world's  sight,  beside  you!  You  have  such  vast  schemes,  such 
vast  ambitions,  so  wide  a  repute,  so  broad  a  field:  can  you  never  forget  me, 
and  let  me  go  ?  " 

"  Cher  Agostino,"  returned  the  Right  Honorable  Member,  "  you  are  illogi- 
cal. A  thing  may  be  insignificant,  but  it  may  be  wanted.  A  pawn  may,  be- 
fore now,  have  turned  the  scale  of  a  champion  game  of  chess.  Take  care  of 
the  trifles,  and  the  big  events  will  take  care  of  themselves.  That's  my  motto; 
though,  of  courre,  you  don't  understand*  this,  seeing  that  your  trade  in  life  is  to 
scatter  broad  splashes  of  color  and  leave  fancy  to  fill  'em  up, — to  paint  a  beetle's 


CHANDOS.  415 

back  as  if  the  universe  hung  in  the  pre-Raphaelism,  and  to  trust  to  Providence 
that  your  daub  of  orange  looks  like  a  sunset, — to  make  believe,  in  a  word,  with 
a -little  pot  of  oil  and  a  little  heap  of  colored  earths,  just  for  all  the  world  as 
children  play  at  sand-building,  is  the  very  oddest  employment  that  ever  a  fan- 
tastic devil  set  the  wits  of  a  man  after!  You  are  unpractical,  that's  a  matter 
of  course;  but  you  are  more: — you  are  desperately  ungrateful!  " 

A  quiver  of  passion  shook  the  artist's  frame;  the  scarlet  flood  flushed  the 
olive  of  his  delicate  cheek;  he  recoiled  and  rebelled  against  the  tyranny  that 
set  its  iron  heel  upon  his  neck,  as  years  before  the  beautiful  lad,  whom  the  old 
Hebrew  loved,  had  done  so  in  the  gloomy  city  den. 

"Ungrateful!  Are  men  grateful  whose  very  life  is  not  their  own?  Are 
men  grateful  who  hourly  draw  their  breath  as  a  scourged  dog's  ?  Are  men 
grateful  who  from  their  boyhood  upward  have  had  their  whole  future  held  in 
hostage  as  chastisement  for  one  poverty-sown  sin  ? — grateful  for  having  their 
spirits  broken,  their  souls  accursed,  their  hearts  fettered,  their  steps  dogged, 
their  sleep  haunted,  their  manhood  ruined  ?  If  they  are  grateful,  so  am  I ; 
not  else." 

Trevenna  laughed  good-humoredly. 

"  My  good  fellow,  I  always  told  you  you  ought  to  go  on  the  stage:  you'd 
make  your  fortune  there.  Such  a  speech  as  that,  now, — all  a  rimproviste,  too, 
— would  bring  down  any  house.  Decidedly  you've  histronic  talents,  Agostino; 
you'd  be  a  second  Talma.  All  your  raving  set  apart,  however  (and  you're  not 
good  at  elocution,  tres-cher;  who  can  '  fetter  '  hearts  ?  who  can  '  break  '  spirits  ? 
Tt  sounds  just  like  some  doggerel  for  a  valentine),  you  are  ungrateful.  I  might 
have  sent  you  to  the  hulks,  and  didn't.  My  young  Jew,  you  ought  to  be  im- 
measurably my  debtor." 

He  spoke  quite  pleasantly,  beating  a  rataplan  with  the  mahl-stick,  and  sit- 
ting crosswise  on  the  painting  chair.  He  was  never  out  of  temper,  and  some 
there  were  who  learned  to  dread  that  bright,  sunny,  insolent,  mirthful  good 
humor  as  they  never  dreaded  the  most  fiery  or  the  most  sullen  furies  of  other 
men.  Even  in  the  political  arena,  opponents  had  been  taught  that  there  was 
a  fatal  power  in  that  cloudless  and  racy  good  temper,  which  never  opened  the 
slightest  aperture  for  attack,  but  yet  caught  them  so  often  and  so  terribly  on 
the  hip. 

"  Very  ungrateful  you  are,  my  would-be  Rubens,"  resumed  Trevenna. 
"Only  think!  Here  is  a  man  who  committed  a  downwright  felony,  whom  I 
could  have  put  in  a  convict's  chains  any  day  I  liked,  and  I  did  nothing  to  him 
but  let  him  grow  up,  and  turn  artist,  and  live  in  the  pleasantest  city  in  the  world, 
and  marry  when  he  fancied  the  folly,  and  do  all  he  liked  in  the  way  he  liked 
best:  and  he  can't  see  that  he  owes  me  anything!  Oh,  the  corruption  of  the 
human  heart! " 


416  GUI  DA'S     WORKS. 

With  which  Trevenna,  having  addressed  the  exposition  to  the  Dryad  on  the 
easel,  dealt  her  a  little  blow  with  the  mahl-stick,  and  made  a  long,  cruel  blur 
across  the  still  moist  paint  of  her  beautiful,  gravely-smiling  mouth,  that  it  had 
cost  the  painter  so  many  hours,  so  many  days,  of  loving  labor  to  perfect. 

Agostino  gave  an  involuntary  cry  of  anguish.  He  could  have  borne  iron 
blows  rained  down  on  his  own  head  like  hail,  better  than  he  could  bear  that 
ruin  of  his  work,  that  outrage  to  his  darling. 

"I  do  it  in  the  interest  of  morality;  she's  too  pretty  and  too  sensual," 
laughed  Trevenna,  as  he  drew  the  instrument  of  torture  down  over  the  delicate 
brow  and  the  long  flowing  tresses,  making  a  blurred,  blotted,  beaten  mass 
where  the  thing  of  beauty  had  glowed  on  the  canvas.  He  would  not  have 
thought  of  it,  but  that  the  gleam  of  fear  in  his  victim's  eyes,  as  the  stick  had 
accidently  slanted  towards  the  easel,  had  first  told  him  the  ruin  he  might  make. 
To  torment  was  a  mischief  and  a  merriment  that  he  never  could  resist,  strong 
as  his  self-control  was  in  other  things. 

It  was  the  one  last  straw  that  broke  the  long-suffering  camel's  back.  With 
a  cry  as  though  some  murderer's  knife  were  at  his  own  throat,  the  painter 
sprang  forward  and  caught  his  tyrant's  arm,  wrenching  the  mahl-stick  away, 
though  not  until  it  was  too  late  to  save  his  Dryad,  not  until  the  ruthless  cruelty 
had  done  its  pleasure  of  destruction. 

"Merciful  God!  "  he  cried,  passionately,  "  are  you  devil,  not  man?  Sate 
yourself  in  my  wretchedness;  but,  for  pity's  sake,  spare  my  works,  the  only 
treasure  and  redemption  of  my  weak,  worthless,  accursed  life!  " 

Trevenna  shrugged  his  shoulders,  knocking  his  cigar-ash  off  against  the  mar- 
vellous clearness  of  limpid,  bubbling,  prismatic,  sunlight  water  at  the  Dryad's 
feet,  that  had  made  one  of  the  chief  beauties  and  wonders  of  the  picture. 

"Agostino,  ban  enfant,  you  should  go  on  the  stage.  You  speak  in  strophes, 
and  say  'good-day'  to  anybody  like  an  Orestes  seeing  the  Furies!  It  must  be 
very  exhausting  to  keep  up  at  that  perpetual  melo-dramatic  height.  Try  life  in 
shirt-sleeves  and  slippers;  it's  as  pleasant  again  as  life  in  the  tragic  toga.  Be 
logical.  What's  to  prevent  my  slashing  that  picture  across  right  and  left  with 
my  penknife,  if  I  like  ?  Not  you.  You  think  your  life  '  weak  and  worthless; ' 
far  be  it  from  me  to  disagree  with  you;  but  what  you  think  you  '  redeem  '  it  in 
by  painting  young  ladies  au  naturel  from  immoral  models,  putting  some  weed 
on  their  head  and  a  pond  at  their  feet,  and  calling  it  '  Idealism,'  I  can't  see: 
that's  beyond  me.  However,  I'm  not  an  idealist:  perhaps  that's  why." 

With  which  he  swayed  himself  back  in  the  painting-chair,  and  prodded  the 
picture  all  over  with  his  cigar,  leaving  little  blots  of  ash  and  sparks  of  fire  on 
each  spot.  Martin  and  Gustave  Dore  are  mere  novices  in  the  art  of  inventing 
tortures,  besides  the  ingenuity  of  Trevenna's  laughing  humor. 

The  man  he  lectured  thus  stood  silent  by,  paralyzed  and  quivering  with  an 


CHANDOS.  417 

anguish  that  trembled  in  him  from  head  to  foot.  Agostino  had  not  changed; 
the  yielding,  timorous,  sensitive  nature,  blending  a  vivid  imagination  with  a 
woman's  suceptibility  to  fear,  was  unaltered  in  him,  and  laid  him  utterly  at  the 
mercy  of  every  stronger  temperament  and  sterner  will,  even  when  he  was  most 
roused  to  the  evanescent  fire  of  a  futile  rebellion. 

"  Oh,  Heaven  ! "  he  moaned,  passionately,  "  I  thought  you  had  forgotten 
me  !  I  thought  you  had  wearied  of  my  misery,  and  would  leave  me  in  a  little 
peace  !  You  are  so  rich,  so  famous,  so  successful;  you  have  had  so  many  vic- 
tims greater  far  than  I;  you  stand  so  high  in  the  world's  sight.  Can  you  never 
let  one  so  poor  and  powerless  as  I  go  free  ?  " 

"  Poor  and  powerless  is  a  figure,"  said  Trevenna,  with  a  gesture  of  his  cigar. 
"  You  will  use  such  exaggerated  language;  your  beggarly  little  nation  always 
did,  calling  themselves  the  chosen  of  Heaven,  when  they  were  the  dirtiest  little 
lot  of  thieves  going,  and  declaring  now  that  they're  waiting  for  their  Messiah, 
while  they're  buying  our  old  clothes,  picking  up  our  rags,  and  lying  au  plaisir 
in  our  police-courts  !  You  aren't  poor,  cher  Agostino,  for  a  painter;  and  you're 
really  doing  well.  Paris  talks  of  your  pictures,  and  the  court  likes  your  young 
ladies  in  ivy  and  nothing  else.  You're  prosperous, — on  my  word,  you  are;  but 
don't  flatter  yourself  I  shall  ever  forget  you.  I  don't  forget !  " 

He  sent  a  puff  of  smoke  into  the  air  with  those  three  words;  in  them  he  em- 
bodied the  whole  career,  the  key-note  of  his  character,  the  pith  and  essence  at 
once  of  his  success  and  of  his  pitilessness. 

A  heavy,  struggling  sigh  burst  from  his  listener  as  he  heard:  it  was  the  self- 
same contest  that  had  taken  place  years  previous  in  the  lamp-lit  den  of  the  bill- 
discounting  offices,  the  contest  between  weakness  that  suffered  mortally  and 
power  that  unsparingly  enjoyed.  The  terrible  bondage  had  enclosed  Agostino's 
whole  life;  he  felt  at  times  that  it  would  pursue  him  even  beyond  the  grave. 

"  Is  there  no  price  I  can  pay  at  once  ? "  he  said,  huskily,  his  voice  broken 
as  with  physical  pain, — "  no  task  I  can  work  out  at  a  blow  ? — no  tribute-money 
I  can  toil  for,  that,  gained,  will  buy  me  peace  ?  " 

"  As  if  I  ever  touched  a  sou  of  his  earnings,  or  set  him  to  paint  my  walls 
for  nothing  !  Mercy  !  the  ingratitude  of  the  Hebrew  race  !  "  cried  Trevenna, 
amusedly,  to  his  cigar. 

The  black,  sad,  lustrous  eyes  of  the  Spanish  Jew  flashed  with  a  momentary 
fire  that  had  the  lodging  in  them,  for  the  instant,  to  strike  his  tyrant  down 
stone-dead. 

"  Take  my  money  ?  No  !  You  do  not  seek  that,  because  it  is  a  drop  in 
the  ocean  beside  all  that  you  possess,  all  that  you  have  robbed  other  men  of  so 
long!  I  make  too  little  to  tempt  you,  or  you  would  have  wrung  it  out  of  me.  But 
you  have  done  a  million  times  worse.  You  have  taken  my  youth,  my  hope, 
my  spirit,  my  liberty,  and  killed  them  all.  You  have  made  a  mockery  of  mercy, 

VOL.  HI.— 14 


418  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

that  you  might  hold  me  in  a  captivity  worse  than  any  slave's.  You  have  made 
me  afraid  to  love,  lest  what  I  love  should  be  dragged  beneath  my  shame.  You 
have  made  me  dread  that  she  should  bear  me  children,  lest  they  be  born  to 
their  father's  fate.  You  have  ruined  all  manhood  in  me,  and  made  me  weak 
and  base  and  terror-stricken  as  any  cur  that  cringes  before  his  master's  whip. 
You  have  made  me  a  poorer,  lower,  viler  wretch  than  I  could  ever  have  been 
if  the  Law  had  taken  its  course  on  me,  and  beaten  strength  and  endurance  into 
me  in  my  boyhood,  by  teaching  me  openly  and  unflinchingly  the  cost  of  crime, 
yet  had  left  me  some  gate  of  freedom,  some  hope  of  redemption,  some  release 
to  a  liberated  life  when  my  term  of  chastisement  should  have  been  over, — left 
me  all  that  you  have  denied  me  since  the  hour  you  first  had  me  in  your  power, 
in  a  cruelty  more  horrible  and  more  unending  than  the  hardest  punishment  of 
justice  ever  could  have  been." 

The  torrent  of  words  poured  out  in  his  rich  and  ringing  voice,  swifter  and 
more  eloquent  the  higher  his  revolt  and  the  more  vain  his  anguish  grew.  This 
was  his  nature  to  feel  passionately,  to  rebel  passionately,  to  lift  up  his  appeal 
in  just  and  glowing  protestation,  to  recoil  under  his  bondage  suffering  beyond 
all  expression,  but  to  do  no  more  than  this, — to  be  incapable  of  action,  to  be 
powerless  for  real  and  vital  resistance,  to  spend  all  his  strength  in  that  ago- 
nized upbraiding,  which  he  must  have  known  to  be  as  futile  as  for  the  breakers 
to  fret  themselves  against  the  granite  sea-wall. 

Trevenna  listened  quietly,  with  a  certain  amusement.  It  was  always  un- 
commonly droll  to  him  to  see  the  struggles  of  weak  natures;  he  knew  they 
would  recoil  into  his  hands,  passive  and  helpless  agents,  conquered  by  the  sheer, 
unexpressed  force  of  his  own  vigorous  and  practical  temperament.  Studies  of 
character  were  always  an  amusement  to  him;  he  had  a  La-Bruyere-like  taste 
for  their  analysis;  the  vastness  of  his  knowledge  of  human  nature  did  not  pre- 
vent his  relishing  all  its  minutiae.  What  the  subjects  of  his  study  might  suffer 
under  it  was  no  more  to  him  than  what  the  frog  suffers,  when  he  pricks,  flays, 
cuts,  beheads,  and  lights  a  lucifer  match  under  it,  is  to  the  man  of  science  in 
his  pursuit  of  anatomy  and  his  refutation  of  Aristotle. 

"'Very  well  done  !  pity  it's  not  at  the  Porte  St.  Martin.  All  bosh  !  Still, 
that's  nothing  against  a  bit  of  melodrama  anywhere,"  he  said,  carelessly. 
"  Shut  up  now,  though,  please.  Let's  go  to  business." 

The  artist  seemed  to  shiver  and  collapse  under  the  bright,  brief,  words;  the 
heart-sick  passions,  the  flame  of  sudden  rebellion,  and  the  fire  of  vain  recrimina- 
tion faded  off  his  face,  his  head  sunk,  his  lips  trembled:  just  so,  years  before, 
had  the  vivid  grace  of  his  youth  shrunk  and  withered  under  his  taskmaster's  eye. 

"You  paint  the  Princess  Rossillio's  portrait?"  pursued  his  catechist. 

Agostino  bent  his  head. 

"  And  go  to  her,  of  course,  to  take  it  ?  " 


CHAN  DOS.  419 

The  Spanish  Jew  gave  the  same  mute  assent. 

"  Can't  you  speak  ?  Don't  keep  on  nodding  there,  like  a  mandarin  in  a  tea- 
shop.  You'd  words  enough  just  now.  You  paint  it  in  her  boudoir,  don't  you, 
because  the  light's  best  ?  " 

Agostino  lifted  his  heavy  eyes. 

"  Since  you  know,  why  ask  me  ?  " 

"  Leave  questions  to  me,  and  reply  tout  bref"  said  his  interrogator,  with  a 
curt  accent  that  bore  abundant  meaning.  "  You've  seen  a  Russian  cabinet 
that's  on  the  right  hand  of  the  fireplace  ?  " 

"  I  have." 

"Ah!  you  can  answer  sensibly  at  last!  Well,  that  cabinet's  madame's 
despatch-box.  You  know,  or  you  may  know,  that  she  is  the  most  meddlesome 
intriguer  in  Europe;  but  that's  nothing  to  you.  In  the  left-hand  top  drawer  is 
her  Austro- Venetian  correspondence.  Among  it  is  a  letter  from  the  Vienna 
Nuncio.  When  you  leave  the  boudoir  to-day,  you  will  know  what  that  letter 
contains." 

Agostino  started;  a  dew  broke  out  on  his  forehead,  a  flush  stained  his  clear 
brown  cheek  ^with  its  burning  shame;  his  eyes  grew  terribly  piteous. 

"  More  sin  !  more  dishonor  !  "  he  muttered,  in  his  throat.  "  Let  me  go  and 
starve  in  the  streets,  rather  than  drive  me  to  such  deeds  as  these  !  " 

Trevenna  laughed,  his  pleasant  bonhomie  in  no  way  changed,  though  there 
was  a  dash  more  of  authority  in  his  tone. 

"  Quiet,  you  Jew  dog  !  Really,  you  do  get  too  melo-dramatic  to  be  amusing. 
There's  no  occasion  for  any  heroics;  but — you'll  be  able  to  tell  me  this  time 
to-morrow." 

The  artist  covered  his  face  with  his  hands,  and  his  form  shook  to  and  fro  in 
an  irrepressible  agitation. 

"  Anything  but  this  ! — anything  but  this  !  Give  me  what  labor  you  will, 
what  poverty,  what  shame;  but  not  this  !  I  can  never  look  in  peace  into  my 
darling's  eyes,  if  I  take  this  villany  upon  my  life  !  " 

"Nobody's  alluding  to  villany,"  said  Trevenna,  with  a  tranquil  brevity. 
"  As  to  your  darling's  eyes,  they're  nothing  to  anybody  except  yourself:  you 
can  make  what  arrangements  for  '  looking  into  '  'em  you  like.  If  the  only  men 
who  '  look  into '  women's  eyes  are  the  honest  ones,  the  fair  sex  must  get  un- 
common few  lovers.  You've  heard  what  I  said.  Know  what  the  letter's  about. 
I  don't  tell  you  how  you're  to  know  it.  Get  the  princess  to  show  it  you.  You're 
a  very  handsome  fellow, — black  curls  and  all  the  rest  of  it, — and  her  Highness 
is  a  connoisseur  in  masculine  charms." 

With  which  Trevenna  laughed,  and  got  up  out  of  the  depths  of  the  painting- 
chair. 

Agostina  stood  in  his  path,  a  deep-red  flush  on  his  forehead,  the  blaze  of 


420  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

freshly-lightened  rebellion  in  his  eyes,  his  Murillo-like  beauty  all  on  fire,  as  it 
were,  with  wretchedness  and  passion. 

"  You  use  your  power  over  me  to  force  me  to  such  things  in  your  service  as 
this  !  What  if  they  were  spoken  ?  what  if  they  were  cited  against  you  ?  You, 
high  as  you  are  in  your  success  and  your  wealth  and  your  rank,  would  be 
thought  lower  yet  than  /  have  ever  fallen.  Do  you  not  fear,  even  you,  that  one 
day  you  may  sting  and  goad  me  too  far,  and  I  may  give  myself  up  to  your 
worst  work  for  the  sake  of  obtaining  my  vengeance  ? " 

Trevenna  smiled,  with  a  certain  laughing  good-tempered  indulgence,  such  as 
a  man  may  extend  to  a  child  who  menaces  him  with  its  impotent  fury. 

"  Tres-cher,  who  would  believe  you?  Say  anything  you  like;  it's  nothing  to 
me.  I  have  a  little  bit  of  paper  by  me  that,  once  upon  a  time,  M.  Agostino 
Mathias  signed  with  a  name  not  his  own.  I  was  very  lenient  to  him;  and  if  he 
dosen't  appreciate  the  clemency  the  world  will,  and  think  him  an  ungrateful 
young  Hebrew  cur,  who  turns,  like  all  curs,  on  his  benefactor.  Prosecute  you 
now  it  wouldn't,  perhaps,  since  the  matter's  been  allowed  to  sleep;  but  criminate 
you  and  disgrace  you  it  would  most  decidedly.  You'd  be  hounded  out  all  over 
Europe;  and  for  your  pretty  Spaniard,  I  heard  a  court  chamberlain  admiring 
her  yesterday,  and  saying  she  was  too  good  for  an  atelier: — she'd  soon  be  his 
mistress,  when  she  knew  you  a  felon.  Ah,  my  poor  Agostino,  when  you  once 
broke  the  law,  you  put  your  head  into  a  steel-trap  you'll  never  draw  it  out 
of  again.  Only  fools  break  the  laws.  Excuse  the  personality  !  " 

Under  the  ruthless  words  of  truth  Agostino  shrank  and  cowered  again,  like 
a  beaten  hound;  he  had  no  strength  against  his  taskmaster, — he  never  could 
have  had:  he  was  hemmed  in  beyond  escape.  Moreover,  now  he  had  another 
and  a  yet  more  irresistible  rein  by  which  to  be  held  in  and  coerced, — the  love 
that  he  bore,  and  that  he  received  from  his  young  wife. 

"  You'll  do  that,  then  ?  "  said  Trevenna,  with  the  carelessness  of  a  matter 
of  course.  "  Bring  some  picture  to  show  me  to-morrow  morning, — Darshamp- 
ton  likes  pictures,  because  it  couldn't  tell  a  sixpenny  daub  from  a  Salvator 
Rosa, — and  remember  every  line  of  the  Nuncio's  letter.  You  understand  ?  I 
don't  want  to  hear  your  means;  I  only  wants  the  results." 

"  I  will  try,"  muttered  Agostino.  He  loathed  crime  and  dishonor  with  an 
unutterable  hatred  of  it;  he  longed,  he  strove,  to  keep  the  roads  of  right  and 
justice;  his  nature  was  one  that  loved  the  peace  of  virtue  and  the  daylight  of 
fair  dealing.  Yet,  by  his  unconquerable  fear,  by  his  wax-like  mobility  of  tem- 
per, by  his  past  sin,  and  by  his  future  dread,  he  was  forced  into  the  very  paths 
and  made  the  very  thing  that  he  abhorred. 

"  People  who  '  try '  aren't  my  people,"  said  the  Member  for  Darshampton, 
curtly.  "  Those  who  do  are  the  only  ones  that  suit  me." 

Agostino  shrank  under  his  eye, 


CHAN  DOS.  421 

"I  will  come  to  you  to-morrow,"  he  murmured,  faintly.  He  had  no 
thought,  not  the  slightest,  of  how  he  should  be  able  to  accomplish  this  sinister 
work  that  was  set  him;  but  he  knew  that  he  must  do  it,  as  surely  as  his  coun- 
trymen of  old  must  make  their  bricks  without  straw,  for  their  conquerors  and 
enslavers. 

Trevenna  nodded,  and  threw  down  his  mahl-stick  with  a  final  lunge  at  the 
Dryad. 

"  All  right  !  of  course  you  will.  You  ought  to  be  very  grateful  to  me  that 
I  let  you  off  so  easily.  Some  men  would  make  you  give  up  to  them  that 
charming  Spanish  Senora  of  yours,  as  Maurice  de  Saxe  took  Favart's  wife  de  la 
part  du  rot.  But  that  isn't  my  line.  I've  coveted  a  good  many  thing  in  my 
day,  but  I  never  coveted  a  woman." 

With  which  he  threw  his  smoked-out  cigar  away,  and  went  across  the  atelier 
and  out  at  the  door,  with  a  careless  nod  to  his  victim.  He  had  so  much  to  fill 
up  every  moment  of  his  time,  that  he  could  ill  spare  the  ten  minutes  he  had 
flung  away  in  the  amusement  of  racking  and  tormenting  the  helplessness  of  the 
man  he  tortured,  and  he  knew  that  he  would  be  obeyed  as  surely  as  though  he 
spent  the  whole  day  in  further  threats. 

Trevenna  had  two  especial  arts  of  governing  at  his  fingers'  ends ;  he  never, 
by  any  chance,  compromised  himself,  but  also  he  never  was,  by  any  hazard, 
disobeyed.  He  had  a  large  army  of  employes  on  more  or  less  secret  service 
about  in  the  world;  but  as  there  was  not  one  of  them  who  held  a  single  trifle 
that  could  damage  him,  so  there  was  not  one  of  them  who  ever  ventured  not 
to  "  come  up  to  time"  exactly  to  his  bidding,  or  to  fail  to  keep  his  counsel  with 
"  silence  a  la  mart" 

The  artist  Agostino,  left  to  his  solitude,  threw  himself  forward  against  the 
broad  rest  of  his  chair,  his  arms  flung  across  it,  his  head  bent  down  on  them: 
he  could  not  bear  to  look  upon  the  defaced  canvas  of  his  treasured  picture;  he 
could  not  bear  to  see  the  light  of  the  young  day,  while  he  knew  himself  a  tool 
so  worthless  and  so  vile.  The  world  smiled  on  him;  fame  came  to  him;  peace 
surrounded  him;  the  desires  of  his  heart  were  fulfilled  to  him;  and  all  was 
poisoned  and  broken  and  ruined  and  made  worthless  by  the  tyranny  that 
dogged  him  unceasingly,  that  seized  him  when  he  thought  he  had  cheated  it  into 
forgetful  ness,  that  haunted  him  and  hunted  him  with  the  phantom  of  his  dead 
crime,  and  through  it  drove  him  on  to  do  the  things  he  cursed  and  scorned. 
He  might  have  been  so  happy  !  and  this  chain  was  forever  weighting  his  limbs, 
eating  into  his  flesh,  dragging  him  back  as  he  sought  a  purer  life,  waking  him 
from  his  sleep  with  its  chill  touch,  holding  him  ever  to  his  master's  will  and  to 
his  master's  work, — will  and  work  that  left  him  free  and  unnoticed  perhaps  for 
years,  and  then,  when  he  had  begun  to  breathe  at  liberty  and  to  hope  for  peace, 
would  find  him  out  wherever  he  was,  and  force  him  to  the  path  they  pointed  ! 


422  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

Agostino  had  hoped  oftentimes  that  as  his  bond-ruler  rose  in  the  honor  of 
men  and  the  success  of  the  world  he  would  forget  so  nameless  and  so  power- 
less a  life  as  his  own:  he  had  found  his  hope  a  piteous  error.  Trevenna  had 
said  truly  he  never  forgot;  the  smallest  weapon  that  might  be  ready  to  his  hand 
some  day  he  kept  continually  finely  polished  and  within  his  reach.  The  painter 
knew  that  he  must  learn  what  was  indicated  to  him, — by  betrayal  or  chican- 
ery, or  secret  violence,  or  whatsoever  means  might  open  to  him, — or  be  blasted 
for  life  by  one  word  of  his  tyrant.  He  abhorred  the  dishonor,  but  he  had  not 
the  courage  to  refuse  it,  knowing  the  cost  of  such  refusal.  It  was  not  the  first 
time  by  many  that  such  missions  had  been  bound  on  him:  yet  every  time  they 
brought  fresh  horror  and  fresh  hatred  with  them.  But  he  was  hunted  and  help- 
less; he  had  no  resistance;  throughout  his  life  he  had  paid  the  price  exacted, 
rather  than  meet  the  fate  that  waited  him  if  it  were  unpaid.  He  clung  to  the 
sweetness,  the  tranquillity,  the  growing  renown,  and  the  newly-won  love  of  his 
existence;  he  clung  to  them,  even  embittered  by  the  serpent's  trail  that  was 
over  them,  with  a  force  that  made  him  embrace  any  alternative  rather  than 
see  them  perish,  that  laid  him  abjectly  at  the  mercy  of  the  one  who  menaced 
them. 

Lost  in  his  thoughts,  he  did  not  hear  the  footfall  of  the  Spanish  girl  as  she 
re-entered  the  atelier.  She  paused  a  moment,  amazed  and  terrified,  as  she  saw 
his  attitude  of  prostrate  grief  and  dejection,  then  threw  herself  beside  him  with 
endearing  words  and  tearful  caresses,  in  wonder  at  what  ailed  him.  He  raised 
himself  and  unwound  her  arms  from  about  him,  shunning  the  gaze  of  her  eyes. 
She  thought  him  as  true,  as  loyal-hearted,  as  great,  as  he  knew  himself  to  be 
weak  and  criminal  and  hopelessly  enslaved. 

"  What  is  it  ?  What  has  happened  ? "  she  asked  him  eagerly,  trying  to 
draw  down  his  face  to  hers. 

He  smiled,  while  the  tears  started  woman-like  beneath  his  lashes.  He  led 
her  gently  towards  the  ruined  canvas. 

"  Only  that; — an  accident,  my  love!  " 

The  brightness  of  the  Dryad  all  blurred  and  marred  by  the  ruthlessness 
of  tyranny  was  a  fit  emblem  of  his  life. 


By  noon  that  day,  in  the  boudoir  of  the  Italian  princess,  all  glimmering 
with  a  soft  glisten  of  azure  and  silver  through  its  rose-hued  twilight,  he  chanced 
to  be  left  for  a  few  moments  in  solitude.  Her  Highness  had  not  yet  risen. 

"  O  God!  "  he  thought,  "  do  devils  rule  the  world  ?  There  are  always  doors 
opened  so  wide  for  any  meditated  sin !"  Then,  with  a  glance  round  him  like 
a  thief  in  the  night,  his  hand  was  pressed  on. the  spring  of  the  Russian  cabinet; 


CHANDOS.  423 

the  letter  of  the  Nuncio  lay  uppermost,  with  its  signature  folded  foremost;  a 
moment,  and  its  delicate  feminine  writing  was  scanned,  and  each  line  remem- 
bered with  a  hot  and  terrible  eagerness  that  made  it  graven  as  though  bitten 
in  by  aquafortis  on  his  memory.  The  note  was  put  back,  the  drawer  closed; 
the  artist  stood  bending  over  his  palette,  and  pouring  the  oil  on  some  fair 
carmine  tints,  when  the  Princess  of  Naples  swept  into  the  chamber. 

She  greeted  him  with  a  kindly,  careless  grace,  with  a  pleasant  smile  in  the 
brown  radiance  of  her  eyes;  and  she  saw  that  his  cheek  turned  pale,  that  his 
eyelids  drooped,  that  his  voice  quivered,  as  he  answered  her. 

"  Povero !  com'  £  bello!"  thought  Irene  Rossillio;  and  she  laughed  a  little, 
as  she  thought  that  even  this  Spanish  Jew  of  a  painter  could  not  come  into  her 
presence  without  succumbing  to  its  spell. 


BOOK   THE    EIGHTH. 


Leave  him,  still  loftier  than  the  world  suspects, 
Living  or  dying. 

ROBERT  BROWNING. 


CHAPTER    I. 

THE   CLAIMANT   OF   THE    PORPHYRY   CHAMBER. 

BEFORE  the  door  of  an  Italian  albergo,  some  men  had  been  drinking  and 
laughing  in  the  ruddy  light  of  an  autumn  day,  just  upon  the  setting  of  the  sun, 
— men  of  the  mountains,  shepherds,  goat-herds,  and  one  or  two  of  less  peace- 
able and  harmless  callings, — rough  comrades  for  a  belated  night  on  the  hill- 
side, whose  argument  was  powder  and  ball,  and  whose  lair  was  made  with  the 
wolves  and  hares.  The  house,  low,  lonely,  poor,  was  overhung  with  the  fes- 
toons of  vines,  and  higher  yet  with  the  great  shelf  of  roadside  rock,  from  which 
there  poured  down,  so  close  that  the  wooden  loggia  was  often  splashed  with  its 
spray,  a  tumbling,  foaming,  brown  glory  of  water  that  rolled  hissing  into  a 
pool  dark  as  night,  turning  as  it  went  the  broad  black  wood  of  a  mighty  mill- 
wheel.  The  men  had  been  carousing  carelessly,  and  shouting  over  their  wine 
and  brandy  snatches  of  muleteer  and  boat-song,  or  the  wild  ribaldry  of  some 
barcarolle,  their  host  drinking  and  singing  with  them,  for  the  vintage  had  been 
good,  and  things  went  well  with  him  in  his  own  way,  here  out  of  the  track  of 


424  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

cities,  and  in  the  solitude  of  great  stretches  of  sear  sunburnt  grass,  of  dense 
chestnut-forest,  of  hills  all  purple  and  cloud-topped  in  the  vast,  clear,  dream- 
like distance.  Now,  flushed  with  their  drink  and  heedless  in  their  revels,  rough 
and  tumultuous  as  wild  boors  at  play,  they  were  circled  round  the  doorway  in 
a  ring  that  shut  out  alike  all  passage  to  the  osteria  and  all  passage  to  the  road; 
and  they  were  enjoying  torture  with  that  strange  instinctive  zest  for  it  that 
underlies  most  human  nature,  and  breaks  out  alike  in  the  boor  who  has  a 
badger  at  his  mercy  and  the  Caesar  who  has  a  nation  under  his  foot. 

They  had  the  power  and  they  had  the  temptation  to  torment,  and  the  animal 
natures  in  them,  hot  with  wine  and  riotous  with  mirth  rather  than  with  any 
colder  cruelty,  urged  them  on  in  it;  one  or  two  of  them,  also,  were  of  tempers 
as  coarse  and  as  savage  as  any  of  the  brutes  that  they  hunted,  and  peals  of 
brutal  laughter  rang  out  from  them  on  the  sunny  autumn  air. 

"  Sing,  my  white-throated  bird  !  "  cried  one.  "  Dance  a  measure  with  me  !  " 
cried  another.  "  Pour  this  down  your  pretty  lips,  and  kiss  us  for  it  !  "  "  You'll 
be  humble  enough  before  we've  done  with  you,  my  proud  beauty  !  "  "  We'll 
tie  you  up  by  a  rope  of  that  handsome  bright  hair  !  "  "  Come,  now,  laugh 
and  take  it  easy,  or,  by  Bacchus,  we'll  smash  those  dainty  limbs  of  yours  like 
maize-stalks  ! " 

The  shouts  echoed  in  tumult,  ringing  with  laughter,  and  broken  with  oaths, 
and  larded  with  viler  words  of  mountain-slang,  that  had  no  sense  to  the  ear  on 
which  they  were  flung  in  their  polluting  mirth.  In  the  centre  of  the  ferocious 
revelry,  beneath  the  bronzed  and  crimson  canopy  of  the  hanging  porch-vine, 
and  with  the  western  light  shed  full  upon  her,  stood  Castalia.  The  tall,  lithe, 
voluptuous  grace  of  her  form  rose  out  against  the  darkness  of  the  entrance-way 
like  the  slender,  lofty  height  of  a  young  palm;  the  masses  of  her  hair  swept 
backward  from  her  forehead.  Her  face  was  white  as  death  to  the  lips;  an  un- 
utterable horror  was  on  it,  but  no  yielding  fear;  it  was  proud,  dauntless,  heroic 
with  the  spirit  of  dead  Rome,  that  rose  higher  with  every  menace.  Her  eyes 
looked  steadily  at  the  savage,  flushed  faces  round  her  so  coarse,  so  loathsome  in 
their  mirth;  her  hands  were  folded  on  her  bosom,  holding  to  it  the  book  she  car- 
ried. They  might  tear  her  limb  from  limb,  as  they  threatened,  like  the  fibres  of 
the  maize;  but  the  royal  courage  in  her  would  never  bend  down  to  their  will. 
They  had  hemmed  her  in  by  sheer  brute  strength,  and  their  clamor  of  hideous 
jest,  their  riot  of  insolent  admiration,  were  a  torture  to  her  passing  all  torture 
of  steel  or  of  flame;  but  they  could  not  wring  one  moan  from  her,  much  less 
could  they  wring  one  supplication. 

"  Altro  !  "  laughed  the  foremost,  a  sunburnt,  colossal  mountain-thief  of  the 
Apennine.  "  Waste  no  more  parley  with  her.  If  she  will  not  smile  for  fair 
words,  she  shall  squeak  for  rough  ones.  My  pretty  princess,  give  me  the  first 
kiss  of  those  handsome  lips  of  yours  !  " 


CHANDOS.  425 

He  launched  himself  on  her  as  he  spoke,  his  hand  on  the  gold  of  her  hair 
and  the  linen  broideries  of  her  delicate  vest:  but  her  eyes  had  watched  his 
movement:  with  a  shudder  like  the  antelope's  under  the  tiger's  claws,  she 
wrenched  herself  from  him,  pierced  the  circle  of  her  torturers  before  they 
could  stay  her,  and,  before  they  could  note  what  she  did,  had  sprung  with  the 
mountain  swiftness  of  her  childhood  on  to  the  rocks  overhanging  the  water- 
wheel.  Another  bound  in  mid-air,  light  and  far-reaching  as  a  chamois's,  and 
she  stood  on  the  broad  wooden  ledge  of  the  wheel  itself,  that  was  stopped  from 
work  and  was  motionless  in  the  torrent,  with  the  foam  of  the  spray  flung 
upward  around  her,  and  the  black  pool  hissing  below.  A  yell  of  baffled  rage 
broke  from  her  tormentors;  yet  they  were  checked  and  paralyzed  at  the  daring 
of  the  action  and  at  the  beauty  of  her  posture,  as  she  was  poised  there  on  the 
wet  ledge  of  the  wheel-timber,  her  hair  floating  backward,  her  eyes  flashing 
down  upon  them,  her  hands  still  holding  the  book,  the  roar  and  the  surge  of 
the  torrent  beneath  her  moving  her  no  more  to  fear  than  they  move  the 
chamois  that  spring  from  rock  to  rock.  They  forgot  their  passions  and  their 
fury  for  the  moment  in  amaze  and  in  admiration,  wrung  out  from  them  by  a 
temper  that  awed  them  the  more  because  they  could  comprehend  it  in  nothing. 

"  Come  down  !  "  they  shouted,  with  one  voice;  "come  down  !  You  have 
gone  to  your  death  !  " 

Where  she  stood  on  the  wood-work,  with  the  water  splashing  her  feet  and  the 
boiling  chasm  yawning  below,  she  glanced  at  them  and  smiled. 

"  Yes;  I  have  that  refuge  from  you." 

"  Per  fede  ! "  thundered  the  mountaineer  who  had  first  menaced  her,  "  there 
are  two  can  play  at  that  game,  my  young  fawn." 

With  a  leap,  quick  and  savage  as  his  own  rage,  he  sprang  on  to  the  shelf  of 
rock.  There  was  only  the  breadth  of  the  falling  water  between  them;  she  had 
cleared  it,  so  could  he.  She  looked  at  the  pool,  cavernous  and  deep,  at  her  feet, 
then  let  her  eyes  rest  on  him  calmly. 

"  Do  it,  if  you  dare  !  "  she  said,  briefly;  and  her  gaze  went  backward  to  the 
torrent  with  a  dreaming,  longing,  wistful  tenderness.  "  You  will  save  me  !  " 
she  murmured  to  the  water.  "  There  is  only  one  pain  in  dying, — to  leave  the 
world  that  has  his  life." 

She  swayed  herself  lightly,  balancing  herself  to  spring  with  unerring  meas- 
ure where  the  eddy  of  the  torrent  was  deepest.  Arresting  her  in  the  leap,  and 
startling  her  persecutors,  a  voice,  deep  and  rich,  though  hollow  with  age,  fell  on 
the  silence. 

"  Wait !     Will  you  be  murderers  ?  " 

Out  of  the  darkness  of  the  entrance  issued  the  tall,  bent  wasted  form  of  the 
blind  Hebrew,  majestic  as  a  statue  of  Moses,  with  his  hands  outstretched,  and 
his  sightless  eyes  seeking  the  sunlight. 


426  OUIDA'S     WORKS. 

"lam  blind,"  he  said,  slowly;  "but  I  know  that  wrong  is  being  done. 
Maiden,  whoever  you  be,  do  not  fear;  come  to  me;  and  the  curse  of  the  God 
of  the  guiltless  fall  on  those  who  would  seek  to  harm  you  !  " 

The  men,  stilled  though  sullen,  riotous  rather  than  coldly  cruel,  stood  silent 
and  wavering,  glancing  from  her,  where  she  was  poised  amidst  the  dusky  mist 
of  the  foam-smoke,  to  the  austere  and  solemn  form  of  the  old  man  suddenly 
fronting  them:  they  were  shamed  by  his  rebuke,  they  were  awed  by  her  cour- 
age; they  hung  like  sheep  together. 

"  Take  care  !  "  murmured  the  host,  who  was  alarmed,  and  wished  the  scene 
ended.  "  Let  her  go.  The  Jew  has  the  evil  eye." 

A  faint  smile  flitted  over  the  withered,  saturnine  face  of  the  Israelite. 

"  Yes,"  he  answered,  with  a  bitterness  that  under  the  turn  of  the  words  was 
acrid  with  remorse, — "  yes,  I  have  the  evil  eye.  Many  souls  have  been  cursed 
by  me:  many  men  have  wished  that  their  mothers'  had  never  borne  them  when 
once  I  have  looked  on  their  faces;  many  lives,  that  were  goodly  as  the  young 
bay-tree  ere  I  saw  them,  withered  and  fell  under  my  glance.  Let  the  maiden 
come  in  peace  to  me;  and  go,  or  worse  will  happen  unto  you." 

The  subtlety  of  the  Hebrew  turned  to  just  account  the  boorish  and  super- 
stitious terrors  of  the  men:  they  slunk  together  in  awe  of  him. 

"  It  was  only  play,"  they  muttered:  "  we  meant  no  harm." 

The  blackness  of  the  stern  sightless  eyes  that  were  turned  on  them  filled 
them  with  terror:  they  crossed  themselves,  and  wished  the  earth  would  hide 
them  from  his  poison-dealing  glance.  Castalia,  where  she  stood,  watched  him 
with  that  meditative,  far-reaching  gaze  that  had  all  the  grave  innocence  of  a 
child,  all  the  luminous  insight  of  a  poet.  She  held  her  perilous  station  still 
high  above  on  the  plank  of  the  wet  mill-wheel,  with  the  white  steam  of  the  tor- 
rent curling  round. 

With  the  instinct  of  the  blind,  Ignatius  Mathias  turned  towards  her. 

"  Come  down  my  child:  I  will  have  care  of  you." 

She  looked  at  him  gratefully,  earnestly. 

"  I  will  come  when  they  have  left." 

The  Jew  turned  to  them  with  a  gesture  majestic  as  any  prophet's  com- 
mand.. 

"  You  hear  her:  go!  " 

With  sullen,  muttered  oaths,  snarling  like  dogs  baffled  of  a  bone,  the 
mountaineers  slunk  from  him  into  the  osteria,  to  drown  their  wrath  and  quench 
their  superstitious  fears  in  some  fresh  skins  of  wine.  Then  he  lifted  his  eyes 
to  the  place  where  he  knew  that  she  was,  and  where  the  rushing  of  the  torrent 
told  him  her  danger. 

"  I  cannot  aid  you;  I  have  no  sight:  but  you  will  trust  me  ?  " 

She  looked  at  him  a  moment  longer,  then,  with  the  deer-like  elasticity  and 


CHANDOS.  427 

surety  of  her  mountain-training,  sprang  once  more  across  the  width  of  the 
falling  stream,  and  down  the  stone  ledges,  all  slippery  with  the  moisture  and 
holding  scarce  footing  for  a  lizard,  and  came  to  him,  touching  his  hand  with  a 
a  grave,  reverential  gentleness. 

"  Yes,  I  will  trust  you.     I  thank  you,  very  greatly." 

He  raised  his  hand,  and  touched  her  hair. 

"  I  cannot  see  you.  Your  voice  is  sweet,  and  sounds  very  young;  but  it  is 
proud.  It  is  not  the  voice  of  a  wanderer;  it  speaks  as  though  it  ought  to  com- 
mand. What  are  you  ? " 

"  Very  friendless." 

He  had  said  aright.  Her  voice  was  proud;  it  spoke  without  a  tremor  now, 
though  she  had  been  so  near  a  self-sought  death. 

"  Truly.     Are  you  far  from  your  home  ?  " 

"  Very  far."     To  her  it  seemed  that  she  had  traversed  half  the  world. 

"  And  why  have  you  left  it  ? " 

"  Partly,  because  they  said  unjust  evil." 

"Of  you  ?" 

"  Of  me,  and  of  one  other.  I  would  not  stay  where  the  false  speakers 
dwelt." 

A  smile,  sardonic  and  sad,  passed  over  his  face. 

"You  had  better  have  sought  the  refuge  beneath  the  water,  then;  you  will 
find  no  footing  to  your  taste  on  earth.  Are  you  alone,  wholly  alone  ? " 

"Yes." 

"Ah!  and  are  still  but  a  child,  by  the  clearness  of  your  voice.  To-day  is 
but  a  sample  of  the  dangers  that  lie  in  wait  for  you:  the  lions  will  not  let 
such  a  fawn  go  by  in  peace." 

The  color  flushed  her  face. 

"  There  is  always  death,"  she  said  calmly. 

"  Not  always.    And  where  is  it  you  are  bound  now  ? " 

A  sigh,  heavy  and  exhausted,  escaped  her. 

"  I  want  to  go  to  large  cities." 

"  To  go  to  the  lions'  den  at  once,  then.  Large  cities!  And  for  you,  who 
chose  the  risk  of  your  grave  rather  than  a  rough  caress  from  these  men  of  the 
hills  ?  Do  you  know  what  cities  are  ? " 

"No;  but  I  must  go  to  them."  Her  hands  pressed  the  book  closer;  she 
thought  that  in  cities  alone  could  she  see  or  hear  what  she  sought. 

The  austere,  worn,  darkened  face  of  the  Hebrew  grew  gentler;  she 
moved  his  pity,  all  pitiless  though  he  had  been;  she  recalled  to  him  the  youth 
of  his  dead  darling,  when,  far  away  in  the  buried  past,  his  heart  had  beat  and 
his  life  had  loved  in  the  summer  glories  of  the  sierras.  He  was  very  old,  but 
that  memory  lived  still. 


428  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

"  And  do  you  know  the  way  to  any  cities  ?  " 

"  Not  at  all." 

"  How  do  you  guide  yourself,  then  ?  " 

"  By  chance." 

"  And  chance  plays  you  cruel  caprices,  my  homeless  bird  !  What  chance 
was  it  led  you  to  those  men  ?  " 

She  shuddered;  but  the  passionate  blood  that  ran  in  her  flushed  her  cheek 
and  glowed  imperially  in  her  eyes. 

"  They  were  boors,  and  had  boors'  barbarity  !  I  asked  my  way,  and  wanted 
a  little  bread,  if  they  would  sell  it  me  at  the  osteria;  and,  before  I  could  see 
them,  those  men  were  round  me,  bidding  me  laugh  and  dance  and  sing." 

"  Mayhap  if  you  had  done  so  you  would  have  put  them  in  good  humor." 

He  was  blind,  and  could  not  see  the  look  that  glanced  on  him  from  the  dark 
shadows  of  her  lashes. 

"// — beg  their  sufferance,  by  obeying  their  bidding,  by  amusing  their 
idleness,  like  any  strolling  tambourine-singer  ?  They  should  have  killed  me 
first  !  " 

"  Verily,  you  should  have  emperors'  blood  in  you  !  You  wellnigh  killed 
yourself  to  escape  them." 

The  darkened  scorn  that  told  the  strength  and  the  depths  of  her  nature 
came  on  her. 

"Well,  what  else  was  there  to  do  ?  Men  can  avenge  themselves;  women 
can  only  die." 

He  bent  his  eyes  on  her  as  though,  sightless  as  they  were,  he  would  fain 
read  her  features. 

"  You  have  grand  creeds.     Who  taught  them  ?  " 

"They  are  not  creeds,  I  think;  they  are  instincts." 

"Only  in  rare  natures.  But  have  you  none  in  all  the  world  to  shield  you 
from  such  risks  ?  " 

"  None.     But  I  can  shield  myself." 

"  How  do  you  live,  then  ?  " 

"  I  have  sold  the  flowers,  arid  sung  an  office  here  and  there.  God  is  always 
good." 

The  tears  welled  slowly  into  her  eyes.  She  would  not  say  what  she  had 
suffered. 

"  But  why  is  it  that  you  wander  thus  ?    You  can  come  of  no  peasant  blood  ? " 

She  was  silent.  She  could  not  have  spoken  of  the  thoughts  that  lay  at  her 
heart, — of  the  goal  that  made  her  search  for  the  sake  of  life  itself.  The  words 
which  had  been  said  to  her  in  the  Italian  town  had  wakened  shame  and  frozen 
her  to  silence,  though  neither  her  purpose  nor  her  will  faltered. 

"  What  has  sent  you  out  alone  ?     Have  any  done  you  wrong  ? " 


CHANDOS.  429 

"Only  they  who  spoke  evil  unjustly." 

"  If  you  hold  that  a  wrong,  do  not  come  into  cities.  But  you  speak  faintly. 
Have  you  broken  your  fast  ? " 

"  Not  to-day." 

She  spoke  very  low;  she  could  not  lie,  but  she  could  not  bear  to  say  the 
truth, — that  she  had  eaten  but  a  little  milk  and  millet-bread  in  the  past  twenty- 
four  hours.  She  had  intense  strength  to  endure,  and  she  had  too  much  pride 
to  complain,  though  a  faint  weakness  was  on  her,  and  her  limbs  seemed 
weighted  with  lead  in  the  aching  exhaustion  that  comes  from  want  of  food. 
His  sightless  eyes  sought  her  with  a  grave  compassion;  the  self-restraint  and 
force  of  endurance  touched  the  iron  mold  of  his  nature  as  softer  things  might 
not  have  done. 

"  Well,  see  here.  I  am  poor,  but  I  am  a  little  wealthier  than  you.  I  go  to 
cities  where  my  people  are  good.  I  am  very  aged;  but  still  I  can  give  some 
guidance,  some  shield,  at  least  from  insult.  Come  with  me." 

She  shook  her  head. 

"  No.     It  is  a  gentle  charity;  but  I  cannot  take  charity." 

His  keen  ear  caught  the  haughty  meaning  of  the  words. 

"  Whoever  you  are,  you  should  be  the  daughter  of  kings  !  Listen.  You 
are  but  a  child,  and  I  claim  the  title  of  age.  I  am  blind,  as  you  see;  I  am  soli- 
tary, I  have  no  companion,  save  only  my  little  dog;  you  can  aid  me  in  much. 
Lend  me  your  sight,  and  I  will  lend  you  my  counsel.  It  will  be  quittance  of  all 
debt  between  us.  I  go  to  Venice;  come  there,  and  from  there  you  can  do  what 
you  will." 

"  To  Venice  !  " 

Her  eyes  lighted;  it  was  the  city  of  which  she  had  heard  most  from  him 
whom  she  sought, — the  city  whence  Chandos  had  come  into  the  beech-woods 
below  Vallombrosa. 

"Yes,"  answered  the  Jew.  "  One  has  gone  thither  whom  I  follow.  Your 
eyes  will  be  fair  friends  to  me;  let  me  have  their  companionship  on  the  road, 
at  least. 

She  wavered.  The  longing  on  her  was  great  to  reach  Venice.  She  thought 
that  there  the  silence  that  reigned  between  her  and  the  life  she  had  lost  might 
be  broken. 

"•Shall  it  be  so  ?  "  he  asked  her. 

She  stooped  with  her  soft,  supple  grace,  and  touched  his  hand  again 
gently. 

"  If  it  will  not  weary  you." 

"That  is  well!  Who  should  serve  each  other,  if  not  the  desolate?  And 
yet  I  spoke  not  altogether  wrongly  when  I  told  those  ruffians  that  I  had  the 
evil  eye.  Not  in  the  sense  of  their  fools'  superstitions,  but  my  eyes  have  been 


430  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

evil;  sight  has  been  blasted  from  them  in  a  just  judgment.  My  life  has  been 
long,  and  cruel,  and  darkly  stained.  You  have  no  fear  of  me  ? " 

She  looked  at  him  with  a  musing,  lingering  gaze.  The  face  she  saw  was 
stern  and  harsh  and  ploughed  with  deep  lines;  but  she  read  its  true  meaning 
aright. 

"  No,"  she  said  simply;  "  I  have  no  fear." 

The  brow  of  the  old  man  cleared.  Because  he  had  forfeited  the  right  to 
trust,  trust  was  the  sweeter  to  him. 

"  So! — that  is  right.  Youth  without  faith  is  a  day  without  sun.  Yours  will 
not  be  wronged  by  me.  Wait  a  while,  then;  I  need  food,  and  they  shall  bring 
you  some  grapes.  Your  hands  are  hot.  When  I  have  fairly  rested,  we  will 
begin  to  travel  onward.  Guide  me  to  the  shade.  Are  there  no  trees  ?  There; 
let  us  stay  there.  Have  no  fear;  your  persecutors  will  not  return." 

So  they  rested  beneath  the  gold-flecked  boughs  of  a  broad  sycamore  that 
grew  beside  the  pool  of  the  water-mill,  with  the  depth  of  shadow  flung  on  the 
white  Syrian  head  of  the  old  man,  and  the  deep  space  of  the  eddying  stream, 
and  the  sun  through  the  leaves  lighting  on  the  grace  of  her  young  limbs  and 
the  musing  beauty  of  her  eyes,  as,  where  the  book  of  "  Lucrece  "  lay  open  on 
the  grass,  they  dwelt  on  the  words  that  Castalia  knew  by  heart  as  a  child  knows 
its  earliest  prayers, — that  had  never  spoken  to  any  as  they  spoke  to  her, — that 
were  richer  in  her  sight  than  all  the  gold  of  the  world,  and  were  to  her  as  in 
Oriental  ages  the  scroll  that  their  prophets  and  kings  had  traced  were  in  the 
sight  of  the  people's  awed  love  and  listening  reverence. 

"  It  was  not  true  to  say  I  was  alone,"  she  mused;  "not  alone  while  his 
thoughts  are  with  me." 

And  in  them  solitude,  and  danger,  and  -the  gnawing  of  famine,  and  the 
heart-sickness  of  her  young  life,  cast  adrift  on  the  fever  and  the  wilderness  of 
the  world,  were  alike  forgotten  when  she  leaned,  in  the  autumn  light,  beside 
the  only  man  among  his  creditors  who  had  not  uncovered  his  head  before  the 
dignity  of  calamity  in  the  porphyry  hall  of  Clarencieux. 


CHAPTER   II. 

"MAGISTER   DE    VIVIS   LAPIDIBUS." 


UNDER  the  great  smoke  pall  that  overhung  Darshampton  there  were  riots, 
— riots  of  the  eternal  conflict  which  has  been  waged  since  the  Gracchan  Prole- 
tariate, and  will  be  waged  on,  God  knows  how  long,  through  the  cycles  of  the 
future.  Prices  were  high:  trades  were  bad;  political  ignorance  was  run  mad, 


CHAN  DOS.  431 

catching  half-truths  and  whole  wrongs  as  it  went,  but  braying  of  them  so  that, 
the  sane  were  fain  to  stop  their  ears,  in  the  same  blunder  as  the  burrowing 
ostrich  makes.  Workers  had  struck  almost  to  a  man;  masters  would  not  or 
could  not  yield;  there  were  misery,  error,  wild  justice,  blind  injustice,  crippled 
creeds  groping  in  twilight,  wrong  codes  hunger-sharpened,  right  premisses  and 
wrong  deductions,  the  ignoratio  elenchi  of  individual  suffering,  that  thought 
itself  an  injured  world,  the  passion  of  starving  lives  that  persuaded  themselves 
want  of  bread  was  resistless  logic;  all  the  eternal  antagonisms  of  Labor  and 
Capital  were  camped  here  as  it  were  on  one  common  battle-ground,  with  the 
angry  smoke  looming  above  their  hostile  battalions. 

The  mighty-sinewed  iron-workers,  like  the  Moyen-Age  smiths  of  Antwerp 
and  Bruges,  the  pale  delicate  artisans  of  the  loom,  wan  and  frail  as  the  flax 
they  wove,  the  gaunt  giants  of  the  blasting-furnaces,  and  the  sickly  weavers  of 
fine  linens,  the  men  poisoned  with  stifling  air,  the  men  scorched  with  foundry- 
flames,  the  men  dying  of  steel-dust  in  their  lungs,  the  men  livid  with  phospho- 
rus-flames inhaled  to  get  daily  bread,  the  men  who  died  like  so  many  shoals  of 
netted  herrings,  that  the  Juggernaut  of  trade  might  roll  on, — all  these  were 
here,  or  their  representatives,  men  who  were  told,  and  believed  it,  that  it  was 
the  Aristocratic  Order  which  wronged  them,  never  thinking  that  it  was  the  mer- 
ciless Thor  of  Commercial  Cupidity  which  crushed  them  under  its  sledge-ham- 
mer, beating  gold  out  of  their  bruised  flesh.  All  these  were  here,  filling  the 
vast  squares  and  the  dark  streets  with  clamor  and  menace  and  sullen  omnious 
murmur, — the  volcanic  lava  which  runs  beneath  the  fair  surface  of  the  careless 
world,  which  soon  or  late  will  break  from  bondage  and  overflow  it — to  fertilize 
or  to  destroy  ? 

To  fertilize,  if  light  be  given  them;  to  destroy,  if  darkness  be  locked  in  on 
them. 

The  thirst  for  liberty  was  in  them, — the  liberty  that  the  sons  of  men  knew 
while  yet  the  earth  was  in  her  youth, — the  liberty  of  pathless  woods,  of  track- 
less seas,  of  wild  fresh  winds,  of  free  unfettered  life.  They  wanted  it,  though 
they  had  never  known  it.  These  who  from  the  birth  to  the  grave  were  pent  in 
factories,  and  sheds,  and  garrets,  in  glass-ware,  and  crowded  alleys,  and  dens 
of  squalid  vice,  with  the  whirr  of  machines  ever  on  their  ear,  and  the  dead 
weight  of  smoke  ever  in  their  breath,  wanted  life, — wanted  the  sweet  west  winds 
they  never  breathed,  the  strong  ocean  air  they  never  tasted,  the  waving  seas  of 
grass  they  never  looked  on,  the  unchained  liberty  of  boundless  moorland  they 
had  never  seen  but  in  their  dreams,  the  human  heritage  of  freedom  that  in  all 
ages  through  is  taken  from  the  poor  in  price  for  the  scant  barren  porridge  of 
daily  sustenance.  Ah,  God  !  it  is  a  bitter  price  to  pay, — a  whole  life  given  up 
for  food  enough  to  keep  alive  in  knowledge  that  life  is  endless  pain  and  end- 
less deprivation  ! 


432  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

They  wanted  this  grand  simple  freedom  that  instinct  made  them  pine  for, 
though  its  knowledge  had  never  been  theirs  or  their  sires' ; — and  their  teachers 
told  them  they  needed  the  ballot-box  and  the  game-laws'  repeal  ! 

It  is  many  centuries  since  Gaius  Gracchus  called  the  Mercantile  Classes  to 
aid  the  people  against  the  Patricians,  and  found  too  late  that  they  were  dead- 
lier oppressors  than  all  the  Optimates;  but  the  error  still  goes  on,  and  the 
Money-makers  still  churn  it  into  gold,  as  they  churned  it  then  into  the  Asiatic 
revenues  and  the  senatorial  amulets. 

The  trades  had  struck.  They  were  wrong,  very  wrong,  in  the  application 
of  theories  and  predicates  which  had  their  root  in  right.  But  it  were  hard  not 
to  be  wrong  in  philosophies  when  the  body  starves  on  a  pinch  of  oatmeal,  with 
the  whole  width  of  the  known  world  drawn  in  between  the  four  pent  walls  of  a 
factory-room  or  the  red-hot  stones  of  a  smelting-house.  It  is  the  law  of  ne- 
cessity, the  balance  of  economy:  human  fuel  must  be  used  up,  that  the  ma- 
chine of  the  world  may  spin  on;  but  it  is  not  perhaps  marvellous  that  the  living 
fuel  is  sometimes  unreconciled  to  that  symmetrical  rule  of  waste  and  repair,  of 
consumer  and  consumed. 

They  were  sullenly  angry,  tempestuously  bitter,  these  surging  tumultuous 
masses,  now  raging  like  seas  in  a  storm,  now  more  ominously  silent,  with  the 
yellow  sickly  gleam  of  the  pale  sun  shining  through  the  reeking  fog  on  to  their 
faces,  here  so  white  and  eager  and  emaciated,  there  so  black  and  dogged  and 
bulldog-like,  here  so  gaunt  with  old  age  of  hungered  patience,  there  so  terrible 
with  youth  of  vicious  desperation.  They  were  at  war  with  all  the  world  in  the 
aching  of  their  hearts,  in  the  dimness  of  their  insight;  at  war  even  with  their 
darling  whom  they  had  so  often  crowned,  their  hero  whom  they  had  long  been 
content  to  follow  as  hounds  follow  their  feeder. 

They  were  riotous  and  desperate.  The  furnaces  had  long  been  cold,  the 
looms  had  long  been  idle,  the  wheels  had  long  been  silent  throughout  their 
country;  their  own  Unions  had  been  hard  on  them,  and  there  were  dark  tales 
afoot  of  what  had  been  done  on  renegades  in  the  Unions'  name.  Their  em- 
ployers would  not  yield,  and  it  was  said  that  strange  hands  were  pouring  in 
and  taking  the  work  they  had  left, — taking  it  at  peril  of  answering  with  life 
and  limb  for  the  temerity.  They  were  very  bitter,  very  savage,  very  maddened, 
in  the  nauseous  fog-mist  steaming  round  them,  in  the  cold  northerly  cutting 
air,  burdened  black  with  smoke,  though  through  them  the  chimneys  had 
so  long  been  without  warmth.  They  were  fierce  in  their  wrath;  their  hearths 
were  fireless,  their  children  had  no  food,  their  women  were  dying  of  fever, 
their  old  people  lay  dead  by  the  score  of  famine;  their  hand  was  against 
every  man's,  and  they  clamored  even  against  their  Representative.  He  was 
faithless  to  them,  he  was  untrue  to  his  pledges;  he  feasted  in  foreign  palaces, 
and  forgot  them;  he  sold  them  for  the  sake  of  office;  he  grew  great  himself, 


CHAN  DOS.  433 

and  let  them  perish;  he  joined  the  ministry,  and  denied  all  that  he  had  said  to 
them.  Thus  they  murmured,  and  yelled,  and  hooted  against  him,  in  their  rest- 
less misery.  The  love  of  a  people  is  the  most  sublime  crown  that  can  rest  on 
the  brow  of  any  man;  but  the  love  of  a  Mob  is  a  mongrel  that  fawns  and 
slavers  one  moment  to  rend  and  tear  the  next,  sycophant  whilst  bones  are 
tossed  to  it,  savage  when  once  not  surfeited. 

They  loved  him  with  a  bold,  rough  love,  that  was  a  million-fold  truer  than 
his  own  heart  had  ever  been;  they  were  proud  of  him;  they  would  have  died 
for  him;  they  believed  in  him;  but,  irritated  against  him,  they  were  capable  of 
killing  their  god,  and  weeping  over  it,  when  shattered,  like  Africans.  Impre- 
cations even  on  him  were  hurled  at  intervals  through  the  city,  while  the  crash 
of  falling  slates,  of  shivered  glass,  of  flung  stones,  of  levelled  bricks,  was  added 
to  the  hurricane  of  noise,  where  clamorous  for  bread,  or  incensed  at  the  stranger- 
hands  hired  by  their  employers,  the  mob  wrecked  a  provision-shop  or  tore 
down  a  machine-house.  It  was  a  pandemonium  under  the  dark  murky  atmos- 
phere; in  the  dull  glare  cast  from  the  westward  flames,  where  some  had  fired  a 
factory;  in  the  midst  of  the  thousands  let  loose  and  made  savage  with  hunger; 
in  the  storm  of  curses  thundered  out  from  the  bared  hollow  chests  gnawed  with 
want, — curses  that  blasted  even  their  idol's  name.  He  had  sold  them  for  the 
bribe  of  office;  he  had  betrayed  them  for  the  possession  of  power;  he  had 
gone  over  to  their  oppressors  for  the  sake  of  his  own  aggrandizement! 

Perhaps  it  was  but  a  multitude's  reaction  and  caprice;  perhaps  it  was  the 
great,  weary,  fettered  heart  of  the  people,  earnest  with  all  its  tyrannous  error, 
and  tossed  by  demagogues  from  lie  to  lie,  vaguely  felt  that  its  own  living, 
aching  humanity  was  but  used  as  a  stepping-stone  for  ambition, — vaguely  felt 
that  what  it  trusted  was  not  true.  Be  it  which  it  would,  they  upbraided,  and 
menaced  and  cursed  him.  He  was  theirs,  and  he  coalesced  with  the  nobles; 
he  was  theirs,  and  he  went  to  banquet  in  palaces;  he  was  theirs,  and  he  was 
betraying  them  to  sit  in  the  Cabinet  Council  and  to  wear  the  gewgaws  of 
honors! 

The  murmur  and  the  threat  rose  louder  and  louder,  stretched  wider  and 
wider.  When  the  tempest  was  at  its  height,  into  the  surging  waves  of  the 
stormy  human  sea  Trevenna  rode  leisurely  down. 

Staying  at  the  country-seat  of  a  millionnaire  some  ten  miles  away,  whither 
rumors  came  with  every  hour  of  the  Darshampton  riots,  he  had  heard  how  his 
subjects  had  mutinied  against  him, — heard  as  he  was  shooting  over  a  pleasant- 
cover  that  had  been  specially  reserved  for  him,  with  sundry  other  good  shots  of 
the  nobility  of  rank  and  the  princes  of  the  plutocracy.  He  had  given  his  gun 
to  a  loader,  without  a  second's  hesitation,  and  ordered  a  horse  to  be  saddled. 
His  friends  had  crowded  around  him,  and  sought  to  dissuade  him;  he  had 
shrugged  his  shoulders.  "  They  curse  me  behind  my  back;  let's  see  what 


434  OUIDAS     WORKS. 

they'll  dare  say  to  my  face."  There  was  no  bravado  in  it;  but  there  was  the 
cool  audacity,  the  dauntless  zest  in  peril,  which  made  him,  despite  all  his  self- 
love  and  caution,  bold  in  a  fray  as  a  mastiff;  his  teeth  clenched,  his  hand 
gripped  a  riding-switch  with  a  meaning  force:  the  lion-tamer  had  no  thought 
of  leaving  his  lion-whelps  to  riot  unchecked;  and  he  rode  now  into  Darshamp- 
ton,  with  the  gentlemen  who  were  his  hosts  and  fellow-guests,  about  him  like  a 
cohue  of  courtiers  round  a  king. 

"  It  is  very  unwise  to  risk  it,"  whispered  one  of  them.  "  They  are  at  wild 
work,  and  your  life  is  of  national  value." 

Trevenna  laughed,  and  bowed  his  thanks  for  the  compliment. 

"  Nobody's  life's  of  value,  my  dear  lord:  there  are  always  plenty  to  fill  the 
vacancies.  There  aren't  two  people  whose  death  would  lower  the  Consols  for 
two  days.  To  affect  the  money-market  is  the  acme  of  greatness:  I'm  afraid 
the  exchanges  would  scarce  stay  twelve  hours  below  par  for  me  yet." 

And  he  rode  leisurely  down,  as  he  would  take  his  morning  canter  along  the 
park,  into  that  sea  of  turbulent,  hooting,  swaying,  sullen,  fog-soaked  human 
life  that,  for  the  first  moment  since  his  clarion-words  had  challenged  Dars- 
harnpton,  were  angered  against  him  and  upraiding  him  as  a  renegade.  There 
was  laughter  in  his  eyes  as  they  glanced  over  the  heaving  mass.  To  his 
worldly  wisdom  and  bright  sagacity,  there  was  an  irresistible  comedy  in  this 
passionate,  raving,  undoubting  sincerity  of  a  hungry  multitude;  there  was  an 
inexpressible  ridicule  for  him  in  these  poor  purblind  tools  that  rushed  with  such 
ardor  to  do  his  work  for  him,  thinking  all  the  while  they  were  doing  their  own, 
— never  knowing  that  they  but  tunnelled  the  way,  or  threw  the  bridge,  by 
which  he  would  pass  to  his  ambitions,  while  they  would  lie  gasping,  kicked 
aside  and  unknown.  To  his  shrewd  common  sense'  there  was  something  un- 
utterably droll  in  the  sight  of  men  in  love  with  an  idea,  amorous  of  a  principle, 
sincere  in  anything  except  self -love;  there  was  something  unutterably  ludicrous 
in  the  notion  of  men  who  starved  for  lack  of  a  crust  crazing  their  heads  about 
the  world's  government.  Trevenna  was  a  democrat,  because  he  hated  every- 
thing above  him,  delighted  to  lead,  and  held  a  bitter  grudge  against  the  pes- 
tilential tyranny  of  class;  but  at  heart  he  cared  not  a  button  more  for  the 
people  than  the  most  supercilious  of  aristocrats,  and,  had  he  been  given  a 
supreme  power,  would  have  been  as  strong  a  tyrant  in  his  own  way  as  ever 
made  a  nation  the  mill-horse  to  grind  for  his  treasuries  and  fill  his  granaries. 
He  had  a  thorough,  manly,  passionate  contempt  for  the  differences  of  rank ; 
but  all  the  same  his  one  motive  was  simply  to  get  rank  for  himself,  and  such  a 
sentimentality  (as  he  would  have  called  it)  as  pity  for  the  suffering  of  multitudes 
could  never  enter  into  the  strong,  practical  astuteness  of  his  sagacious  temper. 

But  bold  he  was,  bold  as  a  lion,  and  more  politic  even  than  bold:  so  he 
rode  now  down  into  the  close-wedged  ranks  of  the  crowds,  into  the  sulphurous 


CHAN  DOS.  435 

heat  from  the  distant  flames,  into  the  clamor  and  the  uproar  and  the  storm  of 
rage,  till  his  horse  could  push  way  no  more,  and  he  faced  the  whole  front  of 
those  who  were  clamorous  against  him,  with  the  dull  red  light  shining  full  on 
the  keen  brave  blue  of  his  eyes. 

They  were  amazed  to  see  his  apparition  rise  there  so  suddenly  out  of  the 
cloud  of  smoke  and  fog:  he  was  their  idol,  moreover,  though  they  had  cursed 
him  when  they  had  no  bread,  as  men  beat  the  god  Pan  when  he  sent  them 
no  game  for  the  hunting;  and  a  silence  fell  for  a  moment  on  them:  in  it  he 
spoke: — 

"  So,  fellows,  you  are  damning  me,  they  say.  Tell  me  my  faults  to  my  face, 
then  !  " 

There  was  the  familiar,  half-brusque,  half-bantering  tone  that  was  so  popu- 
lar with  the  throngs  he  challenged;  but  beneath  that  there  was  something  of 
the  grand  insolence  of  Scipio  ^milianus: — "  Surely  you  do  not  think  I  shall  fear 
those  free  whom  I  sent  in  chains  to  the  slave-market  !  " 

"  You  sold  us  for  office  !  "  "  You  have  broken  your  pledges  !  "  "  You 
have  heen  false  to  your  promises  !  "  "  You  have  abandoned  Reform  !  "  "  You 
have  been  bribed  by  courts  !  "  "  You  have  recanted  your  creeds  !  "  "  You 
have  joined  the  aristocracy  ! "  "  You  have  feasted  in  palaces  !  "  "  You  have 
turned  traitor  !  "  "You  only  seek  your  own  dignities,  and  leave  us  to  starve  !  " 
Sullen,  hoarse,  savage  and  uncouth  oaths,  yelled  out  in  the  northern  accent,  the 
charges  were  hurled  against  him.  The  multitude  were  waking,  in  their  irrita- 
tion, to  the  truth,  and  vaguely  feeling  their  way  to  it, — vaguely  feeling  that  they 
were  only  used  by  the  idol  whom  they  had  hugged  the  belief  they  had  created 
and  could  dethrone. 

He  heard. them  quite  patiently,  his  bold  frank  eyes  resting  on  them  with  a 
certain  insolent  amusement  that  lashed  them  like  cords:  it  was  the  amusement 
of  the  lion-tamer  who  let  his  mutinous  cubs  fret  and  fume  beneath  his  gaze, 
knowing  that  a  crack  of  his  whip  will  break  them  into  obedience. 

He  laughed  a  little. 

"  You  rebuke  me  for  taking  office  ?  Why  did  you  re-elect  me  after  my 
acceptance  of  it,  then  ? " 

The  mob,  indignant  to  have  their  own  inconsistency  and  mutability  brought 
in  their  teeth  against  them,  broke  out  into  tenfold  uproar;  shrieks,  curses,  yells, 
hooting,  menaces,  crossed  each  other  in  horrible  tumult;  a  shower  of  stones 
was  hurled  through  the  darkened  air,  a  thousand  hands  struck  out  with  massive 
iron  weapons  or  cleft  the  mist  with  flaming  fire-brands.  His  horse  reared 
and  fretted,  while  the  masses  of  half-naked  figures  were  jammed  and  crushed 
against  its  flanks;  a  thousand  arms  were  stretched  out,  brawny  and  terrible  in 
their  threats,  ten  thousand  voices  thundered  imprecations,  hungry  savage  eyes 
glared  on  him  like  wild  beasts',  hot  breath  panted  on  him  from  mouths  foul 


436  O  UIDA '  S     WORKS. 

with  curses  and  livid  with  famine.  Trevenna  sat  firm  as  a  rock,  with  the  fresh 
sanguine  color  in  his  face  unblenched,  and  his  eyes  watching  the  riot  as  though 
it  were  an  opera  ballet.  Had  Trevenna  been  Napoleon,  he  would  have  won  at 
Waterloo  ere  Blucher  could  turn  the  day,  or  else  would  have  died  with  the  Old 
Guard. 

The  missiles  of  iron,  and  stone,  and  lead,  and  wood,  and  slate,  flew  about 
him,  hissing  and  roaring  through  the  fog;  his  horse  plunged  nervously,  but  he 
never  swerved  in  his  saddle,  never  moved  his  head  to  avoid  the  blows  that  with 
every  second  rained  at  him,  as  the  angered  worshippers  pelted  their  god  because 
their  bodies  were  fasting.  At  last,  a  flint,  sharp,  jagged,  heavy,  struck  him, 
cutting  through  his  clothes  and  wounding  him  in  the  shoulder;  the  blood 
poured  out  down  his  arm. 

With  a  careless  glance  at  it,  he  thrust  his  hand  into  the  breast  of  his  coat, 
took  out  his  cigar-case,  struck  a  fusee,  and  began  to  smoke, — smoke,  as  calmly 
and  with  as  much  indifference  as  if  he  were  on  the  couch  of  a  smoking-room. 

The  crowds  fell  back,  the  thirsty  menacing  eyes  stared  vacantly  at  him, 
the  yells  dropped  down  into  a  low,  unwilling,  sullen  muttering  of  wonder  and 
admiration;  the  cool  bravery,  the  calm  sang-froid,  of  the  action  struck  a  chord 
never  dumb  in  the  English  heart;  they  had  pelted  their  god,  and,  lo  !  he  was 
but  the  greater  for  it.  They  loved  him  once  more  with  all  a  people's  swift, 
passionate,  volatile  repentance;  they  broke  out  into  riotous  cheering,  they 
tossed  his  name  upward  to  the  murky  skies,  with  all  the  old  faith  and  honor. 
Without  speaking  a  word,  he  had  conquered. 

"  That  was  like  the  Clarencieux  blood  ! "  thought  Trevenna  of  his  own 
coolness  with  a  smile.  Then,  sitting  there  in  his  saddle,  he  spoke, — spoke  with 
all  his  skill  and  all  his  eloquence,  rating  them  soundly  like  a  whipper-in  rating 
his  hounds,  till  the  great  masses  hung  their  heads  penitent  and  ashamed  before 
him,  yet  speaking  so  that  they  loved  him  more  furiously  than  they  had  ever 
done,  and  making  them,  to  a  man,  believe  that  all  he  took,  all  he  did,  all  he 
said,  all  he  projected,  were  only  with  one  view, — their  service.  -And  on  the 
morrow  the  whole  nation  was  full  of  adoring  applause  for  the  self-devotion  and 
the  courage  and  the  serenity  with  which  a  Cabinet  Minister  had  risked  his  life 
to  quell  the  northern  riots,  and  to  lead  the  people  back  to  reconciliation  and  to 
quietness  with  the  charm  of  his  eloquence  and  the  spell  of  his  personal  daring. 

"  Magister  de  Vivis  Lapidibus  "  was  the  title  given  in  the  Gothic  age  to  the 
sculptors  of  the  Gothic  fanes.  Trevenna  might  have  borne  it:  it  was  out  of 
the  living  stones  of  other  men's  lives  that  he  carved  the  superstructure  of  his 
envied  triumphs.  It  is  only  to  those  who  have  this  supreme  art  that  success 
comes. 


CHANDOS.  437 

CHAPTER   III. 

"  TO   TELL    OF   SPRING-TIDE    PAST." 

IT  was  the  blossoming-time  of  the  early  year  in  Venice,  with  the  glow  on  the 
variegated  marbles,  and  the  balmy  breeze  stirring  calm  lagunes,  and  the  scent 
of  a  myriad  of  spring-born  flowers  filling  the  air  with  their  fragrance  from  the 
green-wreathed  ruins  of  arches  and  the  deep  embayment  of  pillared  casements. 
The  world  was  waking  after  winter,  and  the  joy  of  its  renewed  life  laughed  in 
every  smile  of  color,  and  crowned  the  earth  with  a  diadem  of  leaf  and  of  bud 
like  a  young  Bacchus  rousing  from  sleep  to  his  revels. 

"  How  its  youth  renews  !  "  said  Chandos  to  his  own  thoughts;  "and  w£  only 
know  the  value  of  ours  when  its  beauty  has  faded  forever  ! " 

"  L'artiste  est  un  dieu  tombe  qui  se  souvient  du  temps  ou  il  creait  un 
monde."  The  memories  of  his  perished  world  were  with  him, — the  world  in 
which  his  word  had  been  as  the  thyrsus  of  Dionysus,  a  wand  beneath  whose 
touch  all  the  earth  laughed  round  him  into  fragrance.  He  had  resisted  the 
mandragora-steeped  despair  in  which  the  great  lives  of  Byron  and  De  Quincey 
quenched  their  pain  and  ebbed  away;  he  had  taken  the  broken  wreck  of  his 
peace  boldly  and  calmly,  and  had  sustained  himself,  sustained  his  courage,  by 
desires  loftier  than  happiness,  by  the  treasuries  of  intellect,  by  the  consolations 
of  freedom.  He  had  borne  with  the  desolation  of  life  for  the  sake  of  his  man- 
hood until  it  had  ceased  to  be  wholly  desolate,  because  filled  with  the  dignity 
of  a  pure  and  high  labor.  He  had  done  this,  and  done  it  so  that  no  Ciceronian 
lament  for  exile  ever  was  heard  to  pass  his  lips, — done  it  so  that  through  it 
there  had  come  to  him  the  power  most  foreign  to  the  careless  sensuousness  of 
his  inborn  nature, — the  power  of  serene  and  unswerving  endurance.  He  had 
suffered,  but  he  had  never  lamented.  He  had  known  that  to  yield  to  suffering 
was  to  debase  manliness  and  that  resistance  and  conflict  are  the  only  noble 
weapons  with  which  adversity  can  be  worthily  met.  He  had  been  stung,  and 
bruised,  and  cheated;  he  had  been  offered  the  bitterness  of  the  hyssop  and 
vinegar  when  his  whole  life  was  athirst  for  the  living  waters  of  loyalty  and  joy. 
Men  had  fooled  him,  betrayed  him,  forsaken  him;  but  he  had  never  in  turn 
abandoned  them,  never  reviled  the  humanity  with  which  he  had  common  bond, 
never  abjured  the  faith  and  creeds  of  his  youth.  The  love  he  had  borne  men 
when  they  were  at  his  feet,  and  the  suns  of  cloudless  day  had  been  shed  across 
his  path,  lived  with  him  still,  now  that  he  had  been  stabbed  deep  by  their 
traitor-blades  and  had  passed  through  the  starless  night  of  bereavement  and 
of  despair. 

Yet  at  times  the  anguish  of  a  great  longing  stole  on  him;  at  times  the  lust 


438  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

of  a  great  vengeance  seized  him.  At  times  he  would  wake  from  some  dream 
of  his  youth,  some  dream  that  had  borne  him,  for  its  hour,  back  to  the  home 
he  had  lost, — borne  him  to  the  fresh  shelter  of  its  forest  leafage,  to  the  sight  of 
its  beloved  beauty,  to  the  lulling  echo  of  its  familiar  waters;  wake,  and  seeing 
the  gray  gleam  of  some  foreign  city  in  its  wintry  dawn  or  the  torrid,  reddened 
sun-glow  of  some  eastern  sky  around  him,  clinch  his  teeth  like  a  man  in 
torture  to  keep  down  the  great  tearless  sob  that  shook  him  as  the  wind  shakes 
reeds.  At  times  he  would  break  from  the  noble  and  tranquil  repose  of  phi- 
losophy, from  the  treasuries  of  intellectual  creation,  from  the  calm  of  deep  and 
scholarly  ambition  and  meditation, — break  from  them  as  men  break  from  the 
stillness  of  monastic  cloisters  and  the  coldness  of  monastic  vows,  with  an  agony 
of  desire  for  the  vivid  joys  and  the  vivid  hues  that  had  died  from  his  life, — 
with  as  passionate  an  agony  for  the  mere  bloodthirst  of  revenge,  that,  under  the 
goad  of  a  giant  wrong,  will  change  the  purest  nature  to  the  sheer  brute  instinct 
of  self-wrought  amends,  of  Mosaic  justice. 

He  had  said  that  he  knew  himself  weak;  all  men,  who  know  themselves 
truly,  know  this  of  their  natures.  He  was  doubtful  of  his  own  duration  of 
control, — doubtful  that  the  lessons  of  a  long  ordeal  might  not  be  forgotten  in 
one  instant  before  the  power  and  the  temptation  of  a  day  of  vengeance. 

He  drifted  now  through  Venice,  beneath  the  marble  walls  and  the  casements 
dark  and  narrow,  out  of  whose  twilight  glowed  the  smile  of  the  flowers'  birth, 
with  the  water  lazily  parting  under  his  boat's  prow,  and  the  green  of  spring-time 
foliage  hanging  over  the  jasper  ledges.  His  heart  was  with  spring-times  that 
were  past,  when  there  had  been  no  shadow  on  the  earth  for  him,  and  the  kiss 
of  a  woman's  lips  had  made  his  idle  golden  paradise.  "  Love  !  "  he  thought, 
with  a  momentary  regret  that  was  in  itself  almost  a  passion.  "  It  can  live  no 
more  in  my  life;  it  is  dead  with  all  the  rest."  Yet  now — for  the  instant  at 
least — he  would  have  given  the  kingship  of  half  the  world,  had  he  owned  it, 
to  steep  himself  once  more  in  the  sweet,  senseless  delirium;  he  could  have 
murmured,  with  Mirabeau  when  he  looked  back  in  his  dungeons  to  the  hours 
of  his  love,  "  Jouissance  !  jouissance  !  que  de  vies  je  donnerais  pour  toi  !  " 

"  If  I  returned  to  her  ?  "  he  mused,  in  a  donbt,  in  a  desire,  that  had  long 
haunted  him,  mingled  with  an  anxiety  that  was  almost  remorse.  "  And  yet — 
a  child's  love;  it  may  be  forgotten  ere  this.  Besides,  God  knows  her  fate  now; 
and,  whatever  it  may  be,  I  have  no  right  to  sacrifice  her  life  to  mine." 

But  there,  in  the  sunset  radiance,  in  the  lulling  of  the  water's  murmur,  in  the 
heavy  fragrance  of  the  many  blosssoms,  the  thoughts  of  his  youth  were  with 
him,  and  they  wandered  alone  to  Castalia.  He  had  not  known  it  while  he  had 
been  with  her,  but  in  absence  the  desire  of  his  heart  had  gone  to  her  in  what 
was  scarce  less  than  love.  He  had  thrust  it  from  him,  because  on  her  the  world 
would  have  visited  that  love  as  dishonor. 


CASTALIA.— Page  439,  Fol.  III. 


CHANDOS.  439 

As  he  passed  through  the  charmed  peace  of  the  silent  city  in  the  first  hour 
of  his  arrival  there,  all  odorous  and  rich  in  the  hues  of  the  flowers'  spring-tide 
luxuriance,  the  vessel  floated  down  the  noiseless  highway  into  a  sequestered, 
desolate  street,  whose  dark  walls  faced  each  other  with  all  life,  all  movement, 
banished,  only  with  the  intense  glow  of  the  sun  on  its  many-colored  stones,  and 
the  wreathing  of  stone-clinging  leafage  filling  the  gaps  of  its  broken  sculptures. 
It  was  that  in  which,  a  few  years  before,  the  young  patriots  of  Venice  had  given 
him  the  homage  of  their  song  of  liberty.  It  was  lonely,  decayed,  abandoned, 
with  no  sound  in  it  but  the  endless  lapping  of  the  water  on  its  sea-stairs;  but 
it  was  grand  despite  that,  with  its  mute  records  of  the  glory  that  once  had 
reigned  there,  its  imperishable  memories  of  things  forever  perished. 

The  keel  grated  on  the  marble  steps,  worn  and  glistening  with  the  splash  of 
the  water-spray;  he  landed,  and  passed  up  them  to  the  place  where  he  had  once 
made  his  dwelling  in  Venice.  The  arc  of  a  vast  archway  spanned  the  slope  of 
the  stairs,  shutting  out  the  light  of  the  sun,  and  leaving  only  a  flckering  ray  of 
the  daylight's  brilliance  to  lie  across  the  interspaces  of  dense  shadow  that  were 
cast  downward  from  the  mighty  structure  and  the  massive  carvings,  rich  in 
jasper,  and  porphyry,  and  agate,  which  loomed  in  the  height  above.  In  the 
depth  of  the  gloom,  midway  on  the  stone  flight,  a  resting  figure  leaned  in  the 
passive,  motionless  repose  of  fatigue  or  of  exhaustion, — a  form  that  would  have 
arrested  an  artist's  glance  in  long- lingering  admiration,  that  was  Venetian  in  its 
perfect  grace,  Titian-like  in  its  perfect  color,  that  was  set  as  a  brilliant  painting 
in  an  ebony  framework  in  that  cavernous  gloom  of  the  arch,  in  exquisite  har- 
mony yet  in  exquisite  contrast  with  the  antique  and  melancholy  majesty  of  the 
forsaken  palace-way.  The  head  was  drooped  forward:  but  there  was  no  sleep 
in  the  eyes  that  gazed  wearily  down  on  the  ebb  and  flow  of  the  gliding  canal; 
the  lids  were  heavily  weighted,  but  it  was  not  with  slumber,  but  with  an  unshed 
mist  of  tears;  the  lips  were  slightly  parted,  as  with  pain,  but  there  was  on  them 
a  proud  fixity  of  resolve;  the  hands  leaned  on  the  twisted  osier  handle  of  a 
basket  from  which  spring  flowers  fell  unheeded  in  coils  and  masses  of  blossom 
down  about  her  on  to  the  worn  stone.  The  single  flash  of  sunlight  that  found 
entrance  beneath  the  marbles  fell,  intense  and  concentred  in  its  heat  and  its 
glow,  alone  on  the  scattered  foliage  and  on  the  golden  gleam  of  her  uncovered 
hair.  The  attitude,  the  flower-fragrance,  the  Southern  languor  of  repose,  were 
the  same  as  they  had  been  under  the  beech-shadows  of  Tuscany;  but  the 
dreaming  peace  of  childhood  was  banished  forever. 

He  saw  her  as,  coming  out  of  the  splendor  of  the  day,  he  glanced,  half 
blinded,  up  the  twilight  of  the  palace-steps;  and  her  name  left  his  lips  with  a 
cry, — "Castalia!"  She  looked  up  with  a  look  in  her  eyes  that  smote  him 
with  a  pang  keen  and  heavy  as  a  murderer's  remorse,  and,  starting  from  her 
musing  rest,  sprang  towards  him  with  all  the  wealth  of  the  spring  buds  and 


440  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

blossoms  scattered  into  the  gliding  darkness  of  the  water;  then— like  a  shot 
fawn— she  fell  downward  at  his  feet,  the  shower  of  her  glistening  tresses  trail- 
ing on  the  sea-wet  marbles  of  the  stair. 

If  he  had  never  loved  her,  he  loved  her  then.  He  lifted  her,  senseless  to 
his  touch,  into  his  arms,  where  she  had  rested  through  the  tumult  of  the  storm; 
he  murmured  to  her  a  thousand  names  that  had  never  been  on  his  utterance 
since  the  days  of  his  youth,  when  there  was  no  toy  so  fair  to  him  as  the  fair- 
ness of  woman;  he  swept  the  burnished  weight  of  her  hair  back  from  the 
face  from  which  he  had  exiled  the  smile  of  its  childhood,  the  light  of  its  peace. 
For  the  moment  he  was  once  more  young;  for  the  moment  time  and  calamity, 
and  the  bitterness  of  disillusion,  and  the  coldness  of  dead  hopes  and  dead  de- 
sires, were  as  though  they  had  never  been;  for  the  moment  passion  once  again 
transfigured  all  his  existence,  and  blinded  him  with  its  warm  golden  glow,  so 
sweet  because  so  transient,  so  strong  in  power  and  so  vain  in  reason.  The 
cost  of  it  is  oftentimes  deadly  and  far-reaching;  but  its  lotus-dream  of  forget- 
fulness  is  worth  it  while  it  lasts. 

The  shock  of  joy  had  stunned  her;  she  lay  unconscious  in  his  embrace. 
No  living  thing  was  near  them  in  the  darkness  of  the  old  sea-palace;  there  was 
only  the  sound  of  the  retreating  oars  beating  out  a  soft,  sad,  distant  music; 
there  was  only  the  one  broad  beam  of  vivid  light  that  flushed  the  tint  of  the 
fallen  carnation-buds  to  scarlet,  and  burned  on  the  loosened  splendor  of  her 
hair  that  swept  across  his  breast.  He  stooped  his  head  over  her,  gazing  on 
her  with  a  love  that  had  silently  grown,  born  in  absence  and  from  pity,  and 
that  sprang  up  like  a  tropic  flower  which  springs  to  its  height  in  one  short 
Eastern  night,  with  the  sudden  sight  of  her  young  beauty. 

"  Castalia  ! — my  child,  my  love  !  "  he  murmured,  as  his  head  sank,  and  his 
lips  touched  her  own,  as  in  the  sunset  haze  of  the  Tuscan  night,  when  for  the 
first  time  the  charm  of  her  childhood  took  for  him  a  woman's  deeper  power. 
As  though  his  kiss  wakened  her  dull  senses  and  called  back  the  mind  from 
its  trance,  her  heart,  where  it  beat  on  his  own,  throbbed  faster;  the  blue-black 
lustre  of  her  eyes  opened  wide  and  startled,  as  they  had  opened  when  he  had 
roused  her  from  her  sleep  in  the  storm;  for  an  instant  she  lay  passive  in  his 
arms,  gazing  upward  at  him  with  the  glory  of  a  joy,  bewildered  as  a  dream, 
dawning,  as  the  day  dawns,  on  her  face. 

"  O  God,  be  pitiful!     Let  me  never  wake." 

The  words  were  murmured,  breathless,  in  her  Tuscan  tongue;  she  thought 
that  she  was  dreaming.  Such  dreams  so  often  had  mocked  her. 

He  drew  her  closer  to  his  bosom. 

Castalia,  look  at  me,  hear  me.     I  am  with  you.     Have  you  loved  me  so 
well,  then  ? " 

At  the  sound  of  his  voice  a  flush  like  the  scarlet  heat  of  the  fallen  carnation- 


CHAN  DOS.  441 

leaves  glowed  in  her  cheek;  her  eyes  looked  upward  to  him,  but  half-conscious 
still. 

"  At  last !  at  last  !  " 

The  murmur  broke  from  her,  stifled  with  the  rush  of  tears;  she  quivered 
from  his  embrace,  and  crouched  down  at  his  feet,  till  her  face  was  veiled  from 
him.  The  knowledge  of  love  was  on  her,  and  it  stilled  and  filled  with  the 
dread  of  his  scorn  the  anguish  of  joy  with  which  her  heart  seemed  breaking  as 
a  nightingale's  breaks  with  the  rapture  of  song. 

He  stooped  to  her,  and  his  hand  touched  her  with  a  gentleness  that  thrilled 
her  with  its  caress  like  fire. 

"  Castalia,  have  you  loved  me  despite  my  desertion, — through  all  my 
cruelty  ? " 

Her  brow  drooped  still,  till  the  bright  masses  of  her  hair  touched  his  feet. 

"  Eccellenza!     I  have  only  prayed  God  to  let  me  see  your  face,  and  die." 

The  words  were  so  low  they  barely  stirred  the  air,  yet  he  heard  them;  and 
his  eyes  grew  dim:  it  was  long  since  any  had  given  him  love;  it  had  an  infinite 
sweetness  for  him.  He  stood  silent  and  motionless  a  moment,  looking  down 
on  her  where  she  knelt  with  the  Venetian  light  shed  like  an  aureole  about  her. 
Then  the  old  dominion,  the  reckless  sovereignty,  of  passion  vanquished  him; 
he  drew  her  once  more  into  his  arms,  he  lifted  again  her  bowed  head,  that  sunk 
downward  like  a  broken  flower  on  the  chill  dark  marble  of  the  water-stairs;  the 
gaze  that  had  never,  sleeping  or  waking,  been  absent  from  her  memory,  met 
hers  with  a  look  that  made  her  senses  sick  and  faint  with  the  paradise  of  joy 
that  doubted  its  own  being. 

"Castalia,  we  are  both  alone;  let  us  be  the  world  to  one  another." 

She  lay  passive  in  his  hold;  her  face  was  turned  upward  to  him  with  the 
radiance  of  the  sun  fallen  across  her  proud  bright  brow;  her  lips  trembled,  she 
heard  him  with  a  breathless  incredulity,  a  breathless  ecstacy. 

"  Oh,  my  lord,  you  mock  me! "  she  murmured,  while  her  voice  was  faint. 
"  Love!  your  love! — for  me  !  " 

It  seemed  to  her  the  gift  of  so  divine  a  world,  the  treasury  of  so  vast  a  sov- 
ereignty, the  benediction  of  so  godlike  a  mercy!  She  could  not  think  that  it 
could  be  her  own.  She  could  not  hold  a  lifetime  of  service  and  of  sacrifice  title 
sufficient  for  it. 

He  drew  her  closer  and  closer  to  his  breast,  and,  for  all  answer,  spent  his 
kisses  on  her  lips. 

4<  Do  you  doubt  now  ?  " 

With  the  touch  of  his  caresses  the  consciousness  alike  of  the  passion  she 
wakened  and  the  passion  she  cherished  stole  on  her;  the  barrier  betwee'n  them, 
that  her  veneration  for  him  had  raised  by  the  deep  humility  of  its  own  worship, 
seemed  to  fall  as  his  eyes  gazed  down  into  hers;  for  the  first  time  the  knowl- 


442  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

edge  of  what  love  he  might  bear  her,  of  what  love  she  might  render  him,  came 
to  her  with  the  glow  of  its  warmth,  with  the  wonder  of  its  deep  and  hushed  de- 
light. The  carnation  flush  of  her  face  burned  deeper  in  its  soft  shame;  a  sigh 
trembled  through  her,  where  she  rested  in  his  arms  as  a  hunted  bird  rests  in 
its  haven  of  shelter. 

"For  the  pity  of  God — if  I  am  dreaming,  kill  me  while  I  dream  !" 
The  words  died  in  their  prayer;  her  gaze  met  his,  heavy  with  the  voluptuous 
weight  of  new-born  thoughts,  lustrous  as  her  own  Southern  skies  by  night, — the 
eyes  of  Sappho,  under  the  first  breath  of  love.  His  hand  wandered  among 
the  floating  gold  of  her  sun-lightened  tresses;  his  lips  sought  ever  and  again  the 
warmth  of  hers. 

"  Let  me  dream  with  you,  if  I  can  !     Let  me  dream,  too,  once  more, — 
dream  that  you  give  me  back  my  youth  !  " 


CHAPTER  IV. 

"TO  THINE  OWN   SELF   BE  TRUE." 

HE  gazed  down  on  her,  and  wondered  how  he  could  ever  have  left  her. 

The  flight  of  a  few  months  had  brought  her  loveliness  to  its  perfection ;  and 
the  silence  of  endurance,  the  passion  of  suffering,  had  left  on  it  a  heroism  and  a 
power  that  gave  tenfold  more  beauty  to  the  luxuriance  of  its  youth,  more  inten- 
sity to  the  splendor  of  its  hues.  Young  though  she  was,  hers  was  already  a 
life  to  be  a  poet's  mistress,  to  comprehend  and  to  inspire  loftiest  ambitions, 
highest  efforts,  noblest  v  thoughts,  to  gain  from  the  lips  of  a  man  the  words  of 
Dante,— 

Quella  che  imparadisa  la  mia  mente, 
Ogni  basso  pensier  dal  cor  m'avulse. 

As  the  full  consciousness  of  his  presence  and  of  his  love  wakened  in  her,  as 
the  sense  of  his  words  and  the  truth  of  her  dream  dawned  on  her  till  her  haert 
seemed  breaking  with  its  rapture,  she  drew  herself  from  his  embrace,  and  sank 
down  beside  him,  her  head  bowed  upon  his  hand. 

"  Ah,  eccellenza  !  this  is  but  your  pity  ?  " 

The  words  were  low-breathed  as  a  sigh. 

To  her,  he  was  far  above  her,  far  as  the  stars  in  their  divine  majesty;  to  her 
it  seemed  that  she  could  have  nothing  to  raise  her  into  fitness  with  his  life. 
For  all  answer  he  lifted  her  head  upward  as  he  stooped  over  her. 

"  Only  pity  ?     Look  in  my  eyes,  and  see  !  " 


CHAN  DOS.  443 

Once  before  he  had  said  the  last  words  to  one  whom  they  had  no  power  to  stir, 
whose  heart  was  chill  as  ice  against  his  own.  Now  the  whole  fervor  of  a  South- 
ern nature  thrilled  in  answer  to  them.  Castalia  looked  up,  and  met  his  gaze; 
then  the  burning  color  flushed  her  cheek  and  her  bosom,  a  light  like  a  flash  of 
sunlight  trembled  over  her  face,  her  lips  parted  with  a  deep  broken  breath. 
From  his  eyes  she  had  learned  what  her  reverence  in  its  humility  could,  not 
realize;  she  never  asked,  she  never  doubted,  again  whether  he  loved  her. 

And  the  weight  and  the  wonder  of  its  joy  seemed  to  kill  her  with  its  glory. 

"  What  can  I  give  thee  back,  O  liberal 
And  princely  giver,  who  hast  brought  the  gold 
And  purple  of  thine  heart  ?  " 

her  own  heart  asked. 

"  Oh,  my  lord,  my  king  !  "  she  murmured,  while  her  lips  hesitatingly 
touched  his  hand  in  the  kiss  of  a  slave's  veneration,  "  I  am  not  worthy  !  A 
word  from  you,  a  smile  from  you  such  as  you  give  the  dogs,  were  all  7  prayed 
for  !  What  can  I  render  you  ?  I  am  nameless  and  desolate  !  " 

Of  the  gifts  of  her  own  loveliness  she  never  thought;  she  had  known 
them  no  more  than  the  passion-flower  knows  its  own  hues.  His  arms  pressed 
her  closer  to  his  breast. 

"  You  will  give  me  yourself,  and  you  will  give  me  youth, — gifts  more  pre- 
cious than  the  treasures  of  a  world,  Castalia  !  My  love  ! — all  my  youth  through 
I  sought  your  likeness,  and  never  found  you  !  You  waited  to  be  the  angel  of 
consolation  to  the  darkness  of  years,  that  were  without  a  joy  in  them  until  you 
brought  one." 

She  lifted  her  eyes,  wistful  and  humid. 

"  Oh  !  you  are  not  happy  ? " 

He  smiled,— a  smile  in  which  the  melancholy  of  his  fate  was  tinged  with 
impassioned  tenderness  for  her.  . 

"  When  I  look  on  you,  I  am.' 

She  gave  a  swift,  low  sigh. 

"Oh,  my  lord  !  if  I  can  make  you  so  one  hour,  I  shall  have  lived  enough." 

He  understood  her.  This  vivid,  intense,  devotional  love  was  very  precious 
to  him;  he  had  dreamed  of  it  in  the  ideals  of  his  poetic  fancies;  and  it  was 
doubly  sweet  now  that  it  came  to  him  after  the  desert  waste  of  many  years,  in  which 
no  smile  had  lightened  for  him,  no  lips  touched  his  own.  Where  he  rested  in 
the  shadow  and  the  solitude  of  the  old  palace-entrance,  as  he  gazed  on  her  and 
swept  back  the  magnificence  of  her  hair,  the  dead  days  revived  once  more  for 
him.  Once  more  he  lost  himself  in  the  languor  and  the  warmth  and  the  oblivion 
of  passion,  as  he  murmured  to  her  a  thousand  caressing  Italian  names,  and 
drew  from  her  the  story  of  her  wanderings,  touched  beyond  words  by  the  pa- 


444  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

thetic  simplicity  of  that  search  for  him  through  the  vastness  of  an  unknown 

world. 

"  I  sought  you,  eccellenza;  yes,"  she  murmured,  while  she  looked  up  at  him 
with  an  appealing  deprecating  prayer,  "  I  could  not  stay  when  you  were  gone; 
my  heart  was  dead,  my  life  was  broken.  And  I  heard  them  speak  evil  against 
you,  and  the  Padre  Giulio  lifted  up  his  voice  with  them;  and  I  would  not  wait 
and  eat  the  bread  of  those  who  had  once  touched  your  name.  For  I  heard  that 
name  at  the  last,  and  I  knew  you  then  greater  than  any  kings;  I  knew  the  book 
that  I  loved  as  your  book,  the  thoughts  I  had  treasured  as  your  thoughts. 
But,  though  I  sought  you,  it  was  not  to  seek  your  pity,  not  to  ask  your  mercy. 
I  never  meant  that  you  should  know  that  I  was  near: — if  ever  I  met  you,  I 
only  meant  to  watch  you  from  a  distance,  to  hear  your  voice,  to  see  your  face, 
while  you  knew  nothing.  You  believe  me  ? — you  believe  it  ? " 

The  terror  on  her  was  great  lest  he  should  think  that  she  had  followed  him 
to  appeal  to  his  compassion,  to  force  herself  on  his  life.  His  eyes  were  dim,  his 
voice  quivered,  as  he  answered  her, — 

"  Believe  it  ?  Yes  !  each  word  your  lips  say.  My  darling,  my  darling,  what 
you  have  suffered  !  and  suffered  through  and  for  me  !  " 

She  shuddered,  and  her  eyes  closed  a  moment  as  in  the  recollection  of  some 
unbearable  torture;  then  the  radiance  of  light  came  on  her  face,  a  smile  sweet 
as  the  daybreak  on  her  lips. 

"  Eccellenza,"  she  said,  under  her  breath,  "  I  would  suffer  a  thousand 
years  of  that  for  this  one  hour." 

The  passion  of  his  kisses  stayed  her  lips. 

"Hush!  hush!  or  I  shall  love  you  too  well;  and  all  that  /love  I  lose. 
Such  courage,  such  patience,  such  fidelity; — and  you  ask,  what  you  have  that 
you  give  me  ?  " 

"  Those  are  nothing,"  she  said  dreamily.  "  The  mercy  is— to  let  me  ren- 
der them.  It  has  been  so  long,  O  God  !  so  long  !  Here  in  Venice  it  was  a 
little  happier.  The  people  speak  of  you;  they  love  you,  though  they  say  it  be- 
neath their  breath,  because  of  the  tyranny.  They  said  you  would  come  here 
with  the  spring;  and  so — I  waited." 

The  words  were  simple,  spoken  with  the  tears  of  remembered  anguish  heavy 
on  her  lashes;  but  all  her  story  was  told  in  them.  "  She  had  waited,"  with  the 
ith  of  a  child,  the  passion  of  a  woman:  it  was  the  epitome  of  the  intense  vo- 
lition and  the  silent  power  of  sacrifice  that  met  in  her  nature.  It  was  the  ideal 
of  which  he  had  once  vainly  dreamed;  it  moved  him  now  to  an  emotion  keen 
to  pain. 

Castalia,  in  my  youth  I  loved  many,  yet  my  youth  never  had  such  love  as 
yours.  What  you  have  suffered  while  I  knew  nothing  !  And  you  never  loathed 
me  for  my  cruelty  ?  " 


CHAN  DOS.  445 

"  Cruelty  ?  You  were  never  cruel.  You  saved  my  life;  it  was  yours  to  take 
or  to  leave,  to  command  or  to  neglect." 

"  But  I  left  you  to  this  loneliness,  to  this  peril  !  How  have  you  lived, 
fragile  and  friendless,  and  dowered  with  the  danger  of  such  beauty  ?  " 

Her  face  grew  pale.  The  past  was  terrible  to  her, — a  time  never  to  be 
dwelt  on  without  a  horror  of  remembrance;  and  she  would  not  wound  him 
by  confessing  all  she  had  endured. 

"  It  is  over,"  she  said,  softly;  "  let  it  sleep." 

"  It  will  never  sleep  in  my  memory,"  he  murmured,  as  he  drew  her  closer 
to  his  bosom  and  called  her  color  back  with  his  caress.  "  And  now,  now  that 
we  have  met,  what  does  the  thought  of  my  love  bring  you  ?  " 

Her  eyes  dwelt  on  his,  deep  and  dreamy  as  the  night,  with  the  fire  of  a 
tropic  nature  in  their  depths;  her  voice  was  hushed  below  her  breath. 

"  How  can  I  say  ?  I  know  now  how  possible  it  is  to  die  of  joy;  I  feel  as  if 
I  should  die  so  to-night!  " 

He  drew  her  nearer  still  into  his  embrace.  The  words  sent  a  chill  through 
him;  all  that  his  heart  had  clung  to  had  been  taken,  soon  or  late. 

"  God  forbid!  Live  to  bless  me,  Castalia;  live  to  be  my  love,  my  consoler, 
my  mistress,  my  wife  !  " 

The  last  words  left  his  lips  in  unconsidered  impulse.  She  was  his  so 
utterly,  his  to  cherish  or  destroy,  to  honor,  or  dishonor,  to  lead  as  he  chose,  to 
make  what  he  would; — the  absolute  defencelessness  of  her  life,  the  absolute 
abandonment  of  her  trust,  forbade  him  to  seek  from  her  aught  that  others 
would  have  held  her  sacrifice. 

Where  she  rested  in  his  arms,  she  trembled  from  head  to  foot,  the  liquid 
darkness  of  her  eyes  grew  burning  with  the  bewildered  vision  of  a  future  that 
passed  all  which  her  thought  had  ever  reached;  her  senses  seemed  blind  and 
faint;  she  felt  as  though  angel  hands  had  been  laid  on  her  and  had  raised  her 
upward  into  the  light  of  eternal  suns. 

"  No,  no!  "  she  murmured,  while  her  gaze  dwelt  on  his  with  all  the  humility 
and  all  the  idolatry  that  were  in  her;  "  I  have  no  title!  I  was  born  of  shame, 
they  say;  I  am  without  name,  or  kin,  or  worthiness.  I  am  yours  to  neglect,  to 
smile  upon,  to  forsake,  to  command, — as  you  will!  Let  me  be  as  your  slave; 
let  me  follow  and  serve  and  obey  you  as  spaniels  may;  let  me  live  in  your 
sight,  and  have  honor  enough  in  one  word,  in  one  touch: — that  is  all  that  /am 
meet  for  from  you!  " 

The  words  moved  him  as  no  words  that  had  claimed  her  justice  or  his  ten- 
derness would  ever  have  done, — words  that  had  the  sublime  self-oblivion  and 
self-devotion  of  Heloi'se. 

"  Not  so  !  You  were  worth  empires  if  I  had  them  in  my  gift.  Castalia, 
there  is  but  one  passion  possible  between  us  now.  The  world,  as  its  bigotry 


446  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

stands,  would  call  that  passion  your  shame,  unless  my  name  were  bestowed 
with  it,— unless  the  marriage-benediction  were  on  you.  I  have  little  left  to 
give;  but  such  as  I  have  shall  be  yours." 

The  scarlet  flush  deepened  over  her  bosom;  her  head  drooped  till  her  lips 
touched  his  hand  again  in  their  reverent  kiss;  her  voice  was  broken  and  lost  in 
tears. 

"  Ah,  God  !  what  can  I  say  to  you  ?  how  can  my  life  repay  you  ?  You 
gave  me  all — gave  me  the  world — when  you  once  gave  me  your  love  !  " 


Past  the  darkened  arch  of  the  entrance  a  gondola  floated  slowly  down  the 
solitary  and  neglected  street, — a  vessel  richly  arrayed,  and  piled  in  the  prow 
with  a  fragrant  load  of  gathered  violets  and  red  carnation-buds.  Lying  back 
in  it  was  a  form,  delicate  and  patrician,  covered  with  costly  laces  and  velvets: 
her  cheek  rested  on  her  hand;  her  hand  glittered  with  diamonds.  She  looked 
up  languidly  as  the  boat  dropped  past  the  high  and  massive  sculpture  of  the 
mighty  archway.  The  gloom  was  deep  as  twilight  beneath  its  arc,  yet  her  eyes 
pierced  it  and  caught  the  hues  of  the  fallen  flowers,  the  gleam  of  the  golden 
hair, — eyes  falcon-bright,  pitiless,  and  unerring, — the  eyes  of  Heloise  de  la 
Vivarol. 

"  She  has  found  him  !  "  she  said,  in  her  teeth.  "  And  he  loves  her.  So  it 
comes  round, — so  it  comes  round  ! " 

So  her  vengeance  came  round  to  her, — her  vengeance  vowed  in  the  years 
that  were  gone.  Women  may  forget  their  love,  and  change  it;  but  there  are 
few  who  ever  forget  the  oath  or  the  desire  of  jealously. 


The  flitting  by  of  that  single  gondola  was  unseen  by  them,  the  noise  of  its 
oars  drowned  in  the  ripple  of  the  water  beneath  the  wide  slope  of  the  stairs. 
He  surrended  himself  once  more  to  the  forgetfulness  and  the  sweetness  of 
passion;  and  her  life  seemed  to  rest  in  a  trance  divine  as  that  which  comes  to 
the  lotus-eaters.  The  darkness  of  the  vast  stone  pile  enclosed  them  in  its 
shadow  and  its  solitude;  the  red  gold  of  the  fast-declining  sun  only  stole  in  a 
single  ray  across  the  lustre  of  her  eyes  as  they  looked  up  to  his.  The  heavy 
fragrance  of  the  fallen  flowers  weighted  the  air;  the  delicious  monotone  of  the 
water's  ebb  and  flow  below  against  the  marble  alone  stirred  the  stillness. 
Time  passed  on;  neither  counted  its  flight.  The  sun  set,  the  odorous  night 
fell ;  it  seemed  to  her  at  once  brief  as  a  moment,  long  as  a  lifetime,  since  she 
had  found  him  whom  she  had  grown  to  hold  her  sovereign  and  her  religion. 


CHANDOS.  447 

Through  the  gloom,  as  the  depth  of  night  fell,  a  voice  came  from  above  them. 

"  Castalia,  art  thou  not  home  ? " 

Chandos  started:  he  knew  the  voice  again, — the  voice  of  the  blind  Hebrew. 

"  Who  is  that  ?  "  he  said,  swiftly.     "  Who  calls  you  by  your  name  ?  " 

"  Ah  !  I  had  forgotten  him,  she  murmured,  with  that  soft  contrition  with 
which  she  had  once  pleaded  her  forgetfulness  of  the  Tuscan  priest.  "  I  was 
wrong  to  say  I  was  wholly  friendless.  He  has  been  very  good.  He  is  a  Jew, 
old,  and  blind,  and  poor;  but  he  led  me  here,  and  he  brought  me  to  some 
women  of  his  nation,  who  have  been  gentle  to  me,  because  they  knew  me  to  be 
homeless  and  motherless." 

As  she  spoke,  the  old  man  came  slowly  down  the  steps,  feeling  his  way 
with  that  wavering  uncertain  movement  of  his  hands  that  was  in  so  pathetic  a 
contrast  with  the  dignity  of  his  austere  and  venerable  age.  A  gleam  of  the 
white  luminous  Venetian  moon  fell  across  the  majesty  of  his  bowed  head  and 
lofty  form. 

"  Good  God  !— at  last !  " 

The  words  escaped  Chandos  involuntarily  as  he  rose  to  his  feet,  facing  the 
figure  of  the  Israelite.  He  had  sought  the  lost  life  of  the  old  man  far  and 
diligently  since  the  night  when  he  had  found  him  wandering  in  the  streets, — 
sought  him  on  vague,  baseless,  shapeless  thoughts  and  the  unerring  instinct 
of  the  desire  for  vengeance. 

The  Jew  paused  and  listened;  his  quick  ear  apprized  him  of  her  presence, 
and  of  another  beside  hers. 

"  Castalia,  thou  art  so  late  !     And  who  is  with  thee  ?  " 

"It  is  I !" 

At  the  sound  of  his  voice  the  Jew  started,  and  over  the  brown  worn  stern- 
ness of  his  face  Chandos  saw  the  look  that  had  come  there  when  he  had  spoken 
his  name  in  the  blind  man's  ear. 

"  It  is  I,"  he  continued,  as  he  passed  up  the  sea-stairs,  and  stood  beside  the 
Israelite  on  the  breadth  of  the  marble  landing-place.  "  You  have  been  good 
and  pitiful  to  a  life  that  is  very  dear  to  me,  I  hear.  Take  my  deepest  grati- 
tude for  every  tenderness  you  have  shown  her,  every  pang  you  have  striven  to 
spare  her." 

Over  the  old  man's  face  swept  the  look  of  pain  and  of  shame  that  had  been 
there  in  the  after-midnight  in  Paris, — a  look  that  hardened  instantly  into  a 
rugged  iron  calm. 

"  I  have  served  her  little,"  he  said,  briefly.  "  The  maiden  has  gained  her 
own  bread  by  the  choirs  of  her  Church,  and  the  sale  of  flowers  while  flowers 
bloomed.  I  owe  her  more  than  she  owes  me.  And  what  is  she  to  you  ?  " 

"  The  only  thing  I  love." 

A  sigh  rose  to  the  Hebrew's  lips.     Castalia's  life  had  been  precious  to  him; 


448  OU1DAS     WORK  3. 

he  had  grown  to  listen  for  her  voice,  and  her  step,  and  her  presence,  as  the  aged 
listen  for  the  only  thing  that  reminds  them  of  the  world  in  which  they  once  had 
place:  he  knew  that  she  would  be  lost  to  him  now.  But  the  rigid  austerity  of 
his  face  kept  its  reticence. 

"  Love  !    And  you  left  her  to  wander  and  starve  ?  " 

"  I  had  no  knowledge  of  her  fate.     Had  I  left  her  as  you  think,  I  should 
merit  now  your  worst  reproach,  your  worst  rebuke." 
The  Israelite  bent  his  head. 

"  Pardon  me,  sir.     /  should  not  have  doubted  your  mercy.     Yet,  for  the 
child's  sake,  I  would  hear  more.     Is  she  your  daughter?" 
"  Mine  !     God  forbid  !  " 

The  Hebrew  turned  his  sightless  eyes  on  Castalia. 
"  Wilt  thou  leave  us  ?  " 

She  lifted  her  eyes  to  Chandos;  her  life  now  had  no  law  but  his  word,  no 
sun  but  his  smile.  He  stooped  and  drooped  his  lips  in  one  long  caress  upon 
her  own. 

"  Leave  us,  my  love, — one  moment.     I  will  be  with  you  soon." 
She  passed  from  them  into  the  darkness  of  the  palace-entrance.     The  He- 
brew bent  his  face  so  that  the  moonlight  which  he  felt  was  on  it  should  not  be 
shed  there. 

"Sir,  I  have  not  title  to  arraign  you.     Yet  they  tell  me  she  has  a  marvellous 
loveliness.     Will  you  make  of  her  but  your  mistress  ? " 
"No;  she  shall  bear  my  name." 
"  Verily  ?    And  you  were  ever  so  proud  !  " 

"  I  am  too  much  so  now,  perhaps.  Yet  I  may  justly  be  too  proud  to  mis- 
lead what  trusts  me." 

"  Ah  !  your  creeds  were  never  those  of  your  fellow-men.  They  are  not  of 
the  world,  sir, — not  of  the  world  !  " 

There  was  an  acrid  bitterness  in  the  Israelite's  words,  because  he  felt  a 
poignant  suffering;  he  moved  to  feel  his  feeble  way  down  the  steps,  to  escape 
the  presence  that  was  one  continual  rebuke  to  him.  Chandos  laid  his  hand  on 
him  and  arrested  him.  Memories  were  rising  from  the  vague  chaos  of  far-off 
remembrance;  knowledge  was  coming  to  him  dimly  and  with  difficulty. 

"  Wait !  We  have  other  words  to  speak.  Who  was  your  chief,  your 
tyrant  ? " 

For  a  moment  the  Hebrew's  frame  shook  in  every  fibre;  the  next,  the  com- 
plete control,  the  steel-like  power  of  endurance,  in  him  returned,— immovable. 

"That  secret  will  be  buried  with  me." 

"Buried?  It  is  not  buried;  it  is  clear  tome.  Answer  me.  Your  bond- 
master  was  my  foe  ? " 

His  face  grew  eager,  and   quivered  with  swift-rising  passion,  in  which  all 


CHANDOS.  449 

softer  memories  were  lost.  The  Hebrew's  features  never  changed;  they  were 
cast  in  bronze,  when  he  would. 

"  It  may  be  so.     Perhaps  your  foes  are  many." 

"  You  equivocate  !     Answer  me, — yes  or  no.     It  was  John  Trevenna  ? " 

"I  equivocate  in  nothing;  I  simply  keep  silence.  I  shall  keep  it  until 
death." 

The  answer  was  so  unmoved  in  its  iron  serenity  that  not  even  the  man  who 
watched  and  who  heard  him  could  gather  one  sign  by  which  to  know  the  truth. 

"  Keep  it  ?     And  he  tortured  you,  chained  you,  cursed  you  !  " 

There  was  a  magnificent  grandeur  in  the  old  man's  attitude  as  he  raised  his 
head. 

"What  of  that?  I  swore  the  oath  to  the  God  of  Israel;  I  keep  it  because 
he  spared  the  life  of  the  youth.  The  Gentiles  take  oaths  by  our  God,  to  break 
them;  ours  are  redeemed,  come  what  will." 

Chandos  stood  silent  a  moment.  On  his  nature,  even  in  the  first  agony  of 
the  desire  for  vengeance,  the  appeal  could  not  be  lost.  He  recognized  the 
greatness  of  the  fidelity,  even  whilst  it  stood  like  a  barrier  of  granite  between 
him  and  the  justice  of  retribution,  the  knowledge  of  his  past.  But,  as  he  gazed 
on  the  Hebrew,  the  light  of  remembrance  broke  on  him;  the  crowd  of  the 
porphyry  chamber  came  back  on  his  memory;  a  great  cry  broke  from  him. 

"  Wait !  /  swear  that  this  darkness  shall  be  made  light.  You  were  among 
the  claimants  on  Clarencieux  ?  " 

The  Jew  turned  his  sightless  eyes,  his  rugged  face  upon  him,  impassive  as 
death. 

"  Say  that  I  was;  what  does  that  prove  ?  There  were  many  claimants,  and 
just  ones." 

The  fire  of  deadly  instincts  gathered  in  Chandos'  eyes. 

"  It  proves  enough  to  me  !  A  Jew  firm  was  the  largest  of  my  creditors: 
that  firm  was  yours.  Your  tyrant  ruled  it:  that  tyrant  was  my  traitor.  My 
wealth  went  to  him:  he  devoured  it.  The  world  called  me  mad:  I  was  so,  for 
I  was  his  dupe  !  Answer  me:  your  torturer  and  my  enemy  were  one  ?  " 

The  Hebrew's  features  were  impenetrable  as  the  night;  he  was  stirred  no 
more  than  were  the  marbles  around  him. 

"You  speak  widely,  sir,  and  without  warrant.  It  is  vain  to  appeal  to  me. 
I  neither  deny  nor  affirm;  I  keep  the  silence  for  which  I  suffered." 

"  Suffered  ! — and  for  a  fiend  ?  " 

"  Suffered, — for  my  oath's  sake." 

The  granduer  of  the  resistance  to  him  wrung  his  reverence  from  Chandos, 
even  whilst  the  anguish,  the  fire,  the  impotence  of  awakening  wrath  and  awaken- 
ing knowledge  rose  in  tumult. 

"Keep  it !  "  he  said,  while  his  voice  rang  with  the  might  of  his  passions. 

VOL.  HI.— 15 


450 


GUI  DA'S     WORKS. 


«  Kept  or  broken,  it  shall  avail  nothing  to  guard  him  from  my  vengeance.  I 
know  enough,  without  more  knowledge,  to  stamp  his  infamy  in  the  sight  of 
men.  Those  lost  deeds,  that  hidden  usury,  that  trading  in  the  trust  and  the 
necessities  of  his  friends,— it  will  blast  his  name  through  Europe  !  " 

The  Hebrew's  harsh  calm  tones  answered  him  with  judicial  brevity. 

"  What  do  you  know  ?  Nothing!  You  suspect;— you  will  speak  on  suspicion; 
baseless  and  unproved,  the  accusation  will  recoil  harmless  from  the  accused,  to 
brand  the  accuser  as  a  libellist  and  a  false  witness." 

Chandos  quivered  in  every  limb  as  he  heard;  the  rage  of  justice  paralyzed 
from  its  stroke,  of  truth  impotent  to  make  manifest  its  truth,  seized  him  with 
maddening  misery.  He  was  once  again  in  the  coils  of  the  net  that  had  wound 
itself  so  long  about  his  life  to  fetter  and  destroy. 

"  Oh,  God!  "  he  said,  "  why  will  you  shield  your  destroyer  and  mine  ?  why 
will  you  shelter  the  iniquity  you  have  said  you  repent  ?  Your  own  soul  is 
noble:  what  sympathy  have  you  with  the  villany  you  have  abjured  ?  Your  own 
sacrifice  has  been  grand:  why  will  you  have  so  much  tenderness  of  sins  that  are 
vile  as  murder  ?  " 

"  I  have  none;  but  I  am  true  to  him  by  whom  my  son  was  spared." 

"  What!  are  traitors,  and  tyrants,  and  criminals  to  find  such  loyalty,  whilst 
honest  men  are  betrayed  and  abjured  by  the  score  ?  Have  you  no  pity,  no 
remorse,  for  the  wrongs  of  a  life  ?  " 

"  Sir,  if  I  had  ever  known  either  pity  or  remorse,  I  had  not  been  what  I 
was." 

Chandos'  hand  clenched  on  the  old  man's  shoulder.  Conviction,  strong, 
unbearable,  intense,  was  on  him  that  this  Hebrew  held  the  secret  of  his  enemy's 
hatred,  and  that  John  Trevenna  was  the  curse  of  both  their  fates;  yet  he  was 
as  impotent  to  wring  the  truth  as  to  force  blood  from  the  cold  black  marbles 
beneath  their  feet. 

"Listen!  I  have  pitied  you  from  my  heart,  honored  your  endurance  from 
my  soul;  but  I  have  the  wrongs  of  a  lifetime  to  avenge.  I  knou>,  as  though  the 
proof  were  by  me,  that  my  foe  is  one  with  your  master,  that  fraud  and  treachery 
and  baseness  had  more  share  in  my  ruin  than  my  own  extravagance.  Speak 
now,  or — as  we  believe  in  one  God— the  law  shall  make  you." 

The  Hebrew  turned  his  blind  eyes  on  him  with  the  patience  of  his  race. 

"  The  law?    It  did  its  worst  on  me:  had  it  power  to  make  me  speak  ?  " 

Chandos  almost  reeled  from  him. 

4  Great  Heaven  !  crime  gets  such  loyalty  as  this,  while  I  found  love  and 
friendship  traitors  !  " 

The  Jew's  bronzed  face  grew  paler,  his  close-set  lips  shook  slightly  under 
the  snowy  whiteness  of  his  beard;  but  he  remained  immovable.  Chandos  stood 
above  him,  his  eyes  black,  his  teeth  set. 


CHAN  DOS.  451 

u  Man — man  !  if  you  ever  loved,  if  you  ever  hated,  give  me  my  vengeance  !  " 

"  Sir,"  said  the  Hebrew,  with  his  grave  and  caustic  speech,  "  beware  !  You 
lust  for  an  evil  thing." 

"  No  !  I  claim  a  barren  justice." 

"  Justice  is  not  given  on  earth.     Hear  me.     You  urge  me  to  evil — 

"  I  urge  you  to  the  service  of  truth,  to  the  chastisement  of  infamy — 

"  It  may  be  so;  yet  hear  me.  You  tempt  me  to  evil,  because  you  tempt 
me  to  forswear  the  sole  fidelity  in  gratitude  that  redeems  my  baseness.  I  know 
your-  life;  I  know  your  thoughts;  I  know  that  you  have  loved  men  well,  served 
them  unwearingly,  taught  them  high  and  gracious  things.  When  you  heard  my 
story,  you  called  it  a  martyrdom  whose  nobility  men  seldom  reached:  why  call 
it  now  a  sheltering  of  evil,  because  your  own  wish  is  to  behold  that  evil  un- 
earthed ?  You  told  me  then  I  had  atoned  for  my  past:  why  tell  me  now  I  only 
stain  it  further  ?  This  is  unworthy  you, — untrue  to  your  creeds.  Were  your 
passions  now  unloosed,  your  life  now  unbiassed,  you  would  be  the  first  to  say 
to  me,  '  Before  all,  keep  your  oath  sacred.'  " 

Chandos'  hand  fell,  his  breath  came  loud  and  quick;  he  stood  like  one 
pierced  to  the  heart  with  an  exceeding  bitterness. 

"  Sir,"  went  on  the  Hebrew's  unbroken,  impassive  voice,  ':  it  is  true  that 
you  have  a  secret  of  mine  that  you  can  torture  me  with,  if  you  will;  but  I  have 
read  your  nature  wrong  if  you  will  use  against  me  the  weapons  that  I,  uncon- 
scious, placed  in  your  hold.  You  have  passed  through  vast  calamities  since 
the  day  that  I  stood  amidst  your  spoilers;  they  will  have  failed  to  teach  you 
what  I  believe  they  have  taught  you,  if  you  tempt  another  to  dishonor  because 
through  that  dishonor  you  believe  your  own  desires  would  be  served,  your  own 
revenge  gained  to  you." 

Chandos  stood  silent  still;  a  mortal  struggle  shook  him. 

"  I  am  no  god,"  he  said,  hoarsely;  "  what  you  ask  of  me  is  a  god's  divine, 
impartial  justice  !  I,  as  a  man,  claim  a  man's  right,  a  man's  weakness,  a  man's 
sin  of  vengeance." 

"It  may  be  so:  yet,  if  you  be  true  to  yourself,  it  is  that  very  impartiality 
of  justice — all  hard  though  it  may  be— that  you  will  render." 

There  was  a  long  silence,  in  which  only  the  lapping  of  the  water  sounded. 
No  demand  that  honor  had  ever  made  on  him  had  been  so  merciless  in  cruelty 
as  this,  no  contest  that  had  wrung  his  life  so  hard  to  meet.  His  voice  was  very 
low  as  it  fell  at  last  on  the  stillness. 

"  You  are  right  !     I  tempt  you  no  more." 

The  Hebrew  bowed  his  head. 

"  There  a  great  life  spoke." 

Then,  slowly,  with  his  sightless,  feeble  movement,  he  passed  down  the  water- 
stairs  till  the  dignity  of  his  dark,  bent  form  was  lost  in  the  breadth  of  the 


452  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

shadows.  Chandos  let  him  go,  unarrested.  He  stood  there,  blind  to  all  around 
him,  dead  to  all  memory  save  one.  The  blackness  of  night  was  on  his  soul, 
and  the  violence  of  baffled  passion  shook  him  as  a  storm-wind  the  strength  of 
the  cedars.  There  was  but  one  terrrible  thirst  upon  him, — the  thirst  for  his 
vengeance. 

Where  he  stood,  his  arm  dropped  as  though  the  nervous  force  of  it  were 
broken;  his  eyes  gazed  without  sight  down  the  shaft  of  the  gloomy  stairs  where 
the  water  glistened  cold  and  gliding  in  the  flicker  of  the  moon.  The  convic- 
tion of  his  foe's  guilt  was  scored  on  his  mind  as  though  he  had  beheld  it  writ- 
ten up  through  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  lands;  the  meshes  of  his  own 
impotence  for  chastisement  and  retribution  bound  him  helpless  as  one  para- 
lyzed; the  human  lust  of  evil  possessed  him  as  his  madness  possessed  Saul. 

A  while, — and  in  the  soft  Venetian  darkness  of  the  young  night  Castalia 
stole  to  him,  she  touched  his  hand  with  the  suppliant  kiss  of  her  tender  homage, 
she  raised  upward  to  his  face  the  dreamy  lustre  of  her  eyes. 

"  My  lord,  is  regret  with  you  because  you  were  too  merciful  to  me  ?  If  it 
be,  say  it.  My  life  is  only  lived  for  you." 

His  arms  drew  her  to  him  in  the  vibration 'of  the  passions  that  beat  in  him; 
his  lips,  hot  and  white,  burned  in  their  kisses  on  her  own. 

"Regret! — when  in  you  I  find  all  the  consolation  I  shall  ever  know  ? 
Castalia,  dark  hours  come  on  me:  you  must  not  fear  them.  My  heart  is  sick 
because  of  its  own  failure.  Tempted,  I  am  weak  as  water,  I  am  cruel  as  mur- 
derers. I  have  lived,  and  striven,  and  suffered,  and  sought  to  serve  men,  only 
at  the  last  to  reel  back  into  a  barbarian's  lust, — to  be  athirst  with  a  Cain's 
desires  ! " 

For  the  evil  that  his  foe  had  wrought  him  had  not  yet  reached  its  end,  and 
it  poisoned  now  the  first  sweet  hours  of  reviving  happiness. 

It  might  go  farther  yet,  and  close  his  life  in  crime. 


CHAPTER    V. 

THE   CODES   OF   ARTHUR. 


IN  the  darkness  of  large,  jutting  marble  blocks  in  another  quarter  of 
Venice,  Ignatius  Mathias  held  his  almost  nightly  vigil,— the  vigil  which  had 
but  one  aim  and  but  one  reward,— to  hear  the  passing  footstep  of  his  son. 
Agostino  had  come  to  Venice  in  the  restlessness  of  one  who  has  peace  nowhere 
and  vainly  thinks  with  each  new  refuge  to  escape  what  haunts  him.  He  lived 
the  life  that  a  hare  leads  in  hunting  seasons:  the  season  may  pass  and  leave 


CHANDOS.  453 

the  animal  in  safety,  unmolested  under  the  shade  of  fern  and  thyme,  but  none 
the  less  with  every  hour  must  its  heart  beat,  and  its  sleep  be  broken,  and 
its  nerves  tremble  at  every  crack  of  the  brandies,  every  sough  of  the  wind, 
lest  its  hunters  be  out  on  its  scent.  Years  would  go,  and  his  tyrant  need  nothing 
of  him;  but  all  the  same  he  was  never  sure  but  that  some  cruel  task  might  any  day 
be  required  at  his  hands,  and  no  alternative  left  him  but  to  do  its  work,  how- 
ever abhorrent,  or  to  brave  the  shame  of  public  slander  and  public  exposure 
from  which  the  feminine  terrors  of  his  nature  had  so  long  shrunk  as  more 
unendurable  than  death.  But  of  this  tyranny  that  ruled  his  life  his  father 
knew  nothing:  he  heard  of  the  painter's  fame,  of  his  talent,  of  his  growing 
wealth,  of  his  adoration  of  his  art,  of  his  love  for  his  Spanish  wife,  and  he 
believed  Agostino  happy  with  the  happiness  that  he  had  himself  sacrificed  all 
to  purchase  for  "  the  lad."  He  was  ever  but  a  youth  in  the  old  man's  thoughts, 
a  beautiful,  yielding,  caressing,  tender-natured  boy,  won  by  a  smile,  crushed  by 
a  stern  word,  as  he  had  been  when  the  eyes  whose  blindness  now  kept  him  ever 
young  in  their  memory  had  last  looked  upon  the  graciousness  of  his  early 
years.  That  Agostino  could  grow  older  with  the  growth  of  time  never  came 
to  the  remembrance  of  one  who  had  parted  with  him  in  his  boyhood;  he  had 
eternal  youth  in  the  love  of  the  sightless  man.  There  is  thus  far  mercy  for  the 
blind,  that  they  know  nothing  of  the  stealing  change  that  robs  the  beauty 
which  is  cherished  from  the  eyes  that  cherish  it,  slowly  and  cruelly,  until  the 
last  change  of  all. 

Ignatius  Mathias  stood  now,  so  guiding  himself  by  the  marvellous  compen- 
sative instinct  which  his  calamity  confers,  that  he  was  secured  from  all  passers- 
by  by  the  jutting  out  of  the  stone,  and  his  long,  black,  floating  garments  could 
scarce  be  told  from  the  marble  that  shrouded  him.  If  by  any  chance  a  stray 
moonbeam  wandered  through  to  the  deep  shelter  of  the  statueless  niche,  it 
would  have  seemed  to  any  casual  passer-by  that  it  was  filled  by  some  sculptured 
figure  of  prophet  or  of  priest  which  was  in  perfect  keeping  with  the  solemn  and 
melancholy  grandeur  round.  He  was  listening  eagerly,  intently;  but  his  hands 
were  clenched  on  the  marble  where  he  leaned,  and  his  heart  ached  with  the 
burden  of  remorse,  the  dry,  tearless,  hopeless  grief  of  age. 

It  had  pierced  him  to  the  quick  to  remain  steeled  to  Chandos'  prayer,  as  it 
had  been  bitter  to  him  to  show  no  sign  of  respect  in  the  porphyry  hall  at 
Clarencieux,  when  all  the  heartless  crowd  about  him  had  been  moved  and  awed 
by  the  dignity  of  adversity.  The  keen  Israelite  could  reverence  from  his  soul 
the  man  who  in  his  deadliest  passions  was  still  obedient  to  the  demand  and  the 
duty  of  justice;  and  he  felt  that  he  too  had  sinned  towards  him. 

"  It  was  a  villanous  sin  to  rob  him,"  he  mused, — "  vilest  treachery,  vilest 
murder.  He  heaped  coals  of  fire  on  my  head  with  everyone  of  his  just  words; 
and  yet  it  would  bring  him  nothing  even  if  he  knew  all.  We  were  always  with- 


454  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

in  the  law.  He  would  wreck  all  the  nobility  of  his  nature  in  the  bloodhound 
thirst  for  vengeance;  he  would  do  what  would  belie  his  life.  Pshaw!  why  do  I 
deal  with  these  sophistries  ?  If  he  slew  his  foe,  and  slew  me,  it  would  be  no 
more,  as  he  said,  than  barren  justice.  But  give  it  him  I  never  will.  Sin  or 
martyrdom,  whichever  it  be,  added  crime  or  atoning  fidelity,  I  will  die  silent; 
I  will  be  true  to  him  by  whom  my  son  was  spared, — true  to  the  last." 

His  face  set  in  stern,  unflinching  resolve,  the  firmness  of  silence;  the  dig- 
nity of  faithfulness,  which  would  be  true  to  its  bond,  even  if  that  bond  were 
forged  by  crime,  lent  it  nobility;  then  the  caustic  and  ironic  bitterness  in  which 
his  temper  had  steeled  itself  long  to  all  gentler  things  passed  over  it. 

"  Why  should  I  care  for  one?  "  he  muttered.  "  There  were  thousands.  If 
I  ever  spoke,  I  should  unloose  hell-dogs;  if  I  ever  made  atonement  by  turning 
traitor,  what  lives  I  should  have  to  summon  out  of  their  graves  to  hear  my  mea 
culpa,  if  I  called  all  my  auditors! " 

The  smile  was  evil  on  his  face,  though  that  evil  was  more  sad  than  other 
men's  sorrow.  His  hands  had  been  a  millstone,  grinding  all  that  went  through 
them  to  powder,  that  the  grist  might  feed  the  yawning  sack  of  money-lust.  If 
all  his  accusers  would  rise  against  him,  the  tomb  must  yield  up  its  dead. 

A  slight  sound  caught  his  ear;  he  started,  and  listened  as  Indians  listen. 
He  had  kept  this  vigil  long  and  often,  in  divers  scenes,  and  divers  hours, — 
under  the  cold  shadow  of  green  leaves,  under  the  driving  snow  of  winter  nights, 
under  the  broad  gables  of  antique  houses,  under  the  drenching  rains  of  autumn 
skies,  under  the  mild  stars  of  vintage  eves,  moving  unweariedly  in  the  chang- 
ing, restless  track  of  an  artist's  wanderings,  content  if  reward  came  in  the  echo 
of  a  laugh,  in  the  distant  murmur  of  a  voice,  in  the  passing  of  a  far-off  footfall. 
Unseen,  unthanked,  unrecompensed,  save  by  such  fleeting  things  as  could  be 
borne  on  summer  air  or  heard  through  winter  blasts,  his  great  and  silent  love 
endured.  A  step  passed  him;  he  held  his  breath  as  it  went;  he  knew  that  his 
son  was  nigh.  Then  the  faint  sound  died  to  silence,  and  the  light  died  from 
his  face;  this  was  all,  all  that  was  left  him, — one  moment  to  be'  scored  against 
a  martyrdom;  and  his  lips  moved  in  voiceless  prayer  and  thanksgiving.  He 
breathed  his  blessing  on  the  life  that  passed  by  him  in  the  hush  of  the  night; 
he  was  grateful  even  for  so  little.  It  sufficed;  his  son  lived. 


Where  the  silver  lustre  of  the  Venetian  moon  poured  down  through  lofty 
casements  of  a  desolate  palace-chamber;  Chandos,  as  he  looked  into  the  eyes 
that  once  more  spoke  to  him  in  the  language  of  his  youth,  strove  to  put 
from  him  the  remembrance  of  his  traitor,  the  thirst  for  his  vengeance;  and  he 
could  not.  The  darkness  of  a  violent  and  unsparing  hatred  had  seized  him. 


CHANDOS.  455 

Hate  was  foreign  to  his  nature,  yet  it  had  sprung  in  growth  fast  as  poison- 
plants  from  poison-seeds  in  the  rank  soil  of  Africa.  With  his  foe  in  his  hands 
now,  he  could  have  stamped  his  life  out  with  as  little  mercy  as  men  show  who 
crush  a  rattlesnake.  The  fangs  of  a  snake  had  bitten  him;  the  coils  of  a  snake 
strangled  him;  the  virus  of  a  snake  entered  his  whole  life  to  change  and  wither 
and  consume  it.  The  snake  was  Treachery;  and  he  could  have  killed  the 
traitor  with  the  fierce  meed  of  such  justice  as  men  took  when  the  sword  made 
alike  law  and  judge  and  avenger. 

He  strove  to  thrust  it  from  him,  and  it  would  return, — return  to  darken  and 
embitter  the  sweetness  of  a  love  long  denied  to  him,  vivid  and  voluptuous  as 
any  that  had  usurped  him  in  the  years  when  the  fairness  of  woman  had  made 
his  paradise.  He  had  left  her  a  child,  to  pity,  to  caress,  to  play  with,  without 
deeper  thought;  he  found  her  in  a  few  brief  months,  extreme  as  her  youth  still 
was,  a  woman  in  her  superb  beauty,  her  courage,  her  genius,  her  patrician 
grace,  her  far-reaching  meditative  thought,  her  endurance  of  suffering,  her  fear- 
lessness through  danger.  With  the  simplicity  of  a  child,  she  had  left  Vallom- 
brosa  on  the  sting  of  coarse  jests  of  the  peasantry,  that  she  had  resented  with- 
out wholly  comprehending,  of  imputed  dishonor  to  her  and  to  him  which  had 
roused  her  like  a  young  lioness,  though  she  had  but  dimly  known  their  mean- 
ing,— left  it,  and  flung  herself  on  the  unknown,  untraversed  world  with  the  sim- 
plicity of  a  child;  she  was  now  abandoned  to  him,  to  his  will,  to  his  wish,  to  his 
power,  asking  him  nothing  of  his  life,  yielding  him  an  absolute  submission, 
and  seeking  no  more  of  him  or  of  the  world  than  the  one  joy  of  his  presence. 
But  it  was  the  fire  of  the  South  with  which  she  worshipped  him;  the  intense 
strength  of  a  supreme  passion  vibrated  through  the  unquestioning  idolatry  she 
rendered  him.  "  Poco  spero,  mulla  chiede"  had  b^en  the  soul  of  the  rever- 
ence she  bore  him;  but  with  it  ran  the  burning  warmth  of  the  suns  that  had 
shone  on  her  from  her  birth,  with  it  was  blent  the  proud  impassioned  self-ob- 
livion that  would  have  made  her  say  for  her  own  fate,  in  the  words  she  had 
once  quoted  ere  she  wholly  knew  their  meaning,  "  Si  1'empereur  cut  voulu 
m'honorer  du  nom  de  son  epouse,  j'aurais  mieux  aimer  etre  appele  ta  maitresse." 

It  was  the  love  of  which  he  had  dreamed, — the  love  which  he  had  desired, 
and  never  found. 

In  those  long  hours  of  the  spring  night,  while  the  lulling  of  the  water 
sounded  softly  through  the  open  casements,  and  no  light  was  about  them  ex- 
cept the  light  of  the  great  stars  above  Venice,  he  almost  resigned  himself  to 
their  enchantment,  he  almost  cheated  himself  into  the  belief  that  the  years  of 
his  youth  had  revived, — almost.  The  desire  of  vengeance,  the  baffled  justice, 
the  impotence  to  cast  off  one  stone  from  the  granite  cairn  that  had  been  heaped 
to  crush  his  peace  beneath  it,  all  these  that  were  upon  him  forbade  him  the 
one  lotus-draught  he  longed  for, — forgetfulness.  The  intensity  of  the  hatred 


456  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

roused  in  him,  the  exhaustion  of  the  conflict  through  which  he  had  passed 
when  the  code  of  his  justice  had  been  arrainged  against  the  instincts  of  his 
nature,  had  left  a  shadow  upon  him  dark  as  the  past  to  which  they  stretched. 
Of  that  past  he  did  not  speak  to  her;  he  could  not  travel  backward  over  it, 
even  in  words;  she  would  know  it  in  the  future,  but  not  yet  could  he  relate  it. 
With  her  he  strove  to  let  it  die;  the  kiss  of  her  lips,  the  touch  of  her  hair,  the 
beating  of  her  heart  upon  his  own,  the  gaze  with  which  their  eyes  met  in  the 
dreamy  luminance  of  the  moonlight,  were  better  eloquence  than  speech. 

Once  alone  regret  broke  from  him  as  he  looked  down  on  the  sovereign 
loveliness  with  which  nature  had  gifted  her,  as  though  in  recompense  for  all 
which  it  denied  her. 

"  Ah,  Castalia  !  once  I  could  have  given  you  the  royalties  that  you  would 
have  graced  so  richly  !  Now,  my  love,  my  mistress,  my  darling,  my  life  is  but 
dark,  and  lonely,  and  joyless  for  such  years  as  yours.  It  is  very  weary,  it  is 
little  above  poverty;  it  is  spent  in  banishment." 

Where  she  rested  on  his  breast,  the  liquid  brilliance  of  her  gaze  met  his  in 
the  flickering  shadows. 

"  Your  thoughts  are  greater  glory  than  any  crowns.  And — do  you  not  know 
yet  that  I  could  have  no  exile  while  your  hand  touched  mine  ?  that  I  could  feel 
no  poverty  while  I  could  still  look  upward  to  your  face  ?  Oh,  my  lord,  my 
king  !  do  not  shame  me.  I  am  nameless  and  unhonored,  and  without  worth  in 
me  to  have  one  title  to  your  life.  You  honored  me  more  than  empires  could 
honor,  when  you  once  let  rest  on  me  the  graciousness  and  pity  of  your  love  !  " 

His  arms  drew  her  closer  to  his  bosom,  and  his  lips  dwelt  long  on  her  own; 
this  heart  so  wholly  yielded  to  him,  this  faith  which  asked  him  nothing  of  what 
his  past  had  been,  this  nature  which  gave  echo  to  all  that  was  highest  in  his 
own,  were  more  precious  to  him  yet  than  even  the  luxuriance  of  beauty  that 
he  looked  on  in  the  midnight  gleam  of  Venice, — beauty  that  would  be  his  while 
breath  should  move  and  existence  throb  in  it. 

"  Oh,  my  child  ! — my  darling  ! "  he  murmured,  as  his  hand  wandered 
among  the  lustre  of  her  hair,  who  could  behold  you  and  fail  to  give  you  love  ? 
While  I  look  into  your  eyes,  I  live  in  my  lost  world  once  more." 

For  love  itself  is  youth,  and  cannot  revive  without  bringing  some  light  of 
youth  back  with  it. 

With  her,  his  life  seemed  once  more  what  it  had  been  when,  in  the  languor 
of  the  East,  and  under  the  glow  of  the  Southern  skies,  he  had  loved  and  been 
loved  in  the  careless  vivid  sweetness  of  a  poet's  passions,  deep-hued  and  chang- 
ing as  a  sapphire  in  the  sun.  But  when  later  he  left  her  for  the  few  short  hours 
emaining  of  the  Venetian  night,  left  her  lest  foul  tongues  should  touch  her 
lefenceless  innocence,  the  spell  broke,  the  black  desires  that  had  wakened  in 
him  embittered  and  banished  the  softer  dreams  that  for  the  moment  had 


CHAN  DOS.  457 

usurped  him.  His  soul  was  set  upon  his  vengeance,— set  in  the  impotence 
of  David's  desperation:  "How  long,  O  Lord?  how  long?"  It  seemed  to 
him  as  though  no  retribution  could  ever  serve  to  wash  out  his  wrongs,  and 
stamp  his  traitor  what  he  was  in  the  sight  of  the  people  who  followed  and  believed 
in  him;  it  seemed  to  him  that  no  justice  that  could  rend  the  living  lie  of  this 
man's  life  asunder,  and  show  its  hidden  vileness  to  the  world  he  fooled,  would 
ever  cut  deep  enough,  ever  stretch  wide  enough,  ever  avail  enough  to  avenge 
the  endless  treachery  with  which  his  foe  had  taken  food  and  raiment  and 
wealth  from  him  with  one  hand,  to  thieve  and  stab  him  with  the  other.  "  My 
God  !  "  he  thought,  as  he  went  alone  through  the  stillness  of  the  after-midnight, 
"  what  could  vengeance  do  sufficient  ?  None  could  give  me  back  all  the  world 
I  have  lost,  all  the  years  I  have  consumed,  all  the  joy  he  wrecked  forever,  all 
the  youth  he  slew  in  me  at  one  blow.  Vengeance  !  the  worst  would  be  as  a 
drop  beside  an  ocean.  He  has  prospered,  and  enjoyed,  and  triumphed,  all  his 
life  long:  how  would  vengeance  merely  at  the  end  strike  the  balance  between 
us  ?  If  my  hand  were  at  his  throat  now,  how  would  one  death-pang  pay  me  for 
all  the  living  torture  of  nigh  half  a  lifetime?  " 

No  requital  that  thought  could  reach  seemed  vast  enough  to  embrace  the 
wrongs  wrought  on  him  from  the  first  hour  when  the  generous  faith  of  his  boy- 
hood had  flung  him  without  defence  into  the  net  and  power  of  his  traitor's 
subtlety.  If  the  means  came  to  his  hand  to  strike  his  enemy  down  from  the 
eminence  of  station  and  the  fruitage  of  achieved  ambition,  it  could  do  at  its 
best  so  little;  if  it  could  destroy  the  future,  it  could  efface  nothing  of  the  past,  it 
could  change  none  of  these  years  that  had  seemed  so  endless,  through  whose 
course  he  had  dwelt  in  banishment  and  bitte'rness  and  seen  his  Iscariot  caressed 
2nd  crowned.  Though  his  hand  should  ever  dash  down  the  brimming  cup  of 
Trevenna's  success,  the  uneven  balance  between  them  could  never  be  redressed; 
the  world-wide  wrong  must  ever  remain  unrequited,  uneffaced.  What  could 
give  him  back  all  it  had  killed  forever  in  him  ?  What  could  bring  back  to 
earth  the  gallant  and  beloved  life  of  the  old  man  whom  it  had  slain  ?  What 
could  restore  him  to  all  he  had  forfeited  through  it  ?  What  could  make  him 
ever  again  as  he  had  been  when  its  ruin  had  blasted  the  glory  from  his  years 
forever  ? 

Vengeance! — its  fatality,  its  insufficiency,  its  weakness  of  act,  beside  the 
strength  and  longing  of  his  own  passions,  recoiled  upon  him  with  the  heart- 
sickness  of  vain  desire:  yet  the  world  seemed  to  hold  but  one  thought,  one 
future,  one  travail  on  him, — justice  against  his  traitor! 

Where  he  went  in  the  silence  of  the  late  night,  past  the  great  Austrian 
palaces  of  Venice,  that  were  filled  with  revelry  and  music,  and  the  fragrance  of 
flowers,  and  the  masking-of  Carnival  balls,  with  the  gay  riots  of  the  melodies 
echoing  through  the  conquered  city,  and  the  wreathing  of  gold  and  silk  and 


458  QUID  AS     WORKS, 

many-colored  blossoms  hanging  all  alight  with  lamps  over  the  melancholy  and 
the  dignity  of  the  time-honored,  sea-worn  marbles,  the  rich,  rolling,  silver 
cadence  of  a  Bacchic  chant,  sung  with  careless  mirth  and  deep  Olympian 
laughter,  rang  across  the  water  and  above  the  strains  of  the  Austrain  music.  It 
was  the  voice  of  Philippe  d'Orvale. 

In  his  carnival  dress,  with  its  scarlet-and-gold  floating  back,  and  the  light 
of  the  stars  and  the  crescents  of  lamps  glittering  on  its  jewelled  brillance,  he 
came  down  a  flight  of  stone  stairs  from  some  reckless  revelry,  the  song  on  his 
lips,  the  laughter  still  given  back  in  answer  to  a  challenge  from  some  fair 
maskers  that  leaned  above,  the  fragrance  of  wine  only  just  dashed  from  the 
auburn  silver-flecked  waves  of  his  beard.  "  Vivre  selon  son  cceur  !  "  was  the 
epitome  of  "the  mad  duke's  "  life,  as  of  Diderot's;  and,  as  in  Diderot's,  there 
was  a  grand,  careless,  Titan  majesty  in  this  handsome  head,  tossed  back  in 
such  fiery  defiance,  such  sunny  laughter,  against  the  laws  of  conventionality 
and  the  snow-barriers  of  prejudice.  Life  was  too  rich  with  him  to  be  stinted 
by  a  niggard  measure;  its  joys,  its  passions,  its  treasures,  its  scope,  too  wide,  to 
be  meted  out  by  the  foot-rule  of  custom;  and  while  men  of  his  own  years  grew 
gray  about  him,  the  prince-Bohemian  laughed  at  Time,  and  found  the  roses  of 
his  wine-feasts  blossom  never  fading  to  his  hand. 

His  Bacchan  chaunt  paused;  a  gentle,  softened  look  gleamed  from  the 

flash  of  his  brown,  fearless  eyes,  as  in  the  shadow  of  the  street  he  saw  Chandos. 

"Ah!  c'esttoi!"     And   in  the  caress  of  the  French  tutoiement,  and  the 

touch  of  his  hand  as  it  fell  on  the  shoulder  of  the  man  he  loved  best,  there  was 

the  welcome  of  a  friendship  close  as  brotherhood. 

Not  a  tree  had  ever  been  felled'at  Clarencieux,  not  a  picture  been  stirred, 
not  a  horse,  useless  from  age,  been  shot,  not  a  trifle  in  the  whole  length  of  the 
chambers,  not  an  unfinished  sketch  in  the  forsaken  atelier,  not  a  disordered 
manuscript  in  the  solitude  of  the  Greuze  Cabinet,  been  touched,  under  Philippe 
d'Orvale's  reign.  With  him  the  exile  was  honored;  with  him  the  memory  of 
the  disinherited  was  kept  green  and  cherished  and  sacred  in  the  hearts  of  the 
people.  "I  am  but  his  viceroy:  keep  your  homage  for  the  absent,"  he  had 
said  once  when  the  peasantry  had  addressed  him  as  their  lord. 

"So  !  you  are  in  Venice?"  he  said,  softly,  where  he  paused  in  the  deeper 
shadow,  with  the  festoons  of  light  and  the  arabesque  of  flower-wreathed  bal- 
cony far  above,  reflected  in  the  "black  surface  of  the  canal.  "  I  half  hoped  to 
meet  you  here  when  I  came  for  this  riotous  Carnival  time  with  which  our 
Austria  Felix  tries  to  drown  the  murmurs  of  her  prey.  You  have  not  been 
long,  Ernest?" 

"  I  came  but  to-day.     Lulli  needed  me " 

u  Lulli  ?  what  ails  him  ?  "  This  princely  Bohemian,  whose  own  strength 
was  so  superb  and  whose  existence  so  joyous,  had  always  had  a  singular  com- 


CHAN  DOS.  459 

passion  and  tenderness  for  the  cripple  whose  art  was  his  only  happiness:  his 
home  had  always  been  open  to  him,  his  aid  always  ready  for  him.  The  strong 
hand  of  the  aristocrat  had  often  raised  the  fame  of  the  musician  above 
the  envy  or  the  rivalry  that  had  tried  to  crush  it,  and  not  a  little  of  the  wealth 
given  to  Lulli  for  his  music  had  gone  in  secret  from  D'Orvale,  unguessed  by 
the  recipient. 

"  Nothing  ails  him,"  Chandos  answered,  wearily:  his  thoughts  were  far  in 
other  things.  "  But  a  singer  has  been  arrested  here  for  giving  some  of  his 
music  in  public, — some  song  of  freedom  too  free  for  Austria;  and  his  heart  is 
set  on  her  liberation." 

"  Ah  !"  the  duke  ground  his  heel  into  the  pavement;  "I  will  see  to  that. 
They  shall  give  her  her  liberty  in  twenty-four  hours.  The  fools  !  to  think  that 
by  scourging  a  woman  they  can  consolidate  an  empire  !  Every  weakness 
persecuted  becomes  strength  against  its  persecutor  when  once  hunted  into 
martyrdom.  And  they  will  not  know  that  !" 

"  When  they  do,  human  life  will  have  entered  on  a  very  different  phase 
from  what  we  live  in."  . 

Philippe  d'Orvale  flashed  a  quick  glance  on  him.  This  wild,  headlong,  in- 
souciant rioter  could  read  men  like  a  book. 

"  Tell  me,"  he  said,  gently  (and  his  voice  had  the  sweetness  of  a  tender 
woman's), — "  tell  me:  you  have  had  some  fresh  pain, — some  new  wrong  ?  " 

"Scarcely;  but  I  have  had  fresh  temptation,  and  I  have  little  strength 
for  it." 

"  You  always  underrate  your  strength  !  " 

"  Not  I;  Sometimes  I  think  that  were  impossible.  We  flatter  ourselves  we 
have  strength,  we  pride  ourselves  on  our  codes,  on  our  philosophies,  on  our  for- 
bearance; and  the  momenta  spark  is  dropped  on  our  worst  passions,  they  flare 
alight  and  consume  all  else  !  " 

The  duke  tossed  back  the  glitter  of  his  Carnival  dress. 

"  May-be  !  But  the  age  rants  too  much  against  the  passions.  From  them 
may  spring  things  that  are  vile;  but  without  them  life  were  stagnant,  and  heroic 
action  dead.  Storms  destroy;  but  storms  purify." 

Chandos  paused  in  the  shade  of  the  marble  wall  looming  above,  and  turned 
his  eyes  on  his  companion.  To  the  man  who'  had  been  faithful  to  him  under 
trial  as  no  other  had  been,  to  the  man  who  had  saved  the  honor  of  his  heritage 
from  being  parcelled  out  amidst  knaves  and  hucksters,  he  bore  more  than 
friendship,  and  he  spoke  with  the  frankness  of  brethren. 

"  There  is  truth  in  that;  but  we  are,  at  our  best,  half  passion,  half  intelli- 
gence, and  at  a  touch  the  brute  will  rise  in  us  and  strangle  all  the  rest.  No 
man  can  wholly  suppress  the  animal  in  him;  and  there  are  times  when  he  will 
long  to  kill  as  animals  long  for  it." 


460  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

"  Ay  !  "  Philippe  d'Orvale's  fair  frank  faced  flushed,  and  his  right  hand 
clenched:  he  had  known  that  longing. 

"  Tell  me tell  me  whether  to-night  I  was  weak  as  a  fool,  or  did  but  barren 

justice.     I  barely  can  tell  myself.     John  Trevenna  has  been  the  foe  of  my  life; 

you  know  that " 

«  Know  it!  Yes  ! — a  hound  who  turned  on  his  master!  By  my  faith,  when 
I  see  that  man  in  honor  and  eminence,  I  knew  what  Georges  Cadoudal  meant 
when  he  said,  '  Que  de  fautes  j'ai  commis  de  ne  pas  etouffer  cet  homme-la 
dans  mes  bras  ! '  If  there  be  a  regret  in  my  life,  it  is  that  7  did  not  kill  him 
where  he  stood  laughing  and  taunting  on  your  hearth,  while  you  went  out  to 
your  exile! " 

The  blood  flushed  Chandos'  face,  and  his  teeth  set  hard. 
"You  left  it  for  me!"     There  was  a   terrible  meaning  in  the  brevity  of 
the  words.     "  Well,  to-night  I  could  have  had  my  vengeance  on  him,  to-night 
I  could  have  unearthed  his  villany  to  hold  it  up  before  the  nation  that  takes 
him  as  a  chief;  to-night  I  know  as  though  I  saw  it  written  before  me  that  he 
betrayed  me,  chicaned  me,  robbed  me  as  usurers  rob;  and — I  let  justice  go!  " 
"Let  it  go!     Are  you  mad?"     The  duke's  eyes  were  aflame  like  a  lion's, 
his  breath  came  hotly,  his  Southern  temper  was   on  fire  like  so  much  spirit 
lighted  at  the  words  and  the  wrongs  of  his  friend. 

"That  is  what  I  doubt  !  I  would  sell  my  own  life  for  justice  on  him;  I 
fear  I  could  kill  him  with  less  thought  than  men  kill  adders! — and  yet  I  let  it 
go.  I  could  not  reach  it  without  forcing  another  to  break  his  oath,  to  for- 
swear his  conscience,  to  sin  against  the  only  redemption  of  his  life:  what 
could  I  do  ?  " 

"  Do  ?  I  would  have  crushed  ten  thousand  to  have  struck  at  him!  Tell 
me  more." 

"  I  cannot.  It  is  another's  secret,  not  my  own;  were  it  mine,  you  should 
know  it.  All  the  laws  of  justice  and  humanity  bound  me  powerless;  I  could 
not  break  through  them.  I  had  honored  this  man's  fidelity  when  I  was  in 
ignorance  whom  it  was  rendered  to:  I  could  not  dishonor  it  because  I  learned 
that  it  was  shown  to  my  enemy." 

Philippe  d'Orvale  stood  silent,  his  teeth  crushing  his  silken  beard. 
"  Few  men  would  have  stayed  for  that,"  he  said,  curtly,  at  the  last. 
"  May-be  !     It  was  hard  for  me  to  stay  for  it.     It  is  hard  as  death  now  !     It 
were  surely  small  crime  to  tempt  anyone  to  betray  a  trajtor;  it  were   but  to 
turn  against  him  his  own  poisoned  weapons.     One  oath  broken  more  or  less, 
what  would  it  be  in  self-defence  against  one  who  has  broken  thousands,  broken 
every  tie  and  bond  of  gratitude,  of  honesty  ?     And   yet— right  is  right.     I 
could  not  bid  another  turn  betrayer  because  I  had  been  betrayed.     Look  !  to 
have   my   justice  of  vengeance,  I  must  have  done  injustice  to  one   placed,  in 


CHAN  DOS.  461 

his  own  unconsciousness  and  by  his  own  trust,  in  my  power.  Which  could  I 
choose  ? — to  forego  it,  or  to  wrong  him  ?  " 

Philippe  d'Orvale  lifted  his  lion's  head  with  a  toss  of  his  lion's  mane;  his 
eyes  rested  on  Chandos  with  a  loyal,  flashing,  noble  light. 

"Forego  it!  Your  vengeance  were  ill  purchased  by  any  falsehood  to 
yourself." 

It  wrung  his  heart  to  say  so,  wellnigh  as  hard  as  it  had  cost  Chandos  to 
yield  the  sacrifice  the  Israelite  had  asked  for  him;  for  he  could  hate  with  a 
great  hatred,  fierce  and  stern  as  his  friendship  was  fervent,  and  that  hate  fell 
on  none  heavier  than  on  John  Trevenna.  But  the  creeds  of  the  superb  gentle- 
man could  not  forswear  themselves. 

Chandos  stretched  out  his  hand  in  silence;  D'Orvale's  met  it  in  a  close 
firm  grasp.  They  said  no  more;  they  understood  each  other  without  words: 
only,  as  they  parted  farther  on  in  the  lateness  of  the  night,  the  prince-Bohe- 
mian's regard  dwelt  on  him  with  something  that  was  wistful  for  once  almost  to 
sadness, — a  thing  that  had  no  place  in  the  brilliant  and  heedless  career  of  the 
"  mad  duke." 

"  Chandos,  you  were  made  for  Arthur's  days,  not  for  ours.  Those  grand 
creeds  avail  nothing — except  to  ruin  yourself.  Yet  you  would  rather  have 
them  ?  Well,  so  would  I,  though  I  am  but  a  wine-cup  roysterer." 

As  he  spoke,  the  lights  burning  above  among  a  sea  of  flowers  and  colors, 
in  crescents  and  stars  and  bands  of  fire,  shone  on  the  leonine  royalty  of  his 
head  and  the  majesty  of  his  height,  all  lustrous  with  the  scarlet  and  the  gold 
and  the  diamonds  of  his  Carnival  attire.  There  was  an  unusual  softness  in 
his  brown,  bold  eyes,  an  unusual  touch  of  melancholy  in  his  voice: — that  one 
memory  of  him  was  never  to  pass  away  from  Chandos, 


CHAPTER     VI. 

ET    TU,    BRUTE  ! 

THROUGH  the  brilliance  of  the  earliest  sun-dawn  a  gondola  shot  swiftly 
through  the  silent  highways,  with  the  light  on  the  water  breaking  from  under 
its  prow  in  a  shower  of  rippling  gold,  and  the  brown  shadows  lazily  sleeping 
under  the  arches  of  bridges,  and  under  the  towering  walls,  as  though  they  were 
loath  to  wake  and  flee  before  the  rising  of  day.  It  was  just  morning;  no  more, 
but  morning  in  all  its  radiance,  with  the  scarlet  heads  of  carnations  unclosing, 
and  the  many-colored  hues  warm  over  land  and  sea,  with  the  darkness  only 


4)j.,  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

left  in  the  hushed  aisles  of  churches,  and  the  breath  of  the  sea-wind  blowing 
balmily  from  thfc  Adriatic.  Guide  Lulli,  where  he  leaned  in  the  vessel,  saw  it 
all  with  an  artist's  eye,  felt  it  all  with  an  artist's  heart,  and  wove  magical  dreams 
of  sound  from  the  melody  of  the  oars.  Life  had  been  but  captious  with  him, 
giving  him  the  head  of  a  seraph  and  the  limbs  of  a  stricken  child,  the  heart  of 
a  man  and  the  frame  of  a  paralytic,  breaking  his  youth  into  weakness  and  tor- 
ture and  starvation  and  strengthlessness,  calling  his  manhood  into  the  fame  of 
the  world  and  crowning  him  with  the  great  masters;  it  had  been  cruel  and  lavish 
at  once,  taking  from  him  all  happiness,  all  knowledge  of  happiness,  all  con- 
sciousness of  what  health  could  mean  or  freedom  from  pain  be  like,  all  sense 
of  "the  wild  joys  of  living  "  and  of  the  liberties  and  heritage  of  manhood, 
taking  them  from  him,  from  the  hour  of  his  birth,  and  making  every  desire  of 
his  heart  an  unending  pang;  yet— giving  him  in  one  Art,  giving  him  with  the 
eye,  and  the  ear,  and  the  temperament  of  genius,  a  sovereignty  wide  as  the 
world,  and  a  treasury  of  beauty  that  could  only  be  closed  when  the  touch  of 
death  should  make  his  sight  dark  and  his  hands  motionless.  Others,  beholding 
him,  saw  but  a  pale,  shattered,  silent  cripple,  with  great  wistful  eyes,  ever  seem- 
ing to  seek  what  they  never  found, — a  man  whom  a  child  could  cheat,  whom  a 
buffoon  could  mock,  whom  a  stare  could  make  nervously  and  unbearably 
wretched;  but  others  had  come  to  know  that  this  man  had  a  kingdom  of  his 
own  in  which  he  was  supreme,  had  a  power  of  his  own  in  which  he  was  godlike, 
and  lived  as  far  above  the  fever  and  the  fret  of  their  own  lives  as  the  stars  move 
above  them  in  their  courses.  He  heard  what  they  never  heard,  he  saw  what 
they  never  saw;  and  to  Lulli's  sublime  transcendentalism  the  whole  universe 
was  but  as  one  chaunt  of  God. 

As  his  gondola  glided  now,  he  was  looking  dreamily  upward:  he  was  in 
Venice  because  the  young  Venetian  had  been  arrested  for  singing  a  song  of 
liberty  from  one  of  his  operas,  might  be  imprisoned,  might  be  scourged  perhaps, 
and  he  came  to  save  her  from  chastisement,  or  to  insist  that  he  had  a  right 
to  share  it.  He  knew  nothing  of  her  except  the  fact  that  she  had  suffered 
through  singing  his  music  in  defiance  of  the  usurpers;  but  he  had  a  lion-bold- 
ness where  wrong  menaced  weakness,  and  a  pure  chivalrous  instinct  conquered, 
whenever  it  was  needed,  the  shrinking  sensibilities  and  the  physical  feebleness 
of  this  man,  whom  other  men  had  called  for  three  parts  of  his  life— a  fool.  The 
buzz  and  the  fret  and  the  money-seeking  crowds  of  the  world  passed  by  him 
unnoticed,  unheard;  he  took  no  more  heed  of  the  stir  about  him  than  if  he  had 
been  a  palm-tree  set  in  their  midst,  and  they  thought  him  a  fool  accordingly; 
but  let  one  spark  from  the  flame  of  wrong,  one  blow  from  the  gauntlet  of 
tyranny,  fall  on  anything  near  him,  and  the  enthusiast,  the  dreamer,  the  iso- 
lated visionary,  became  on  the  instant  filled  with  fire  and  with  action.  And  for 
this  yet  more  they  called  him  fool:  the  man  who  does  not  care  for  his  own 


CHAN  DOS.  463 

purse  and  his  own  palate,  but  only  rouses  for  some  alien  injury,  what  is  he  but 
the  Quixote  of  all  ages  ? 

As  he  went  now,  to  welcome  to  Venice  the  one  friend  of  his  life,  he  looked 
up  at  that  towering  marble  and  the  blue  of  the  cloudless  skies  above.  Above  a 
lofty  archway,  out  of  an  oval  casement,  with  her  arms  resting  on  the  jasper  ledge, 
and  the  umber  darkness  behind  her,  so  that  as  the  sun  fell  full  upon  her  face 
and  her  hair  she  was  like  one  of  those  master-pictures  where  the  golden  head  of  a 
woman  gazes  out  from  a  black  unbroken  surface  of  deepest  shade,  leaned  Cas- 
talia.  Her  eyes  were  glancing  above,  following  a  flight  of  white  pigeons  whose 
wings  flashed  silver  in  the  light;  and  on  her  face  was  the  look,  more  spiritual- 
ized than  any  smile,  more  intense  than  any  radiance,  more  hushed  and  yet 
more  passionate  than  any  words  can  paint,  of  that  happiness  which  is  "the 
sweetest  vintage  of  the  vine  of  life." 

Lulli  glanced  up  and  saw  her  there,  leaning  down  over  the  dark  mosaics; 
he  strove  to  rise,  ere  the  boat  had  swept  past. 

"Valeria!" 

As  the  name  left  his  lips,  reason  and  memory  and  the  space  of  years  were 
all  as  naught;  he  was  back  in  the  days  of  his  youth  and  his  poverty;  he  believed 
that  his  lost  one  lived  unchanged,  imaged;  with  the  warmth  of  Southern  suns 
upon  it,  and  made  richer  and  fairer  yet  by  that  higher  and  softer  light  it  wore, 
the  face  of  his  lost  darling  looked  on  him  once  more  from  the  jasper  setting  of 
the  Venetian  casement.  A  gondola,  that  had  followed  him  from  his  dwelling, 
glided  up  swiftly  in  his  wake  and  came  side  by  side  with  his  own;  from  the 
awning  a  woman's  hand  was  stretched  and  touched  his  arm. 

"  Signer  Lulli,  one  word  with  you." 

He  uncovered  his  head,  with  the  instinct  of  courtesy,  and  turned  to  her; 
but  his  thoughts  were  whirling:  what  he  had  seen  seemed  to  him  like  a  resur- 
rection from  the  dead. 

"With  me?     Whom  have  I  the  honor ?  " 

"  A  friend  to  you,  and  to  one  you  lost.  Let  us  wait  a  moment,  there  in  the 
shadow." 

The  speaker  who  had  arrested  him  leaned  from  beneath  her  awning,  her 
hand  lying  on  the  side  of  his  gondola:  he  could  not  see  her  features,  but  her 
voice  was  very  melodious  and  low. 

"  There  was  once  a  life  that  was  very  dear  to  you  in  the  old  days  at  Aries  ?  " 

He  trembled  violently;  his  frame  was  very  feeble,  and  his  heart  had  dwelt 
so  long  on  this  one  stolen  treasure,  had  so  long  abandoned  all  hope  that  its 
spoiler  or  its  refuge  could  ever  be  known,  that  the  thought  of  touching  at  last 
the  secret  buried  so  long,  overcame  him,  as  when  they  come,  at  last,  upon  the 
gold  vein,  the  toil-worn  and  heart-sickened  gold-searchers  are  beaten  with 
their  joy. 


464  QUID  AS     WORKS.     , 

"  Dear  to  me  ?    Yes,  God  knows  !     You  bring  tidings  of  Valeria  ?  " 
She  whose  form  was  lost  in  the  shapeless  folds 'of  a  Carmelite's  habit,  and 
whose  face  was  obscured  by  the  hood  of  the  order,  stooped  from  under  the 
black  shade  of  the  gondola. 

"  Land;  and  I  will  tell  you  all  I  have  to  tell." 

He  obeyed  her,  his  weakened  limbs  bearing  him  slowly  and  with  labor  up 
the  water-stairs.  Fronting  them  was  the  porch  of  a  church, — a  great,  gray, 
dim,  noble  place,  with  marvellous  carvings  of  time-browned  stone,  and  feathery 
grasses  floating  from  its  colossal  height,  and  Titian  statues  that  looked  blind 
and  weary  down  from  their  niches  on  the  water  below,  as  though  evil  days  had 
fallen  on  them  and  on  their  Venice. 

The  entrance  was  wide  and  of  vast  depth,  a  lofty  cavern,  roofed  and  walled  with 
carvings  on  which  countless  hearts  and  hands  had  spent  their  lifetime's  labor; 
and  from  it,  in  the  body  of  the  building,  were  seen  by  changing  glimpses, 
as  the  air  moved  the  vast  moth-eaten  fall  of  Genoese  velvet  to  and  fro,  glimpses 
of  twilight  gloom  with  the  ethereal  tracery  of  the  ivory  pyx  gleaming  white 
from  the  shadow,  and  the  marble  limbs  of  a  crucified  Christ  nailed  against  a 
dark  pillar  of  Sienna  marble.  She  motioned  him  to  rest  on  the  stone  bench 
within  the  porch,  and  stood  herself  beside  him.  He  never  asked  her  who  she 
was;  he  never  thought  of  her  save  as  one  who  knew  Valeria;  her  religious  habit 
made  her  sacred  in  his  eyes,  and  his  soul  held  but  one  thought, — the  fate  of 
the  one  lost  to  him.  His  eyes  sought  the  Carmelite's  with  longing  anxiety. 
"  Speak  now  ! — speak  in  one  word,  if  you  can.  Where  is  Valeria  ? " 
"  Dead." 

The  word  was  spoken  very  gently,  but  it  dealt  him  a  keen  blow;  though  he 
had  long  said  that  she  was  dead  to  him, — said  it  in  the  bitterness  of  his  soul 
when  he  had  first  heard  of  her  flight  to  dishonor, — he  had  unconsciously  cher- 
ished hope  that  some  day,  ere  it  should  be  too  late,  he  would  find  her. 

"Dead?"  he  murmured:  "and  without  one  word  for  me  !  But  that  face 
yonder  ? — it  was  hers  !  " 

His  heart  was  full,  and  he  spoke  on  its  impulse;  he  never  remembered  that 
he  addressed  a  stranger,  he  only  knew  that  he  spoke  to  one  who  might  give  him 
some  link  with  his  long- broken  past;  his  mind  was  giddy;  his  love  for  Valeria, 
his  loathing  of  her  shame,- were  wakened  in  all  their  first  intensity;  his  life  had 
been  entirely  uneventful,  and  the  few  things  that  had  marked  it  held  him  for- 
ever, as  they  could  never  have  held  a  life  of  action. 

'  She  brings  you  some  memory  ? "  pursued  his  questioner.     The  voice  was 
ubdued,  and  yet  had  a  certain  imperious  command  in  it  that  would  not  be  re- 
isted  and  was  unaccustomed  to  delay  as  to  disobedience.     The  eyes  of  the 
cripple  turned  with  pathetic  entreaty  upon  her. 

"  You  must  know  that  she  does,  or  why  speak  to  me  of  her  ?    Whoever  you 


CHANDOS.  465 

are,  whoever  she  be,  tell  me,  for  the  love  of  mercy.     You  know  the   fate  of 
Valeria? " 

"  She  whom  you  now  saw  is  Valeria's  daughter." 

The  Provencal's  face  flushed  scarlet,  his  eyes  lighted  with  an  infinite  ten- 
derness, that  flashed  and  darkened  into  the  fiery  wrath  that  had  used  to  arise 
in  them  against  the  unknown  lover  of  the  last  of  his  name. 

His  teeth  set;  his  hands  clenched. 

"  Her  daughter  ?     My  God!     And  he— 

"  He — led  Valeria  where  dishonor  was  forgotten  in  recklessness,  and  shame 
was  lost  in  diamonds  and  wine  and  evil  laughter." 

The  fury  of  his  Southern  blood  dyed  his  face  and  lightened  his  eyes;  the 
stab  of  the  disgrace  to  his  name,  long  ennobled  by  art  and  long  pure  from  the 
faintest  taint,  smote  him  as  keenly  as  in  the  first  moment  when  he  had  learned 
Valeria's  fate;  the  old  vengeance  that  he  had  vowed  against  her  lover  rose  in 
him,  black  as  night;  his  breath  came  short  and  stifled;  the  hand  that  drew 
such  aerial  and  tender  melodies  from  the  keys  clenched  as  though  ready  to  do 
avenging  work, 

"  His  name  ?"  he  said.  It  was  but  a  whisper;  yet  a  vibration  ran  through  it 
that  told  without  words  the  strength  which  this  frail  and  suffering-worn  cripple 
would  find  against  the  spoiler  and  polluter  of  the  only  life  round  which  his 
memory,  his  imagination,  and  his  heart  had  ever  woven  the  fair,  if  the  vain 
dreams  of  love. 

She  was  silent. 

"  His  name  ? "  he  said,  with  an  imperious  force  that  rang  through  the 
silence.  His  eyes  dilated  and  flashed  fiery  gleams  from  their  black  soft  sweet- 
ness; his  whole  frame  was  instinct  with  the  vivid  energy  of  the  manhood  that 
leaped  into  sudden  power  under  the  touch  of  wrong,  at  the  power  which 
came  into  his  hands  after  the  lapse  of  so  many  hopeless  and  silent  years. 

"Can  you  bear  its  telling?  "  she  said  gravely. 

"  I  will  not  bear  its  denial.  His  name  ?  and  may  my  worst  vengeance 
light " 

"Hush!"  She  lifted  her  hand  to  silence  him  ere  the  imprecation  was 
breathed.  "  You  know  not  whom  you  curse." 

"Nor  care!  If  he  live,  my  hate  shall  find  him.  Feeble  and  womanish  and 
worthless  as  my  limbs  are,  they  shall  have  strength  in  them  to  track  him  where- 
ever  he  hides,  and  teach  him  that  one  still  lives  who  can  remember  and  avenge 
her.  His  name?" 

"Wait!     Be  calmer  ere  you  hear  it." 

"  Calmer!  when  her  child  lives  there  ?" 

"Yes.  Her  child  knows  nothing  of  her  parentage;  nor  what  that  parentage 
is  can  I  well  tell.  Valeria's  life  grew  very  evil." 


466 


OUIDAS     WORKS. 


The  dark  blood  grew  purple  over  Lulli's  delicate  features,  his  lips  turned 
white  as  death;  he  suffered  excruciatingly;  no  noble  was  more  tenacious  of  the 
nonor  of  his  name  than  he. 

"Speak!"  he  said,  hoarsely.  "Who  was  her  tempter?  Who  lured  her 
first  to  her  sin  ?  " 

"Wait!  Hear  her  history  first.  She  was  a  beautiful,  heartless,  wayward, 
unscrupulous  woman,  to  whom  honor  was  nothing,  to  whom  levity  and  shame 
were  sweet." 

"  He  made  her  that,  if  ever  she  became  it.  The  greater,  then,  his  crime. 
His  name  ? " 

"  Patience:  do  not  hasten  your  own  bitterness." 

"  I  hasten  to  end  it.  It  can  only  be  quenched  in  vengeance."  His  hand 
knit  nervously,  the  long,  fair,  womanlike  fingers  trembling  as  though  in  long- 
ing to  hold  the  weapon  of  his  chastisement. 

"She  lived  for  a  while  in  sinful  magnificence;  but  she  died  in  the  utmost 
poverty,  in  a  Tuscan  village.  It  is  a  common  fate." 

He  shook  in  his  whole  frame  as  he  heard. 

"  And  then  you  bid  me  withhold  my  curse  ?  She  died  in  want,  after  a  short, 
shameful  life  of  glided  vice  ?  No  curse  is  wide  enough  to  reach  him,  if  he 
drove  her  to  that  infamy." 

"It  was  scarce  his  fault:  she  loved  the  fatal  power  of  her  beauty  but  too 
well.  She  died  at  Fontane  Amorose:  if  you  need  a  witness,  it  is  here."  She 
stretched  out  to  him  a  small,  silver,  heart-shaped  relic-box,  worn  and  almost 
valueless,  on  which  were  rudely  graven  the  words,  "  Valeria  Lulli."  A  moan 
broke  from  him  as  he  saw  it;  his  face  grew  white,  his  eyes  filled  with  tears. 

"  Oh,  God  !  I  gave  her  this  myself;  she  was  a  child  then,— a  child  so  beau- 
tiful, so  innocent!"  His  voice  sank,  his  head  drooped;  the  sight,  the  touch, 
of  the  little  relic  struck  him  to  the  heart;  the  hour  of  its  gift  came  back  on  him 
as  though  lived  but  yesterday, — the  hour  when,  with  many  a  denial  of  self,  he 
had  treasured  up  coins  till  he  had  bought  the  thing  that  had  been  the  wish  of 
her  heart,  and  slung  it,  as  his  recompense,  round  the  fair  throat  of  the  laughing 
child  who  paid  him  with  her  kisses. 

"  She  left  it,  on  her  death-bed,  with  a  contadina  for  me.  I  had  known  her 
in  days  evil  to  us  both.  There  were  a  few  feeble  lines  to  me  with  it,  unfinished. 
The  peasant  kept  it,  telling  no  one  of  it,  and  thinking  it  of  value  for  its  holiness, 
till  a  few  months  ago,  when  the  child  Castalia  was  lost  from  Fontane,  the 
woman's  conscience  woke,  and  she  sent  it  to  me.  I  have  left  the  world;  I  am 
in  a  religious  order  now:  thus  it  was  long  in  finding  me.  Once  received,  and 
hearing  also  for  the  only  time  of  this  young  girl's  life,  my  first  wish  was  to  seek 
out  you,  and  leave  you  to  become,  if  you  should  choose,  the  avenger  of  the 
dead,  the  protector  of  the  living." 


CHAN  DOS.  40  T 

The  words  had  a  pathetic  and  solemn  earnestness.  Lulli  bowed  his  head, 
and  pressed  his  lips  on  the  silver  heart. 

"  I  swear  to  be  both,"  he  said,  simply.     "  And  now,  once  more,  his  name  ?  " 

"  Her  lover  was — Chandos  !  " 

A  cry,  such  as  that  which  men  give  on  the  battle-field,  broke  from  him, — a 
cry  of  torture. 

"  It  is  false  !  false  as  hell  !  "  he  swore,  in  the  agony  of  his  passion.  "  No 
lie  ever  touched  his  lips;  no  treachery  ever  belonged  to  him." 

"  No,"  said  the  Carmelite,  gently:  "you  are  right.  But  Valeria  Lulli  was 
only  known  to  him  as— Flora  de  1'Orme." 

The  Provencal's  attenuated  form  seemed  suddenly  to  shrink  and  wither 
and  lose  all  life  as  he  heard;  the  name  came  back  on  his  memory  after  long 
oblivion  of  it;  he  had  used  to  hear  it  in  those  days  that  were  gone,  the  name  of 
the  magnificent,  reckless,  extravagant  lionne  who  had  wasted  her  lover's  gold 
right  and  left,  and  given  but  a  mocking  laugh  at  his  ruin. 

"  He  met  her  in  Aries,"  pursued  the  voice  of  his  companion,  with  a  gentle 
pity  in  its  intonation.  "  She  left  Aries  with  him.  She  was  known  to  him  only 
by  her  nom  de  fantaisie.  What  her  life  became  you  are  aware." 

He  scarcely  heard  her;  his  hands  had  clenched  on  the  stone-work;  he  quiv- 
ered from  head  to  foot;  the  flame  in  his  eyes  had  died  in  an  anguish  beside 
which  the  mere  fury  for  vengeance  was  dwarfted  and  stilled  as  he  gazed  down 
on  the  silver  relic. 

"  O  Christ!  have  pity.     I  swore  my  oath  against  him!" 

The  words  were  inarticulate  in  his  throat;  every  fibre  in  him  thrilled  with 
the  fire  of  his  rage  against  Valeria's  tempter,  and  every  debt  his  life  had  owned 
bound  him  in  fealty  to  the  man  whom  in  his  blind  haste  he  had,  unknowing, 
cursed.-  He  would  have  died  willingly  to  spare  one  pang  to  Chandos,  and  he 
had  vowed  to  the  dead,  and  to  the  living  to  know  no  rest  till  the  work  of  retri- 
bution should  be  accomplished.  He  loved  with  such  loyalty,  such  faith,  such 
honor,  such  self-oblivion,  as  those  with  which  patriots  love  their  country,  the 
one  in  whom  he  had  found  the  succor  of  his  existence,  the  giver  of  every 
earthly  gift  that  had  redeemed  him  from  the  bondage  of  poverty  and  pain; 
and  in  him  he  must  now  forever  see  the  foe  on  whom  he  had  sworn  to  wreak 
the  wrongs  and  the  shame  of  Valeria. 

The  man  to  whom  he  had  held  his  very  life  a  debt  to  be  yielded  up  if  need 
arose,  from  whose  lips  alone  he  turned  for  the  sole  praise  he  heeded,  whose 
liberal  and  royal  charity  had  lifted  him  from  a  beggar's  death-bed  into  the 
light  of  the  world's  renown,  and  to  whom  his  heart  had  clung  more  tenderly 
and  truly  in  the  darkness  of  adversity  than  even  in  the  splendor  of  fair  fortune, 
was  the  injurer  against  whom  through  the  long  course  of  so  many  years  he  had 
cherished  his  silent  and  baffled  hate  ! 


468  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

The  dead  love  and  the  living  love,  the  bonds  that  bound  him  to  her  mem- 
ory and  the  bonds  that  bound  him  to  his  gratitude,  wrenched  him  asunder, — 
divided,— agonized.  All  the  withering  weight  of  his  curse  had  been  breathed 
upon  her  destroyer;  all  the  fealty  and  adoration  of  his  nature  had  been  lavished 
upon  Chandos.  Choosing  betwixt  them,  he  must  sin,  whichever  he  cleaved  to, 
— be  faithless,  whichever  he  elected. 

He  let  his  head  fall  on  the  cold  stone  arm  of  the  bench;  he  knew  nothing, 
felt  nothing,  was  conscious  of  nothing;  he  only  seemed  numbed  and  killed 
with  this  one  thought, — the  feud  that  rose  to  stand  forever  between  him  and 
the  man  he  loved  with  the  love  of  the  son  of  Saul  for  David. 

"Oh,  God  !"  he  moaned;  "and  I  ate  of  his  bread,  I  was  saved  by  his 
mercy  ! ' 

The  Carmelite  looked  at  him,  then  gently  glided  away,  leaving  the  silver 
relic  in  his  hand.  He  never  heard  her  or  remembered  her:  he  sat  in  the  gray 
shadows  of  the  church  entrance  as  though  he  were  turned  to  stone,  silent  and 
senseless  as  the  robed  statues  of  the  Hebrew  kings  that  had  kept  their  motion- 
less vigil  above,  while  the  centuries  passed  uncounted,  and  the  glory  of 
Venetia  fell. 


He  could  not  have  told  how  long  or  how  brief  a  time  had  swept  by:  he  had 
sense  and  memory  for  nothing  save  the  one  knowledge  that  had  come  to  him. 
The  street  and  the  church  were  alike  deserted :  nothing  aroused  him.  He  sat 
there  as  in  a  stupor,  his  clasped  hands  clenched  above  his  head.  The  lapping 
of  the  water,  the  warmth  of  the  sun,  the  flight  of  time,  were  all  lost  to  him;  the 
great  pall  of  the  velvet  wavered  with  the  wind,  the  gleam  of  the  white  Passion 
was  seen  from  out  the  gloom  within;  all  was  still,  and  he  had  no  consciousness 
except  his  misery. 

A  hand  touched  his  shoulder;  the  only  voice  he  loved  fell  on  his  ear. 

"  Lulli  !  you  here  ?     What  ails  you  ?  " 

Passing  the  entrance  of  the  vast  deserted  church,  as  he  went  to  seek  Cas- 
talia  with  the  morning  light,  Chandos  had  seen  the  bent,  broken  attitude  of 
grief  that  shrank  even  from  the  light  of  the  sun.  The  Provencal  started  and 
shuddered  under  the  touch  as  at  the  touch  of  flame;  he  staggered  to  his  feet, 
his  eyes  looking  at  his  solitary  friend  with  the  wild  piteousness  of  a  dog  that 
has  been  struck  a  death-blow  by  its  master's  hand.  His  lips  parted,  but  no 
sound  came  from  them;  he  gasped  for  breath,  and  could  find  no  words;  there, 
face  to  face  with  the  savior  of  his  life,  with  the  spoiler  of  the  honor  dearer  than 
his  own,  the  force  of  the  old  love  borne  so  long,  the  force  of  the  old  vengeance 
so  long  sworn,  rose  in  twin  strength,  wrestling  with  and  strangling  each  other. 

Chandos  gazed,  amazed  and  touched  with  a  vague  dread:  he  laid  his  hand 


CHANDOS.  469 

on  Lulli,  and  drew  him  gently  within  the  hushed  aisles  of  the  church,  where 
the  still,  brown,  sleeping  shadow  slept  so  darkly,  only  broken  by  the  pale  gleam 
of  some  white  carving  or  the  glow  of  some  blazoned  hue. 

"  Lulli,  what  has  happened  ?     You  are  suffering  greatly.     Tell  me." 

"  Tell  you, — oh,  Christ !     How  can  I  tell  you  ?  " 

"  Why  not  ?     Did  I  ever  fail  you  ? " 

The  words  had  the  gentle  compassion  that  he  had  first  heard  when  he  had 
lain  dying  among  the  bleak  and  rugged  hills  of  Spain;  the  voice  had  ever  been 
sweet  to  him  as  the  echoes  of  music,  welcomed  as  the  weary  drought-parched 
forests  welcome  the  stealing  breath  of  the  west  wind:  it  pierced  him  to  the 
heart,  it  killed  him  with  its  very  gentleness.  He  threw  his  arms  upward,  and 
his  cry  rang  shrill  and  agonized  as  a  woman's: — 

"  Great  God,  have  pity  !  Let  my  curse  light  on  my  own  head  ?  I  knew 
not  what  I  did  !  " 

Chandos  laid  his  hands  upon  his  shoulders  and  held  him  there,  in  the  twi- 
light of  the  lofty  narrow  aisle,  with  the  Crucifixion  looming  cold  and  white  out 
of  the  mist  of  shade.  His  eyes  looked  down  in  Lulli's,  where  he  stood  above 
him,  and  stilled  him  as  a  dog  is  stilled  by  its  master's  gaze. 

"  You  rave  !     What  grief  has  befallen  you  ?     Tell  me." 

A  convulsion  shook  the  Provencal's  frail,  yielding  form:  he  loved  so  utterly 
the  life  he  had  voted  to  vengeance,  the  life  on  which  in  his  sight  rested  the  crime 
of  Valeria's  fail,  of  Valeria's  shame,  of  Valeria's  death. 

"  Grief  !  grief  !  "  he  muttered,  in  his  throat;  "it  is  shame, — black,  burning, 
endless  shame  !  I  have  broken  your  bread,  while  you  wrought  her  dishonor; 
I  have  cursed  you,  when  my  whole  life  is  but  a  bond  to  you  for  debts  beyond 
life,  above  life  !  Which  is  the  worst  sin,  the  worst  dishonor  ?  /  know  not  ?  " 

"  Sin  !  dishonor  !     And  whose  ?  " 

"  Hers,  and  mine,  and  yours." 

The  syllables  left  his  lips  stifled  and  slowly;  the  last  two  barely  stirred  the 
silence.  He  had  honored  the  man  to  whom  he  spoke  them  as  though  he  were 
a  deity;  he  had  obeyed  him  as  though  he  were  a  king.  The  blood  flushed 
Chandos'  face  where  he  stood  in  the  shadows  of  the  arches. 

"  Mine  !     No  other  living  should  say  that  to  me.     Mine  !  And  for  what  ?  " 

Lulli  lifted  his  head:  his  wasted,  misshapen  frame  gathered  suddenly  vital- 
ity and  vigor;  there  was  the  dignity  of  wrong  and  of  manhood  in  the  carriage 
of  his  head. 

"  For  this: — you  were  the  lover  of  Valeria." 

"Of  Valeria?" 

He  repeated  the  name  mechanically:  it  had  been  unspoken  between  them 
for  so  long;  it  had  scarce  a  meaning  on  his  ear. 

"  You  brought  her  to  the  pomp  of  vice;  she  died  in  the  misery  of  vice.     I, 


470  O  UIDAS     WORKS. 

your  debtor,  lived  on  the  alms  of  the  destroyer  of  the  last  of  my  name.  Va- 
leria was  your  mistress, — Flora  de  1'Orme." 

The  words  ran  cold  and  clear;  in  the  moment  of  their  speech  he  had  for- 
gotten all  save  the  disgrace  that  had  made  him  the  guest,  the  debtor,  the  alms- 
taker,  of  the  one  by  whom  she  had  been  tempted  into  the  ruin  that  had  de- 
voured her  in  her  youth.  Chandos  stood  silent,  his  eyes  fixed  on  Lulli's  face; 
back  on  his  thoughts  rushed  a  flood  of  forgotten  memories,— memories  of  the 
splendid,  vile,  pampered  beauty  who  had  stooped  her  rich  lips  to  his  wine  and 
wound  the  scarlet  roses  in  his  hair  in  many  a  careless,  riotous  hour, — memories 
of  the  night  when,  in  the  studio  at  Clarencieux,  he  had  paused  before  the  pic- 
ture of  Aries  and  been  haunted  for  a  moment  with  the  doubt  of  that  which  he 
now  heard. 

"  Valeria  !  "  he  echoed,  slowly,  an  intense  pity  and  contrition  in  the  tone  of 
his  voice;  "  Valeria  !  Is  it  possible  ?  " 

"  It  is  true."  The  musician's  words  had  a  fierce,  dogged  misery  in  them, 
and  his  hand  clenched  on  the  silver  heart.  "  A  Carmelite  has  given  me  her 
story.  She  died  long  ago;  but  her  wrongs  do  not  sleep  with  her." 

Chandos  looked  at  him  a  moment,  arid  a  great  pain  passed  over  his  face. 
Had  this  man  also  forsaken  him  ?  He  could  have  said  that  this  woman  had 
been  shameless  ere  ever  he  saw  her,  that  her  heart  was  false  as  her  form  was 
perfect,  that  gold  and  luxury  bought  her  love  as  it  would,  that  she  had  been 
vain,  merciless,  evil,  corrupt  to  the  core;  but  he  held  his  peace,  since  to  speak 
in  his  own  defence  would  have  been  to  pierce  and  would  the  cripple  who  still 
believed  in  her. 

"  If  this  be  true,"  he  said,  simply,  "you  will  not  doubt  my  faith  to  you,  at 
least  ?  You  will  know  that  I  was  as  ignorant  as  you  ?  She  came  from  Aries — 
it  might  have  told  me;  but  I  never  thoaght  that  she  had  other  name  than  that 
by  which  she  called  herself.  You  know — you  must  know — that  the  vilest  thing 
on  earth  should  have  been  sacred  to  me  had  I  been  told  you  heeded  it." 

"  I  believe  !  Nothing  but  truth  was  ever  on  your  lips.  Yet  none  the  less 
were  you  her  lover,  her  tempter,  her  destroyer;  none  the  less  does  the  curse  of 
her  shameless  life,  of  her  bondage  to  evil,  lie  with  you, — you  alone." 

He  spoke  hoarsely;  his  hand  was  clenched  on  the  relic,  his  head  was  lifted, 
his  eyes  flashed,  and  over  the  spiritual  fairness  of  his  face  the  darkness  of 
avenging  hatred  gathered. 

Chandos  looked  at  him,  and  a  slight,  quick  sigh  escaped  him. 

"  You  too  !"  he  said  involuntarily.  "  Well,  the  wrong  I  did  you  was  in 
ignorance:  if  it  must  part  us,  let  us  part  in  peace." 

To  the  man  who  had  loved  him,  as  to  the  enemy  who  had  betrayed  him, 
he  alike  never  quoted  the  claim  of  the  past,  never  argued  the  one  reproach,  "  I 
served  you."  But  in  the  words  there  was  a  weariness  beyond  all  speech,  there 


CHAN  DOS.  471 

was  the  et  tu,  Brute,  which  once  had  pierced  even  the  adamant  of  his  traitor's 
hate;  and  it 'cut  to  the  heart  of  the  hearer  deep  as  a  scourge  cuts  into  the  bared 
flesh;  its  very  gentleness  rebuked  him  with  the  keenest  reproach  that  could 
have  pierced  him.  His  life-long  debt,  his  subject  reverence,  his  deathless 
gratitude,  his  loyal  love  for  the  man  by  whose  mercy  he  was  still  amidst  the 
living,  and  by  whose  aid  the  creations  of  his  genius  had  been  given  their  place 
and  their  name  among  men,  rushed  back  on  his  memory  in  a  tide  that  swept 
aside  the  passions  of  the  hour  and  broke  asunder  the  chains  of  his  oath.  He 
seemed  to  himself  vile  as  any  ingrate  that  ever  stabbed  the  heart  of  his  bene- 
factor. The  moment  of  supreme  temptation  had  come  to  him,  the  test  that 
should  prove  whether  he  was  as  others  were, — loyal  only  whilst  the  gift  of 
generous  service  bound  him,  faithless  and  without  memory  the  instant  that 
ordeal  came.  The  hour  was  here  for  which  he  had  often  longed,  the  hour  that 
could  try  the  truth  of  his  allegiance,  and  in  it  he  had  been  wanting. 

All  the  tenderness  of  his  nature,  all  the  remorse  of  his  heart,  went  out  in 
wretchedness  to  the  man  whom  he  had  arraigned  and  upbraided  and  wounded 
as  though  no  debt  of  life,  no  years  of  charity  and  pity  and  succor,  had  stood 
between  them,  he  had  no  thought  left  except  the  sin  of  his  own  unworthiness. 
He  bowed  down  at  Chandos'  feet,  his  face  sunk  on  his  hands,  his  supplica- 
tion passionate  with  all  the  swift  and  mobile  emotion  of  his  nation  and  his 
temperament. 

"  Monseigneur,  forgive  me!  I  knew  not  what  I  said.  I  swore  an  oath 
before  Heaven  to  avenge  her,  but  I  break  it  now  and  forever,  if  it  must 
light  on  you.  Let  my  curse  recoil  on  my  head;  let  the  weight  of  my  for- 
sworn words  be  on  my  life;  let  me  forsake  the  dead  and  abjure  my  bond. 
Better  any  crime  than  one  thought  of  bitterness  to  you !  Forgive  me,  for  the 
pity  of  God,  what  the  vileness  of  my  passion  spoke.  If  you  killed  me  now 
with  your  own  hand,  you  would  have  right.  I  should  be  bound  to  let  my  last 
breath  bless  you!  " 

Wild,  incoherent,  senseless,  the  words  might  be,  yet  they  were  made  rich 
and  sweet  as  music  by  the  love  that  spoke  in  them;  they  gave  full  recompense 
to  Chandos  for  many  weary  years  of  patient  faith  in  human  life  and  patient 
forbearance  with  its  traitors  and  time-servers.  Against  all  trial,  and  through 
all  suffering,  the  heart  of  this  cripple  was  true  to  him;  in  his  creeds,  the  one 
fidelity  sufficed  to  outweigh  a  thousand  Iscariot  kisses. 

He  stooped  and  raised  him  gently. 

"  Forgiveness  !  It  is  I  who  must  ask  it.  Whatever  debt  you  think  you 
owed  me  in  the  past,  you  have  paid  and  overpaid  now." 

Lulli  stood  before  him,  his  head  still  sunk,  his  face  very  white  in  the  gray 
hues  of  the  darkened  aisles. 

"  No:  there  are  debts  which  we  can  never  pay,  which  we  never'wish  to  pay," 


472  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

he  murmured,  faintly.  Though  his  fidelity  had  stood  its  trial,  the  trial  was  not 
less  terrible  to  him:  in  the  man  he  loved  and  honored  he  still  saw  the  destroyer 
of  Valeria,  the  unknown  foe  on  whom  his  hate  so  long  had  fastened. 

"  But  her  daughter  ? "  he  said,  suddenly,  as  the  remembrance  flashed  on 
him, — "  that  beautiful  child, — here  in  Venice " 

"  Here  ?  Where  ? "  His  voice,  hoarse  and  rapid,  cut  asunder  the  Proven- 
cal's words;  his  face  grew  livid,  a  hideous  dread  possessed  him. 

"  The  daughter  she  left  in  Tuscany, — the  young  girl, — Castalia." 

"  Hold  !— O  Heaven  !  " 

Chandos  staggered  forward,  as  he  had  done  when  the  bolt  of  his  ruin  had 
struck  him:  the  sweat  of  an  unutterable  terror  on  his  brow;  the  agony  of  an 
unutterable  guilt  devoured  him. 

"  Her  daughter — hers!  " 

The  words  were  stifled  in  his  teeth;  he  could  not  breathe  his  thought 
aloud;  the  fibre  of  a  love  whose  very  wish  was  nameless  sin  consumed  him: 
the  blankness  of  an  utter  desolation  fell  on  him,  passing  all  that  his  life  had 
known  of  misery. 

The  Provencal  watched  him,  paralyzed,  silenced  with  a  great  bewildered 
fear;  he  swayed  heavily  back;  guilt  seemed  to  thrill  like  poison  in  his  blood; 
his  face  was  dark  with  the  flushing  of  the  black,  stagnant  veins;  he  reeled 
blindly  against  the  sculpture  of  the  marble  Christ. 

"  Love  between  us!     Great  God  !  what  horror  !  " 


With  the  mellow  flood  of  artificial  light  that  still  shone  there,  instead  of  the 
glory  of  the  risen  day,  shed  about  her,  Heloi'se  de  la  Vivarol  stood  before  her 
mirror  in  the  dressing-chamber  of  the  Venetian  palace  that  was  honored  by  her 
for  a  brief  space:  her  haughty,  delicate,  regal  head  was  lifted;  the  gray,  heavy 
serge  of  a  religious  habit  fell  back  from  the  brilliantly-tinted  hue  of  her  face  and 
the  still  exquisite  grace  of  her  form:  it  was  the  habit  she  had  worn  at  a  prince's 
Carnival  ball,  shrouding  her  beauty,  for  once,  under  an  envious  disguise  and  in 
a  whimsical  caprice,  that  she  might  more  surely  be  unknown  by  those  titled 
maskers  with  whom  she  had  played  the  carte  and  tierce  of  her  state-craft  fence. 
By  mere  hazard,  the  caprice  had  served  her  well;  her  subtle,  unerring  wit  was 
ever  served  well,  alike  by  the  weapons  she  forged  and  the  accidents  that 
favored  her. 

Now,  her  glance  flashed  a  cruel  triumph  at  her  own  reflection,  that  was  given 
there  with  the  glow  from  the  silver  branches  on  its  bright  hawk  eyes  and  on  its 
arched,  smiling,  mocking  lips.  She  had  waited^neigh  twenty  years,  but  she  had 
her  vengeance. 


CHANDOS.  473 

"  /  have  divorced  them  !  "  she  thought,  "  forever, — forever  !  And  none 
can  trace  my  hand  in  it,  suffer  as  he  may,  search  as  he  will." 

And  none  ever  did. 

Her  art  was  perfect  as  Bianca  Capella's,  as  Caterina  de  Medici's.  The  science 
of  destruction  has  its  fair  apostles  and  its  titled  proficients  now,  as  in  the  Cinque 
Cento;  the  only  change  is  that  their  poisons  now  kill  peace  and  honor  and 
fame,  and  spare  the  life  to  suffer. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

LIBERTA. 

THERE  was  a  great  tumult  rising  through  Venice.  Swelling  at  the  first  from 
a  distant  quarter,  it  had  been  borne  nearer  and  nearer  through  the  silence  of 
the  city  of  the  waters,  the  tumult  as  of  a  surging  sea,  as  of  the  roar  of  sullen 
winds, — the  tumult  of  a  people,  long  suffering  and  launched  at  last  against  their 
oppressors.  The  sound  had  not  penetrated  the  depth  of  the  church-aisles; 
only  its  low  muffled  echoes  could  reach  there,  and  they  had  been  unheard  by 
those  who  stood  in  its  solitude,  'lost  in  the  misery  of  their  own  passions.  In 
the  clear  golden  morning,  in  the  luxuriance  of  color  and  of  beauty,  in  the 
warmth  of  the  fragrant  air,  in  the  hush  of  the  tranquil  streets,  revolt  had  risen 
as  it  had  risen  in  the  great  northern  hive  of  labor;  but  here  in  the  "  sun-girt 
South  "  it  rose  for  liberty;  there  in  the  gaunt,  smoke-stifled  Black  Country  it 
rose  for  wages.  Venice  was  athirst  for  her  freedom;  the  north-men  had  been 
hungry  for  so  many  more  coins  a  week. 

They  were  but  the  youths  of  Venice,  the  young  men  whose  hearts  were 
sick,  and  whose  lives  were  aimless,  like  the  life  of  Leopardi,  the  children  of 
eighteen  or  twenty  summers,  whose  blood  was  kindled  and  whose  souls  were 
pure  with  patriot  fire;  who  would  have  flung  themselves  away  like  dross  to  cut 
the  fettering  withes  from  their  Venetia;  whose  ardor  thought  the  world  a  tour- 
nament, where  it  sufficed  to  name  "God  and  the  Right"  to  conquer  and  to  see 
the  foe  reel  down;  who  fed  their  eager  fancies  on  the  memory  of  Harmodius 
and  Aristogeiton,  and  who  refused  to  see  that  the  nations  of  their  own  day 
adored  the  Greeks  in  story,  but  called  a  living  patriot  an  "  agitator  "  if  he 
failed,  and  sent  him  to  the  cell,  the  scourge,  the  death  of  felons.  It  was  the 
boyhood  of  Venice  that  had  risen.  The  past  day  had  been  an  Austrian  festa 
for  an  Austrian  chief,  and  the  music,  the  laughter,  the  glitter,  the  salvoes  of 
artillery,  the  wreaths  of  flowers,  all  the  costly  follies,  had  driven  the  iron  deeper 
into  the  souls  of  those  who  closed  their  shutters  to  the  sound  of  revelry,  and 


474  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

mourned,  refusing  to  be  comforted,  desolate  amidst  the  insolence  of  the  usurp- 
er's magnificence  and  mirth.  The  festa,  following  on  the  arrest  of  a  songstress 
beloved  of  the  city,  who  had  been  siezed  for  signing  an  ode  of  liberty,  had 
broken  their  patience  down,  had  driven  them  mad,  had  made  them  believe 
once  more,  in  their  old  sublime  fatal  blindness,  that  a  pure  cause  and  a  high  de- 
votion would  prove  stronger  than  the  steel  and  the  granite  of  mailed  might. 
They  expiated  the  error  as  it  is  ever  expiated:  they  were  made  the  burnt- 
sacrifice  of  their  own  creeds. 

They  met  with  little  mercy:  in  the  .sight  of  their  foes  they  were  but  seditious 
malcontents,  to  be  shot  down  accordingly,  or  pinioned  alive  like  young  eaglets 
taken  for  a  caravan  cage.  The  soldiers  of  Austria  made  swift  work  with  them, 
— so  swift  that  the  hundreds  who  had  risen  with  the  dawn  with  the  shout  of 
"  Liberta  "  upon  their  lips  as  with  one  voice,  and  the  noble  insanity  of  the 
liberator's  hope  beating  high  in  their  fearless  breasts,  were,  almost  ere  the  first 
echo  of  the  chaunt  had  rung  through  the  silent  highways  to  wake  the  slumbering 
spirit  of  a  Free  Republic,  shot  down,  cut  down,  wellnigh  as  quickly  as  seeding- 
grasses  fall  beneath  the  scythes, — were  driven  as  the  deer  are  ^driven  under  the 
fire  of  the  guns,  yielding  never,  but  overborne  by  the  weight  of  numbers  and 
the  trained  skill  of  veteran  troops,  never  losing  their  courage  and  their  resist- 
ance and  their  scorn,  but  losing  order  and  adhesion,  and  seeing  their  young 
chiefs  fall  in  the  very  moment  of  their  first  gathering,  seeing  their  long-counted 
enterprise,  their  long-watched  opportunity,  their  long-cherished  hope  of  union 
and  strength  and  victory,  fade  and  wither  and  perish  under  the  upward  course 
of  the  bright  morning  sun. 

The  tumult  had  been  brief;  the  chastisement  would  be  life-long  for  such  as 
lived  under  the  heavy  iron  pressure  of  the  battalions  that  forced  them  down, 
through  the  mitraille  of  the  balls  that  hissed  along  the  brown,  still  waters  and 
shook  the  echoes  of  the  mighty  palaces.  They  were  young,  they  were  nobly 
trained;  they  chose  death  rather  than  life  in  a  prison-cell  with  a  convict  gang, 
than  the  shame  of  the  gyves  and  the  scourge.  One  band  of  them,  some  hun- 
dred, fought  inch  by  inch  step  by  step,  their  backward  passage  into  the  great 
porch  of  the  church,  into  the  dim  and  solemn  loneliness  of  the  aisles,  gaining 
breath  from  their  enemies  for  a  while,  holding  aloft  still  their  standard, — the 
colors  of  a  free  Italy. 

Suddenly,  and  with  the  tempest  of  sound  without  as  suddenly  entering  there 
with  the  forcing  open  of  the  large  bronze  doors,  they  fell  backward,  with  their 
faces  ever  to  the  foe,  into  the  darkness  and  the  silence  of  the  edifice.  The 
burst  of  clamor  rolled  strangely  through  the  stillness  of  the  avenues  of  stone; 
the  conflict  of  the  world  seemed  to  pour  like  hell  let  loose  into  the  sacred  hush 
and  peace;  the  throngs  of  hot,  heroic,  fever-flushed,  tyranny-wrung  life,  with 
the  vivid  colors  of  the  banner-folds  flung  high  above  their  ardent,  sun-warmed 


CHANDOS.  475 

faces,  filled,  as  though  they  had  sprung  from  the  sealed  tombs  where  the  great 
of  Venetia  lay  dead,  the  gray,  cavernous  gloom  of  the  porch,  the  twilight  of  the 
stretching  aisles,  the  marble  space  beneath  the  marble  Christ.  Crueller  wrong 
had  never  sought  the  refuge  of  sanctuary,  the  shelter  of  the  altar,  the  shadow 
of  the  Cross.  But  they  did  not  come  here  to  ask  for  peace,  to  demand  pro- 
tection: they  came  to  die  with  their  colors  untouched,  with  their  limbs 
unfettered. 

The  bronze  gates  of  the  larger  entrance  were  forced  open  by  their  pressure 
in  the  very  moment  that  a  horror,  besides  which  all  Chandos  had  ever  borne 
looked  pale  and  painless,  rose  from  the  depths  of  his  past  to  seize  the  one  dream 
of  revived  happiness  that  had  come  to  him.  In  the  first  instant  that  its  blow 
fell  on  him  he  had  no  sense  but  of  unutterable  loathing,  of  sickening  despair, 
before  the  abyss  of  unconscious  guilt  that  had  yawned  beneath  him, — no  con- 
sciousness but  of  the  living  love  that  burned  in  him  passionate  as  the  love  of 
his  earliest  years,  and  the  dead  love  that  made  it  hopeless  and  forbidden  and 
accursed,  that  made  it  a  sin  before  which  all  his  life  shuddered  and  recoiled, 
that  made  each  kiss  of  her  lips  poison,  each  word  of  his  tenderness  crime.  As 
the  thunder  from  the  streets  smote  his  ear,  and  the  flood  of  the  daylight  poured 
in,  he  was  shaken  from  his  trance  of  misery  as  men  are  started  from  a  night- 
mare; his  eyes  were  blood-shot,  his  face  flushed  red,  his  limbs  shook;  he  was 
blind  and  deaf,  he  knew  neither  where  he  was  nor  who  had  spoken;  but  his 
hands  fell  heavily  on  the  shoulders  of  Lulli,  swaying  him  backward. 

"  It  is  false  !  Devils  have  forged  the  lie  ! — not  the  first  forged  to  me.  Cas- 
talia — her  child — mine  !  God  !  such  horror  could  not  be.  Do  you  know-what 
she  was  ? — a  shameless,  loveless,  profligate  woman,  a  vampire,  whose  thirst  was 
gold, — a  Delilah,  who  stole  her  lover's  strength  to  shear  him  of  all  value.  Cas- 
talia  sprung  from  her  ?  It  is  a  lie,  I  tell  you,  coined  to  pollute  and  to  divorce 
from  me  the  fairest  thing  that  ever  lived  or  loved  me  !  " 

Lulli  stared  fear-stricken  in  his  face. 

"  Loved  you  ?  "  he  echoed;  "  loved  you ?  " 

"  Ay,  loved  me  as  I  was  never  loved.  And  you  tell  me  a  life  so  pure  as 
that  was  born  from  a  courtesan  !  You  tell  me  that  I — I " 

The  words  died  in  his  throat;  he  could  not  shape  in  them  the  ghastly 
thought  that  he  flung  from  him  as  men  fling  off  an  asp's  coil  about  their  limbs. 
He  gasped  for  breath,  where  he  stood  there  above  the  man  who  had  brought 
this  lemur  from  his  past:  there  was  the  ferocity  of  a  maddened  beast  in  him. 

The  bronze  doors  were  burst  open;  the  shock  of  the  firing  without  pealed 
through  the  stillness;  the  throng  of  the  young  soldiers  poured  in.  They  saw 
him, — him  to  whom  they  had  rendered  the  homage  of  their  song  of  liberty  in 
the  summer  night  of  a  few  years  past, — and  the  echoes  of  the  vaulted  roof  rang 
again  with  one  shout,  one  Viva  to  his  name. 


476  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

They  knew  his  face  well, — it  had  long  been  among  them  in  Venice;  they 
knew  his  words  well,  that  in  the  poems  of  his  early  manhood  and  in  the  deeper 
thoughts  of  his  later  years  had  borne  so  far  the  seeds  of  freedom;  they  hon- 
ored him  and  loved  him. 

His  eyes  dwelt  on  them  a  while  without  light  or  sense;  he  felt  drunk  as  with 
an  opiate  under  the  storm  of  disbelief  and  sickening  terror  that  possessed  him. 
They  filled  the  space  about  him  under  the  crucifix  that  hung  aloft,  with  the  sad, 
passionless,  thorn-crowned  face  of  the  statute  bending  above  from  out  the 
darkness,  and  the  white  limbs  stretched  in  martyrdom.  The  folds  of  the  stand- 
ard streamed  above  the  crowd  of  upturned  faces  with  the  glow  of  their  earliest 
manhood  and  the  resolve  of  their  settled  sacrifice  set  as  with  one  seal  upon  all. 
They  had  fallen  in  close  in  their  ranks,  and  stood  so  still  in  unbroken  phalanx. 
Alone  and  foremost  was  the  youth  with  the  head  like  the  head  of  a  Gabriel, 
who  had  spoken  in  the  summer  eve  the  gratitude  of  Venice  to  the  teacher  and 
the  lover  of  liberty.  Their  weapons  were  in  their  hands,  and  their  blood  poured 
from  their  wounds  on  the  black  mosaic  pavement  worn  by  priestly  feet.  Some 
had  their  death-wound,  and  knew  it;  but  they  only  pressed  their  hand  closer,  to 
stay  for  a  moment  the  stream  that  carried  life  with  it,  and  they  looked  with  a 
smile  to  his  face. 

One — a  child  in  years,  scarcely  seventeen,  with  the  flushed  fair  features  of 
childhood  still — stooped  and  touched  his  hand  with  a  kiss  of  homage. 

"  Signore,  wait  and  see  how  we  can  die;  see  we  do  not  dishonor  your 
teaching." 

The  simplicity  of  the  words  pierced  his  heart;  through  the  wreck  of  his  own 
misery,  through  the  sirocco  of  his  own  passions,  they  came  to  him  with  the 
weary,  eternal  sigh  of  that  humanity  which,  however  it  had  deserted  him,  he 
had  never,  in  requital,  forsaken.  Death  would  have  laid  its  seal  upon  his  lips, 
and  chained  his  hand,  and  veiled  his  sight,  ere  ever  he  would  be  cold  to  the 
sufferings  of  his  fellow-men,  silent  to  the  prayer  of  the  peoples. 

That  love,  unswerving  and  unchilled,  for  mankind,  which  had  given  so  noble 
a  glow  to  the  dreams  of  his  youth  and  filled  with  so  gentle  a  patience  the  temper 
of  his  later  years,  survived  in  him  now  amidst  all  the  desolation  of  his  fate,  all 
the  horror  that  glided  from  the  shadows  of  his  past  and  seized  the  one  hope 
left  him.  As  the  heart  of  Vergniaud  was,  to  the  last  on  the  scaffold,  with  the 
human  life  in  which  he  had  placed  too  sublime  a  faith,  for  which  he  had  dreamed 
of  too  sublime  a  destiny,  so  his  heart  was  still,  even  in  his  own  torture,  with 
those  young  lives  self-given  up  to  slaughter.  The  boy's  touch  roused  him;  he 
looked  at  the  heaving  mass  that  pressed  about  him,  at  the  pale,  brave  faces 
that  turned  to  him  with  one  accord  in  the  gloom  of  the  aisle.  He  saw  at  a 
glance  they  were  there  as  sheep  are  hemmed  into  the  shambles;  he  divined 
what  folly  had  brought  them, — folly  nobler,  perhaps,  than  some  prudential 


CHAN  DOS.  47? 

wisdom.  He  pressed  forward  into  their  van  on  the  simple  instinct  of  their 
defence,  while  they  fell  back  and  made  way  for  him,  watching  him  reverently 
as  he  passed.  He  had  loved  Venetia,  he  had  served  Liberty;  he  was  sacred 
in  their  sight.  In  the  front  the  standard  caught  a  beam  from  the  golden  air 
without,  and  was  wafted  higher  and  higher  by  the  breath  of  a  free  sea-wind; 
behind,  far  in  the  gloom,  the  altar-lights  burned  dully,  rayless  in  the  blackness 
of  the  shadow  shrouding  them, — meet  symbols  of  the  clear  noontide  of  freedom, 
of  the  midnight  mists  of  creeds  and  churches.  He  forced  his  passage  to  where 
that  banner  floated. 

"  Children,  children  !  what  are  you  doing  ?  Why  will  you  spend  your  lives 
like  water  ? " 

The  youths  of  the  front  file,  the  first  rank  that  would  receive  the  shock  of 
the  bayonets  or  the  fire  of  the  musketry  with  which  the  soldiers  would  in  another 
moment  come  to  drive  them  down  into  obedience,  lowered  their  arms  as  guards 
lower  them  to  monarchs. 

"  Better  to  lose  our  lives  than  spend  them  in  usurpers'  prisons  !  Leave  us 
while  there  is  time,  signore;  you  can  trust  us  to  die  well." 

They  left  the  space  free, — the  space  out  into  the  glowing  sunlight,  into  the 
fragrant  air.  He  stood  still,  and  motioned  their  weapons  up. 

"  You  know  me  better  than  that." 

Their  eyes  filled;  he  had  lived  much  amidst  them,  and  his  written  words  had 
sunk  deep  into  their  hearts.  The  young  patriot  who  held  the  banner — held  it 
with  his  left  hand,  because  the  right  wrist  had  been  broken  by  a  spent  ball — 
flashed  back  on  him  an  answering  comprehension. 

"  We  know  the  greatness  of  your  nature — yes;  but  the  greater  your  life, 
the  less  should  you  expose  it  here.  There  will  be  slaughter:  the  world  must 
not  loseyou." 

He  heard  but  vaguely,  half  without  sense  of  what  was  spoken;  his  life  seemed 
on  fire  with  the  torment  that  possessed  him, — the  hideous  doom  from  which  his 
whole  soul  shuddered.  Instinctively  his  eyes  sought  the  musician;  the  look 
that  was  in  them  was  worse  to  Lulli  than  if  he  had  seen  them  glazed  and  fixed 
in  death. 

"Go  you,"  he  said,  briefly:  "I  wait  with  these." 

The  flush  and  light  that  only  stole  there  when  in  music  he  lost  the  feeble- 
ness and  the  pain  of  his  daily  being,  came  on  Lulli's  face. 

"I  deserted  you  one  moment,"  he  murmured  low;  "not  again, — never 
again  !  " 

The  tramp  of  the  Austrian  soldiery  came  nearer  and  nearer,  ringing  like  iron 
on  the  stone  pavements  without;  the  flash  of  steel  glanced  in  the  sun  beyond 
the  great  bronze  doors  of  Cinque  Cento  arabesque;  the  arch  of  the  entrance 
was  filled  with  dark  faces  and  the  glitter  of  levelled  steel;  behind  were  the  dim, 


478  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

solemn,  majestic  aisles  of  the  church,  with  the  white  Passions  gleaming  through 
the  gloom,  and  the  ethereal  tracery  of  the  pyx  rising  out  of  the  sea  of  shadow; 
in  front,  hemming  them  in  with  a  circle  of  bayonets,  and  blocking  up  the  lofty 
space  through  which  the  blue  sky  and  the  sunlit  air  of  the  living  day  were  seen, 
were  the  mercenaries  of  Austria. 

Some  touch  of  reverence  for  the  sanctuary  that  their  Church  had  made 
sacred  from  earliest  time  to  all  who  sought  the  refuge  of  its  altars,  stilled  their 
zest  for  slaughter  and  held  back  their  weapons;  there  was  a  moment's  pause 
and  silence.  The  boy-patriots  only  gathered  closer  in  their  ranks,  and  looked 
out  on  the  bristling  line  of  rifles  in  the  sunlight  of  the  day.  Chandos  forced 
his  way  to  the  front,  and  stood  between  them  and  their  foes. 

"  O  children  !  why  will  you  give  the  unripe  corn  of  your  young  life  to  such 
reapers  as  these  ?"  he  said,  passionately.  "You  serve  Venice  in  nothing;  you 
but  drain  her  of  all  her  youngest  and  purest  blood  !  Why  will  you  not  learn 
that  to  contain  your  souls  in  patience  for  a  while  is  to  best  perfect  your  strength 
for  her  ?  Why  will  you  not  believe  that  there  is  a  world-wide  love  higher  even 
than  patriotism, — that  while  men  suffer,  and  resist,  anywhere  upon  earth,  there 
we  can  find  a  country  and  a  brotherhood  ?  " 

They  heard  in  silence,  their  young  faces  flushing;  they  knew  that  he  who 
spoke  the  rebuke  to  them  spoke  but  what  he  had  himself  done, — that,  under 
exile  and  wretchedness,  he  had  not  fled  to  the  refuge  of  death,  but  had  made  of 
truth  his  kingdom,  and  of  mankind  his  brethren. 

"  It  is  better  to  die  than  to  live  fettered  !  "  they  murmured,  as  they  lifted 
their  eyes  to  his. 

"  True  !  But  when  the  freedom  of  a  nation,  the  deliverance  of  a  people, 
rest  on  our  bearing  with  the  chains  a  while,  that  we  may  strike  them  off  with 
surety  at  last,  the  higher  duty  is  to  endure  in  the  present,  that  we  may  resist  in 
the  future.  Malefactors  have  died  nobly:  it  is  the  greater  task  to  live  so." 

His  voice,  rich  and  clear  with  the  music  of  the  born  orator,  rang  through 
the  silence  of  the  church,  moving  the  hearts  of  the  young  Venetians  like  music, 
and  stirring  even  the  fierce  and  sullen  souls  of  the  German  soldiery,  though  to 
them  the  language  of  its  utterance  was  unknown.  He  had  the  power  in  him 
which  leads  men  by  the  magic  of  an  irresistible  command, — the  power  that,  in 
forms  widely  different,  his  enemy  and  he  alike  possessed.  In  the  early  ages  of 
the  world  he  would  have  been  such  a  ruler  as  Solomon  was  in  the  sight  of  Israel, 
such  a  liberator  and  leader  of  a  captive  people  as  Arminius  or  Viriathus,  when 
the  life  of  a  country  hung  on  the  life  of  one  man,  and  fell  when  that  life  fell. 

The  Austrian  in  command,  to  whom  his  face  was  unknown,  thought  him  the 
leader  of  the  revolt,  and  wondered  who  this  chief  was  that  thus  swayed  even 
whilst  he  rebuked  his  followers.  He  lowered  his  sword  courteously. 

"  Signore,  surrender  unconditionally,  or  we  must  fire." 


CHANDOS.  479 

Chandos  stood  between  the  ranks  of  the  combatants,  unarmed,  his  head  un- 
covered,— behind  him  the  dark  hues  of  the  paintings,  within  the  whiteness  of 
the  sculpture  and  the  shade  of  the  vaulted  aisles,  a  single  breadth  of  light  fall- 
ing across  his  forehead  and  the  fairness  of  his  hair. 

"  I  cannot  dictate  surrender  to  them,  for  they  have  done  no  crime,"  he  said, 
briefly;  "  and  to  shoot  them  down  you  must  fire  first  through  me." 

The  Venetians  nearest  him  pressed  round  him,  shielding  him  with  their 
weapons,  and  covering  his  hands,  his  dress,  his  feet,  with  their  kisses,  in  the 
vehement,  demonstrative  fervor  of  their  Southern  hearts. 

"  Signore  !  "  they  shouted,  with  one  breath,  "  we  will  surrender  to  save  you. 
You  shall  not  die  for  us.  We  can  find  some  way  to  kill  ourselves  afterwards  !  " 

He  put  them  gently  back;  his  eyes  rested  on  them  with  a  great  tenderness. 

"No:  you  shall  not  surrender.  I  know  what  surrender  means.  Besides,  it 
is  only  cowards'  resort.  Do  you  think  I  am  so  in  love  with  life  that  I  fear  to 
lose  it  ?  I  could  not  die  better  than  with  you." 

As  the  words  left  his  lips,  through  the  ranks  of  the  soldiery,  through  the 
serried  lines  of  steel,  as  the  men  in  amaze  fell  back  before  her,  and  she  thrust 
aside  the  opposing  weapons  as  she  would  have  thrust  aside  the  stalks  of  a  field 
of  millet,  through  the  radiance  of  the  day,  and  the  gloom  of  the  ribbed  stone 
arches,  Castalia  forced  herself  with  the  chamois-like  swiftness  of  her  mountain- 
training  and  the  dauntless  courage  that  ran  in  her  blood.  Before  the  Austrians 
could  arrest  her,  she  had  pierced  their  phalanx,  crossed  the  breadth  of  the 
marble  pavement,  and  reached  Chandos,  where  he  stood  beneath  the  sculpture 
of  the  crucifix.  His  face  grew  white  as  the  face  of  the  sculptured  Christ 
above,  as  he  saw  her. 

"  Oh,  Gocf !  what  love  !  " 

Involuntarily,  with  a  great  cry,  he  stretched  his  arms  out  to  her.  At  that 
instant  a  large  stone,  cast  over  the  heads  of  the  soldiery  from  an  unseen  hand 
behind  them,  was  hurled  through  the  air,  and  struck  the  colors  of  a  Free  Italy 
from  the  grasp  of  the  youth  who  held  them:  he  reeled  and  dropped  dead:  the 
blow  had  fallen  on  his  temple.  As  the  banner  was  shivered  from  his  hold,  the 
folds  drooping  earthward,  Castalia  caught  it  and  lifted  it  in  the  front  of  the 
German  troops.  Her  eyes  flashed  back  on  them  with  a  daring  challenge;  her 
face  was  lighted  with  the  glow  that  liberty  and  peril  lend  to  brave  natures  as 
the  sun  lends  warmth. 

Viva  la  liberta!  rang  in  the  clear  echo  of  her  voice  through  the  cavernous 
depth  of  the  church.  Then,  with  a  smile  that  had  the  heroism  of  a  royal  fear- 
lessness, with  the  fidelity  of  a  spaniel  that  comes  to  die  with  its  master,  she 
came  and  stood  by  Chandos,  her  eyes  looking  upward  to  him,  her  hand  leaning 
on  the  staff  of  the  standard.  Unconsciously,  in  the  violence  of  the  torture 
that  consumed  him  at  her  sight,  her  touch,  her  presence,  he  drew  her  to  his 


480  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

breast,  crushing  her  beauty  in  an  embrace  in  which  all  was  for  the  moment  for- 
gotten, save  the  love  he  bore  her,  save  the  love  that  sought  him  even  through 
the  path  of  death. 

Roused  by  the  echo  of  that  rallying-cry,  infuriated  by  their  comrade's  fall, 
seeing  her  loveliness  given  into  their  defence,  the  Venetian  youths  sprang  for- 
ward like  young  lions,  their  swords  circling  above  their  heads,  their  hearts 
resolute  to  pierce  the  net  that  held  them,  or  to  perish.  The  Austrian  raised  his 
sword : — 

"  Fire  ! " 

Obedient  to  the  command,  the  first  file  dropped  on  one  knee,  the  second 
stood  above  them  with  their  rifles  levelled  over  the  shoulders  of  the  kneeling 
rank,  the  bayonets  were  drawn  out  with  a  sharp  metallic  clash,  the  double 
line  of  steel  caught  the  morning  rays  upon  the  glitter  of  the  tubes:  every 
avenue  of  escape  was  closed. 

Chandos  stooped  his  head  over  her,  where  he  held  her  folded  in  his  arms, 
to  shield  her  while  life  was  in  him. 

"  You  do  not  fear  ? " 

She  smiled  still  up  into  his  eyes;  she  saw  in  them  an  agony  great  as  that 
which  the  sculptor  had  given  to  the  marble  agony  upon  the  cross. 

"  I  have  no  fear  with  you." 

His  embrace  closed  on  her  in  the  vibration  of  a  dying  man's  farewell. 

"  Death  will  be  mercy  for  us  !  " 

With  the  sunlight  of  her  hair  floating  across  his  breast,  he  stood  looking 
straight  at  the  levelled  guns;  her  eyes  rested  on  his  face  alone,  and  never  left 
their  gaze.  With  his  arms  thus  about  her,  with  her  head  resting  on  his  heart, 
she  had  no  fear  of  this  fate;  he  wished  it,  he  resigned  himself  to  it;  she  was 
content  to  die  in  the  dawn  of  her  life,  with  him,  and  at  his  will. 

Guido  Lulli  stood  near  them.  He  was  forgotten — he  had  no  thought  that 
it  could  be  otherwise;  but  where  he  leaned  his  delicate  withered  limbs  on  the 
sculpture  beside  him,  his  eyes  rested  calmly  on  the  circle  of  the  soldierly,  on 
the  gleam  of  the  rifle-barrels;  weak  as  a  woman  in  his  frame,  he  had  no 
woman's  weakness  in  his  soul.  He  had  forsaken  the  man  he  loved  for  one 
moment  in  life;  he  would  be  faithful  to  him  through  the  last  pang  of  death. 

The  sudden  crash  of  the  musketry  rolled  through  the  silence;  the  white 
thick  clouds  of  smoke  floated  outward  to  the  brightness  of  the  day,  and  down- 
ward through  the  length  of  the  violated  church.  Castalia  never  shrank  as  the 
boom  of  the  guns  pealed  over  her;  she  only  looked  up  still  to  the  face  above 
her.  There  was  not  a  sound,  not  a  moan,  as  the  volley  poured  out  its  fire; 
when  the  smoke  cleared  slightly,  they  stood  untouched,  though  shots  had 
ploughed  the  stone  above  them  and  beneath  them;  but  under  the  white  sculp- 
ture of  the  Passion  the  young  lives  of  Venice  lay  dying  by  the  score,  there  lips 


CHAN  DOS.  481 

set  in  a  brave  smile,  their  hands  still  clenched  on  their  sword-hilts.     A  voice 
rang  out  like  thunder  on  the  stillness: 

"  Brutes  ! — do  you  murder  in  cold  blood  ? " 

Thrusting  his  way  through  the  dense  crowds  of  the  entrance,  as  Castalia 
before  him  had  thrust  hers,  Philippe  d'Orvale  strode  through  the  soldiery  into 
the  church,  felling  down  with  a  blow  of  his  mighty  arm  a  rifle  that  was  levelled 
at  Chandos;  with  his  hair  dashed  off  his  forehead,  his  glance  flaming  fire,  he 
swung  round  and  faced  the  German  levies,  grand  in  his  wrath  as  a  god  of 
Homer.  "  So  !  you  turn  the  church  to  a  slaughter-house  ?  Not  the  first  time  by 
many.  By  my  faith,  a  fine  thing,  to  shoot  down  those  brave  children  !  Cow- 
ards, tigers,  barbarians,  fire  again  at  your  peril  !  " 

The  passion  and  the  dignity  of  the  reprimand  stilled  them  for  a  moment  by 
the  force  of  surprise;  but  only  for  that,  only  to  rouse  their  savage  ruthlessness  in 
tenfold  violence.  Dressed,  in  one  of  his  Bohemian  caprices,  in  the  boat-dress 
of  a  barcarolo, — for  he  loved  to  mingle  with  the  people  in  their  own  garb  and  in 
their  own  manner, — and  but  dimly  seen  in  the  midst  of  smoke  and  the  twilight 
of  the  building,  they  failed  to  recognize  him;  they  took  him  for  a  Venetian  and 
a  revolutionist.  Infuriated  by  his  words  and  by  his  forced  entrance,  the  Aus- 
trian in  command  gave  the  word  to  fire  again.  The  volley  of  the  second  line 
rolled  out  as  he  stood  in  the  midst  between  the  soldiery  and  the  body  of  the 
church,  as  a  lion  stands  at  bay;  he  staggered  slightly,  and  put  his  hand  to  his 
breast;  but  he  stood  erect  still,  his  bold,  brilliant  eyes  meeting  the  sun. 

"  You  have  killed  me;  that  is  little.  But  kill  more  of  them,  and,  by  the  God 
above  us,  I  will  leave  my  vengeance  in  legacy  to  France,  who  never  yet  left 
debts  like  that  unpaid  ?  " 

Then,  as  Chandos  reached  his  side,  he  reeled  and  fell  backwards;  he  had 
been  shot  through  the  lungs. 

"  If  it  stop  the  carnage,  it  was  well  done,"  he  said,  as  the  blood  poured  from 
his  breast. 

Awed  at  their  work,  recognizing  him  too  late,  terror-stricken  to  have  struck 
one  for  whose  fall  vengeance  might  be  demanded  by  a  nation  that  never  slurs 
its  dishonor  or  lets  sleep  its  enemies,  the  Austrains  in  command,  motioning 
back  their  brigades,  pressed  towards  him,  to  raise  him,  to  succor  him,  to  protest 
their  lamentation,  their  ignorance,  their  horror.  Chandos  shook  them  from 
him,  and  swept  them  back,  his  voice  hoarse  with  misery  as  he  bent  over  the 
superb  stricken  majesty  of  the  dying  man. 

"  His  blood  is  on  your  heads:  you  murdered  him  !     Stand  off  !  " 

Philippe  d'Orvale  had  known  that  his  death-wound  had  struck  him  in  the 
instant  that  the  ball  had  crushed  through  the  bone  and  bedded  itself  where  every 
breath  of  life  was  drawn;  but  the  careless  laughter  of  his  wit,  the  fine  scorn  of 
the  old  noblesse,  was  on  his  face  as  he  looked  at  the  Austrians. 

VOL.  III.— 16 


482  O  UIDAS     WORKS. 

"  So  !  brave  humanity,  messieurs  !  You  apologize  for  shedding  my  blood, 
because  my  blood  is  called  princely;  if  I  had  been  a  gondolier,  you  would  have 
kicked  my  corpse  aside  !  No,  dear  friend,  let  me  die.  No  good  can  be  done, 
and  it  will  be  but  for  a  moment." 

A  voiceless  sob  shook  Chandos  as  he  hung  over  him;  he  knew  also  that  but 
for  a  moment  this  noble  life  would  be  among  the  living. 

The  thoughts  of  Philippe  d'Orvale  were  not  of  himself;  they  were  with  those 
children  of  Venice,  who  were  perishing  from  too  loyal  and  too  rash  a  love  for 
her.  His  eyes  gathered  their  lion  fire  as  they  rested  on  the  Austrians;  his  voice 
rang  stern  and  imperious. 

"  If  you  regret  my  death,  give  me  their  lives." 

The  officers  stood  mute  and  irresolute:  they  dared  not  refuse;  they  dared 
not  comply. 

"Give  me  their  lives  !"  his  voice  rolled  clearer  and  louder,  commanding 
as  a  monarch's,  "  without  conditions,  free  and  untouched  forever.  Give  me 
them,  or,  by  Heaven,  I  will  leave  France  to  avenge  me.  Give  me  them,  I  say  !  " 

There  was  no  resistance  possible,  in  such  an  hour,  to  such  a  demand,  they 
submitted  to  him;  they  pledged  their  honor  that  the  lives  he  asked  for  as  his 
blood-money  should  be  spared. 

"  That  is  well;  that  is  well,"  he  said,  briefly,  as  the  rush  of  the  air  through 
his  wound  checked  his  utterance,  where  he  lay  back  in  Chandos'  arms  just  be- 
neath the  sculpture  of  the  Passion.  "  All  that  youth  saved  !  No  shot  ever 
told  better.  Ah,  Chandos  !  do  not  suffer  for  me,  caro.  It  is  a  fair  fate, — a 
long  life  enjoyed,  and  a  swift  death  by  a  bullet,  with  your  eyes  on  mine  to  the 
last.  Dieu  de  Dieu  !  what  room  is  there  for  regret  ?  I  am  spared  all  the  lin- 
gering tortures  of  age.  That  is  much  !  " 

"  Oh  God  !— to  lose  you  !  " 

The  cry  broke  from  Chandos  in  an  anguish  mightier  far  than  if  his  own  life 
had  been  ebbing  out  with  every  wave  of  the  blood  that  flowed  out  on  the  mar- 
ble floor.  He  had  lost  all  else, — and,  at  the  last,  this  life  he  loved  was  taken  ! 

Philippe  d'Orvale's  eyes  looked  up  at  him,  tender  as  a  woman's. 

"Chut!  If  1  be  content,  what  matter?  'The  king  will  enjoy  his  own 
again.'  You  will  take  from  your  friend  dead  what  you  refused  from  him  liv- 
ing. Make  my  grave  in  Clarencieux,  Chandos, — under  the  forests  some- 
where,— that  your  step  may  pass  over  it  now  and  then,  and  the  deer  come 
trooping  above  me." 

"  Hush  !  hush  !     You  kill  me." 

Hot  and  bitter  tears  welled  into  Chandos'  eyes,  and  fell  on  the  brow  that 
rested  against  his  breast:  he  would  have  accepted  exile  and  poverty  forever 
rather  than  have  bought  the  joys  and  the  wealth  of  a  world  at  such  a  price 
as  this. 


CHAN  DOS.  483 

Philippe  d'Orvale  smiled, — the  sunlit,  careless,  shadowless  smile  that  had 
been  always  on  the  lips  of  this  bright,  fearless  reveller,  though  the  blood  was 
pouring  faster  and  faster  out  as  his  chest  heaved  for  breath  and  the  chillness 
and  numbness  of  death  were  stealing  over  the  colossal  limbs  that  were  stretched 
on  the  marble  floor. 

"  Nay;  I  tell  you  I  am  fortunate.  My  roses  have  never  lost  their  fragrance 
yet,  and  now — I  shall  not  see  them  wither.  Do  not  grieve  for  me,  Ernest;  it 
is  well  as  it  is, — very  well  !  Ah,  Lulli  !  is  it  you  ?  " 

He  stretched  out  one  hand  to  the  Provencal,  who  bent  over  him  convulsed 
with  the  unrestrained  impassioned  grief  of  his  temperament;  it  seemed  to  him 
strange  and  terrible  beyond  compare,  that  this  mighty  magnificence  of  man- 
hood should  be  laid  low  while  death  passed  by  his  own  strengthless,  pain-racked 
frame  and  left  unsevered  his  own  frail  bonds  to  earth.  An  intense  stillness  had 
fallen  over  the  scene  of  the  carnage  where  the  prince-Bohemian  lay  dying  in 
the  broad  space  of  the  arched  aisle;  the  soldiers  of  Austria  stood  mute  and 
motionless;  the  young  Venetians  gazed  heart-broken  at  the  man  who  had  given 
his  life  for  theirs.  All  those  who  were  wounded  lay  as  still  as  the  stiffened  dead 
beside  them,  letting  existence  ebb  out  of  them  with  the  same  fortitude  as  his. 
The  tumult  had  died;  a  stricken  awe  had  come  upon  the  multitude.  Above,  in 
the  twilight  of  the  dim  vaulted  vista  of  columns,  the  free  colors  of  liberty  still 
floated,  catching  a  gleam  of  light  still  on  their  folds.  Castalia  held  them  where 
she  stood  looking  down  on  the  first  death  that  her  eyes  had  ever  watched,  as 
the  purple  stream  of  the  blood  flowed  to  her  feet,  and  each  breath,  as  it  con- 
vulsed the  vast,  torn,  heaving  chest,  dealt  a  separate  pang  to  her  as  though  her 
own  life  went  with  it. 

The  glance  of  Philippe  d'Orvale,  growing  more  languid  now,  and  losing  the 
fiery  brilliance  of  its  gaze,  dwelt  on  her  with  a  gleam  of  wonder  and  of  light. 

"Who  is  that  ?  "  he  asked,  as  he  raised  himself  slightly. 

She  knelt  beside  him,  holding  the  standard  still,  while  its  bright  hues  dropped 
on  the  marble. 

"  They  call  me  Castalia." 

He  looked  at  her  dreamily. 

"Castalia  !  Ah  !  you  have  eyes  that  are  like  some  I  loved  once.  I  loved 
so  many, — so  many  !  Life  has  been  sweet, — sweet  as  wine.  Stoop  down 
and  touch  me  with  your  lips;  it  will  be  a  better  assoilzement  than  a  priest's 
chrism." 

She  lifted  her  eyes  to  Chandos,  where  she  knelt  beside  him;  he  bent  his  head 
in  silence,  then  at  the  sign  from  him  she  stooped  softly  nearer  and  nearer,  and 
let  her  lips  rest  on  the  French  prince's  brow  in  the  farewell  he  asked. 

He  smiled,  and  touched  her  hair  with  his  hand. 

"  I  thank  you,  belle  enfant"  he  said,  gently;  the  light  was  fading  fast  out  of 


484  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

his  gaze,  his  senses  were  fast  losing  all  their  hold  on  earth,  as  wave  on  wave 
of  his  life-blood  surged  from  the  broken,  shattered  bones  of  his  breast.  He 
lifted  himself  slightly  with  a  supreme  effort,  and  the  sunlit  laughter  with  which 
he  had  ever  met  existence  was  on  his  face  as  he  met  his  last  hour. 

"  Your  foe  waited  for  the  '  Mad  Duke's  '  death  !  Well,  we  have  cheated  him: 
he  will  see  the  rightful  lord  go  back  to  his  heritage.  It  irked  me  reigning  there, 
Chandos,  while  you  were  exiled.  No  Austrian  bullet  ever  did  a  better  stroke. 
Nay  !  why  mourn  me  ?  I  have  drunk  the  richest  of  life,  and  I  am  spared  the 
gall  of  the  lees.  Your  hand  closer,  dear  friend.  I  do  not  suffer;  it  is  nothing, 
nothing  !  Let  me  see  your  eyes  to  the  end,  Ernest.  So  ! — that  is  well  ! " 

And  with  those  words  his  head  fell  back,  and  under  the  white  sculpture  of 
the  Passion  Philippe  d'Orvale  lay  dead. 


While  Venice  was  hushed  in  awe  at  the  greatness  of  the  victim  who  had  fallen, 
and  the  vengeance  of  tyranny  was  stayed  in  obedience  to  his  last  wish,  the 
Prince  who  had  died  for  the  People  was  borne  with  reverent  hands  into  the 
gloom  of  a  state-chamber  of  his  own  palace,  and  laid  reverently  down,  with  the 
radiance  of  the  morning  shut  out,  and  the  gleam  of  funeral  lights  burning 
round.  A  pall  of  purple  velvet  covered  the  limbs;  fine  linens  veiled  the  breadth 
of  the  chest,  with  its  yawning,  blood-filled  cavity.  The  face  was  still  left  un- 
shrouded,  with  its  fair,  frank  brow  pale  in  the  pallor  of  the  wax-light,  the  lux- 
uriance of  the  curling  beard  flecked  with  silver  threads,  the  eyelids  closed  as  in  a 
peaceful  slumber.  There  was  but  one  watcher  with  him.  Besides  the  bier  Chan- 
dos knelt,  motionless  as  the  dead,  with  his  forehead  resting  on  the  hand  which 
in  life  had  never  clenched  but  in  a  righteous  cause,  and  which,  once  clasped  in 
friendship  or  in  pledge,  would  have  been  cut  off  sooner  than  have  let  go  its  bond. 
That  hand,  cold  as  ice,  and  lying  open  like  the  strengthless  palm  of  a  child,  had 
given  him  his  home,  given  him  more  than  empires;  that  hand,  by  its  last  act 
and  will,  had  restored  him  the  one  longing  of  his  life,  had  summoned  him 
from  exile  to  the  honor  of  his  race  once  more;  that  hand  had  swept  aside  a 
score  of  years,  and  brought  him  back  his  birthright.  This  gift  of  a  recovered 
joy  such  as  dreams  sometimes  had  mocked  him  with,  came  to  him  in  the  very 
hour  that  a  horror  worse  than  guilt  laid  his  heart  desolate.  One  desire  of  his 
soul  was  bestowed  on  him  in  the  very  moment  that  all  others  were  laid  waste 
and  banned  as  sin, — one  resurrection  of  dead  hopes  granted  him  in  the  very 
moment  that  all  other  hopes  were  blasted  from  his  hold.  It  was  his  once  more, 
this  land  that  he  had  never  forgotten,  this  thing  that  he  had  mourned  as  Adam 
mourned  the  forfeited  loveliness  of  paradise,  this  lost  treasure  to  which  his  mem- 
ory had  gone,  waking  or  sleeping,  with  every  flicker  of  green  leaves  in  morn- 


CHANDOS.  485 

ing  twilight,  with  every  sough  of  summer  winds  through  arching  aisles  of  wood- 
land, with  every  spring  that  bloomed  on  earth,  with  every  night  that  fell; — and 
it  was  his  only  when  the  one  friend  that  had  cleaved  to  him  loyally  was  stretched 
dead  before  his  eyes,  only  when  the  poison  of  his  past  rose  up  and  turned  to 
incestuous  shame  the  love  which  had  seemed  the  purest  and  the  fairest  treasure 
that  his  life  had  ever  known  !  He  knelt  there,  where,  the  daylight  was  shut 
out  and  the  stillness  was  unstirred  as  in  a  vault.  That  he  had  regained  his 
birthright  by  the  seal  of  eternal  silence  laid  forever  on  those  brave  lips  that  no 
lie  had  ever  tainted,  could  assuage  in  nothing  the  bitterness  of  his  regret;  to 
have  summoned  Philippe  d'Orvale  back  amidst  the  living,  he  would  have  taken 
up  forever  a  beggar's  portion  and  a  wanderer's  doom.  Where  he  had  sunk 
down,  with  his  arms  flung  over  the  motionless  limbs,  and  his  frame  shaken  ever 
and  again  by  a  great  tremor  as  the  scorch  of  passions  that  he  had  been  told 
were  guilt  thrilled  through  him,  a  woman's  hand  was  laid  upon  his  shoulder. 
As  he  started  and  raised  his  eyes,  he  saw,  in  the  pale  silvery  shadows  of  the 
death-lights  burning  round,  the  gaze  of  Beatrix  Lennox  bent  upon  him. 

"Ah  !  I  am  too  late,"  she  said,  wearily.  "I  am  always  too  late  for  good: 
for  evil  one  is  sure  to  be  ready." 

Her  voice  was  very  low;  she  stood  looking,  not  at  him,  but  at  the  noble 
head  that  had  fallen  never  to  rise  again,  at  the  mouth  that  still  wore  its  last 
smile,  from  which  no  chaunt  of  laughter,  no  melody  of  welcome,  would  ever 
again  ring  out. 

Chandos  rose  and  stood  in  silence  also.  There  was  too  great  a  wretched- 
ness on  him  to  leave  him  any  wonder  at  her  coming  there,  at  her  forcing  her 
entrance  into  the  state-chamber  where  the  guards  without  denied  all  comers. 
He  thought  some  tie  might  bind  her  to  Philippe  d'Orvale's  memory:  he  had 
never  known  that  it  was  himself  she  loved. 

"  He  had  a  lion's  heart,  he  was  true  as  the  sun,  he  never  lied,  he  never  broke 
a  bond,  he  never  failed  a  friend;  no  wonder  the  world  had  no  name  for  him  but 
'  Mad  ! '  "  she  said,  as  her  voice  fell  on  the  stillness  of  the  funeral  chamber. 
"  He  died  but  four  hours  ago,  they  say;  and  I — was  those  four  hours  too  late. 
It  is  always  so  with  me  !  " 

"  He  was  dear  to  you  ?  " 

She  smiled;  she  thought  how  closely  she  had  kept  her  own  secret. 

"  No  !  If  he  had  been,  do  you  think  I  could  stand  calmly  here  ?  But  he 
was  a  superb  gentleman:  he  died  superbly.  The  world  has  few  grand  natures; 
it  can  ill  spare  them.  Besides,  I  have  much  to  say  to  you." 

"  Hush  !  not  here." 

"  Yes,  here.  What  I  shall  say  is  no  desecration  to  his  presence.  He  would 
have  been  the  first  to  be  told  it,  had  he  lived.  You  loved  him  well  ? " 

His  mouth  quivered. 


486  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

"  Who  was  ever  so  true  to  me  ? — loyal  and  generous  and  chivalric  to  the 
last  !  " 

He  could  have  thrown  himself  beside  the  bier  of  the  slaughtered  man,  and 
wept  as  women  weep,  when  he  thought  of  the  smile  that  would  never  again 
greet  his,  of  the  fearless  eyes  that  would  never  again  unclose  to  the  waking 
of  day. 

She  waited  some  moments;  then,  with  her  face  turned  from  him,  she  spoke: — 

"  Chandos,  she  whom  you  love " 

"  Spare  me  that,  for  God's  sake  !  " 

"  What  !  is  she  false  to  you  ?  " 

"  Would  to  heaven  she  were,  rather  than 

"  Rather  than  what  ?  " 

He  shuddered. 

"  I  cannot  tell  you  !  " 

"  You  must — if  but  for  her  sake.     It  is ? " 

"  That  Valeria  Lulli  was  her  mother." 

"  That  is  the  truth  !     What  if  she  be  ?  " 

"  IVhat?  She  was  my  mistress, — an  adventuress  who  came  with  me  from 
France " 

"  It  is  false  !     It  is  basely,  utterly  false  !  " 

He  caught  her  hands  in  his. 

"  Prove  it,  prove  it ! — and  no  saint  was  ever  merciful  as  you " 

"  I  can  prove  it.     Valeria  Lulli  gave  her  birth;  but  her  father — lies  there." 

He  drew  a  deep,  gasping  breath,  like  a  man  who  has  escaped  from  the  close 
peril  of  some  awful  death.  « 

"  This  is  true  ?  " 

"  True  as  that  we  live." 

She  turned  from  him,  that  she  might  not  see  his  face  in  that  moment  of 
supreme  deliverance.  There  was  a  long,  breathless  silence,  the  silence  which 
is  a  greater  thanksgiving  than  any  words  can  utter. 

He  lifted  his  head  at  last,  and  his  eyes  dwelt  on  her  with  a  look  that  repaid 
her  for  twenty  years  of  unspoken,  unrequited  love. 

"  Her  father— /k?  /     Oh,  God  !— how  strange  !  " 

"  Yes,  it  is  strange.  And,  yet,  why  do  we  say  so  ?  Life  is  full  of  tragedies 
and  comedies  crossing  each  other  in  wilder  mystery  than  any  fiction  fancies. 
Months  ago,  in  the  autumn,  you  bade  me  feel  a  woman's  pity  for  your  young, 
forsaken  Tuscan.  Well,  I  sought  for  her;  I  wished  to  know  if  she  were  worthy 
you.  You  had  told  me  where  you  had  left  her;  I  went  there  to  find  her  gone, 
—lost  out  of  all  sight  and  knowledge.  The  belief  of  the  people  and  of  the  priest 
was  that  she  had  fled  with  you.  I  knew  the  falsehood  of  that,  and  I  set  myself 
to  the  discovery,  first  of  her  history,  then  of  herself.  It  took  me  long,  very 


CHANDOS.  487 

long;  but  at  last  I  succeeded.  Woman  rarely  fail  when  they  are  in  earnest. 
We  are  patient  limeurs  on  a  track.  The  priest  told  me,  after  long  conference 
with  him,  that  her  mother  had  confided  to  him  a  sealed  packet,  but  he  was  never 
to  open  it  unless  some  imminent  danger  assailed  the  child;  then,  and  then  only, 
he  might  read  what  it  held,  and  act  as  he  might  see  fit.  She  had  died  without 
confession, — died  what  he  considered  impenitent.  He  was  a  grand  old  man  in 
his  creeds  of  duty;  he  had  never  violated  the  sanctity  of  the  seals  to  sate  his 
curiosity  or  to  lighten  his  charge  of  Castalia.  I  had  less  self-restraint.  I  per- 
suaded him  that  the  moment  had  arrived.  He  was  very  hard  to  convince;  he 
considered  the  command  of  the  dead  woman  sacred.  At  last,  however,  I  over- 
came his  reluctance.  We  opened  the  papers:  from  them  I  learned  that  she  was 
the  daughter  of  Valeria  Lulli  and  of  the  Due  d'Orvale," 

"  Valeria  had  been  his  mistress  ? " 

"  No,  his  wife;  but  she  had  disbelieved  that  she  was  so;  hence  her  conceal- 
ment of  herself  and  of  her  offspring.  The  account  of  her  life  is  very  inco- 
herent; written  as  women  write  under  wrong  and  grief.  It  is  plain  to  see  that 
she  was  passionate,  jealous,  doubtless  of  extraordinary  beauty,  but  of  a  fervid, 
uncontrolled  temperament, — one  to  beguile  him  into  hot  love,  but  soon  to 
weary  him.  There  are  many  such  women,  and  then  you  are  blamed  for  incon- 
stancy !  She  had  left  Aries  because  persecuted  by  the  love  of  an  Englishman, 
Lord  Clydesmore, — a  roue,  though  a  saint:  the  union  is  common  !  She 
went  to  Florence,  and  there  saw  Philippe  d'Orvale.  He  heard  her  voice  in 
a  mass  at  Easter,  and  sought  her  out.  A  passion,  ardent  as  his  always  was, 
soon  sprang  up  between  them.  Of  course  he" had  no  thought  of  marriage;  but 
she  had  the  same  pride  that  Guido  Lulli  cherishes  so  strongly.  She  would 
not  yield  to  him.  Call  it  honor,  call  it  egotism,  which  you  will;  in  the  end  she 
vanquished  him.  The  marriage  was  performed  privately,  and  remained  secret. 
Reasons  connected  with  his  great  house  made  this  imperative  for  a  brief 
while;  but  he  kept  her  in  the  utmost  luxury  in  a  palace  of  his  on  Como, 
and  intended  shortly  to  announce  their  union.  It  is  easy  to  see  by  her  own 
confession  that  her  jealous  love  left  him  little  peace,  and  must  have  been 
unendurable  to  such  a  temperament  as  his;  but  throughout  she  speaks  of 
his  unvarying  tenderness,  lavish  generosity,  and  sweetness  of  temper.  It 
is  conceivable  that  he  went  back  to  his  old  freedom  when  once  the  restless 
tyranny  of  her  passion  began  to  gall  him;  but  she  never  hints  that  his  kind- 
ness or  his  affection  altered.  He  left  her  once  for  Paris,  intending  but  a 
short  absence.  While  he  was  away,  she  received  anonymous  letters,  telling 
her  that  her  marriage  had  been  a  false  one,  that  his  equerry  in  a  priest's  guise 
had  performed  it.  A  woman  who  had  read  his  nature  aright  would  have 
known  a  fraud  impossible  to  Philippe  d'Orvale;  but  she  was  very  young,  very 
impulsive, — at  once,  as  I  think,  weak  and  passionate.  She  flew  to  Paris;  he 


488  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

had  gone  to  stay  with  you  at  Clarencieux.  She  knew  her  cousin  was  there,  and 
went  thither  to  declare  her  marriage,  or  arraign  the  duke  if  he  confessed  it 
false.  She  was  his  wife,  but  she  knew  so  little  of  d'Orvale  as  that  !  In  the 
Park  she  was  met  by  the  lover  she  had  repulsed,  Lord  Clydesmore.  Possibly 
it  was  by  him  the  letters  had  been  sent:  that  we  shall  never  know.  At  any  rate, 
he  imposed  on  her  with  a  great  show  of  regret  and  of  devotion,  told  her  that 
all  the  world  considered  her  Prince  Philippe's  mistress,  that  her  cousin  had 
cursed  her  as  a  dishonor  to  his  name,  and  that  she  might  see  on  that  very  spot 
how  utterly  d'Orvale  had  forgotten  her.  As  it  chanced,  the  duke  was  that  mo- 
ment riding  with  the  Countess  de  la  Vivarol  and  other  ladies.  Clydesmore 
drew  her  where  she  could  see  them  without  being  seen.  She  heard  her  hus- 
band's laughter;  she  saw  the  beautiful  women  he  was  with.  She  knew  so  little 
the  worth  of  the  heart  she  had  won,  that  she  believed  all  the  falsehoods  Clydes- 
more poured  in  her  ear,  believed  in  d'Orvale's  faithlessness  and  in  her  own 
dishonor.  Her  first  impulse  was  to  accuse  him  before  all  his  friends,  the  next 
to  flee  from  him  and  from  every  memory  of  him,  and  hide  herself  and  her 
shame  where  none  could  ever  reach  her.  That  she  did.  She  made  her  way 
back  into  Italy,  where  she  gave  birth  to  her  child.  She  would  not  even  let  him 
know  that  she  had  borne  him  one.  There  is  little  doubt  that  the  shock  of  what 
she  believed  his  cruelty,  the  falsehoods  that  Clydesmore  had  woven  about  her 
in  his  revenge,  had  unsettled  her  reason.  That  the  duke  sought  her  far  and 
wide,  though  unsuccessfully,  is  shown  by  the  difficulties  which  she  relates  beset 
her  in  her  avoidance  of  discovery  by  him." 

He  heard  in  silence,  his  breathing  quick  and  loud,  his  hand  on  the  dead 
man's. 

"  His  child  !  If  she  could  be  more  dear  to  me  than  she  is,  that  would  make 
her  so  !  Go  on;  go  on  !  " 

"  The  remainder  is  soon  told.  I  read  this  record  of  a  life  thrown  away 
by  such  blind  folly,  such  mingling  of  utter  credulity  and  mad  mistrust;  her 
marriage-ring  was  enclosed  in  it,  the  certificate  of  the  child's  birth,  and  other 
matters.  She,  of  course,  wrote  her  absolute  belief  that  she  was  not  his  wife.  I 
reasoned  otherwise.  Philippe  d'  Orvale  might  be  a  voluptuary,  but  his  honor 
was  true  as  steel.  A  false  marriage  would  have  been  a  fraud  impossible  to  him; 
he  would  never  have  betrayed  anything.  So — I  sought  out  the  evidence.  Most 
would  have  gone  to  him.  That  is  not  my  way.  I  have  known  the  world  too 
well  to  call  the  accused  into  the  place  of  witness.  I  sought  Castalia,  and  I 
sought  evidence  of  the  marriage,  ere  I  went  to  her  father.  I  found  the  priest 
who  had  performed  the  rites,  with  difficulty;  he  had  joined  the  Order  of  Jesus, 
and  was  in  Africa.  With  patience  I  reached  every  link,  those  who  had  wit- 
nessed it  and  all.  The  marriage  was  perfectly  valid,  legally  recorded,  though 
its  privacfc  had  been  kept.  It  is  easy  to  conceive  that,  with  his  nature,  which 


CHANDOS.  489 

loved  enjoyment  and  loathed  regret,  when  he  found  Valeria  irrevocably  lost  to 
him,  he  had  no  temptation  to  re-open  a  painful  thought  by  relating  his  connec- 
tions with  her.  Doubtless  other  loves  chased  her  memory  away,  though 
doubtless  that  memory  always  prompted  his  extreme  tenderness  towards  Lulli. 
That  the  union  was  strict  to  the  law,  you  will  see  when  I  show  you  the  proofs, 
and,  in  all  that  you  choose  to  claim  for  her,  Castalia  must  be  recognized  as  a 
daughter  of  the  house  of  D'Orvale." 

He  heard  in  perfect  stillness,  the  sudden  relief  of  the  deadly  strain  which 
had  been  on  him  for  the  past  hours  leaving  him  giddy  and  speechless;  he 
doubted  his  own  hearing:  he  had  touched  joy  so  often  only  to  see  it  wither 
from  him,  he  dreaded  that  this  too  was  but  a  dream.  A  thousand  thoughts 
and  memories  rushed  on  him:  that  superb  courage  which  flashed  from  Castalia's 
eyes,  that  imperial  grace  which  had  marked  her  out  among  the  Tuscan  con- 
tadini,  as  Perdita  was  marked  out  among  the  peasants  of  her  foster-home,  that 
pride  of  instinct  in  her  which  had  repelled  insult  as  worse  than  death, — they 
were  the  heritage  in  her  of  the  man  who  lay  dead  beside  him,  the  heritage  of  a 
great  dauntless  race,  that  in  the  annals  of  centuries  had  never  failed  a  friend 
or  quailed  before  a  foe.  His  hand  closed  tighter  on  Philippe  d'Orvale's,  and 
his  head  drooped  over  the  lifeless  limbs,  the  stilled  heart  that  never  again  would 
beat  with  the  brave  pulse  of  its  gallant  life. 

"  If  he  were  but  living " 

In  the  first  moment  of  a  release  so  sudden  that  it  seemed  to  break  all  his 
strength  down  beneath  his  joy,  his  heart  went  out  to  the  slaughtered  friend 
whose  love  had  been  with  him  to  the  last.  In  all  the  width  of  the  world; 
could  he  have  chosen,  there  was  no  life  from  which  he  would  have  had 
hers  taken  so  soon  as  from  Philippe  d'Orvale's,  in  which  honor  and  chivalry 
and  loyalty  and  all  bright  and  fearless  things  of  a  royal  temper  had  met  and 
been  unstained.  The  dignities,  the  titles,  the  possessions  that  would  accrue  to 
her  through  her  heirship  with  the  mighty  race  she  issued  from,  never  passed 
over  his  memory;  the  inheritance  that  he  remembered  in  her,  the  inheritance 
he  thanked  God  for  in  one  who  would  bear  his  name  and  hold  his  honor,  was 
the  inheritance  of  her  father's  nature. 

"  You  noblest  among  women  ! "  he  said,  brokenly,  as  he  took  the  hands  of 
Beatrix  Lennox  in  his  own  and  bent  over  them  as  men  bend  over  an  empress's. 
"  How  can  I  thank  you  ?  What  can  I  render  you  for  the  mercy  you  have 
brought  me,  for  the  torture  you  have  taken  from  my  life  ?  So  vast  a  gift, — 
so  unasked  a  service  !  What  words  can  ever  tell  you  my  gratitude  ? " 

She  smiled,  but  the  smile  was  very  sad. 

"  Don't  you  remember,  long  ago,  I  told  you  I  would  serve  you  if  I  could, 
though  it  were  twenty  years  later  !  Well,  I  have  kept  my  word;  but  there  is 
no  need  of  thanks  for  that:  it  cost  me  nothing." 


490  OU IDA'S     WORKS. 

It  had  cost  her  much  to  labor  to  give  him  to  another's  love,  to  know  that 
the  passion  of  his  heart  was  gone  to  the  one  whom  she  restored  to  him.  But 
that  cost  was  uncounted;  the  world-stained  lionne  could  attain  a  sacrifice  of 
which  the  pure  cold  Lady  of  Lilliesford  could  never  have  faintly  dreamed. 
Her  hands  were  clasped  still  in  his;  his  voice  quivered  as  he  answered 
her. 

"No  cost !  It  is  such  a  debt  as  leaves  me  bankrupt  to  repay  it;  my  life, 
her  life,  will  never  suffice  to  return  it." 

Her  eyes  were  very  beautiful  as  they  dwelt  on  him  in  the  dimness  of  the 
darkened  chamber. 

"  Chandos,  it  is  paid  enough.  You  will  know  happiness  once  more.  It  is 
your  native  sunlight;  could  my  lips  pray,  they  should  pray  that  it  may  shine  on 
you  forever." 

And  there  was  that  in  the  words,  as  they  were  spoken,  which  told  him  the 
truth  at  last, — told  him  of  what  sort  and  of  what  strength  this  woman's  ten- 
derness for  him  had  been. 

"  Hush  ! "  she  said,  softly,  with  that  weary  smile  which  had  in  it  more  sor- 
row than  tears.  "No;  do  not  thank  me;  do  not  say  more.  It  only  pains 
me.  Ah,  Christ  !  I  have  done  so  little  good  !  If  you  think  that  I  merit  any 
wage,  give  me  one  only;  let  me  see  your  darling." 

"  See  her  !  Who  should  be  cherished  and  honored  by  her  always,  if  not 
you, — you  who  have  given  her  back  her  mother's  honor  ?  " 

She  made  a  sign  of  dissent. 

"  No;  my  life  has  no  fitness  for  hers.  But  I  would  see  her  once  ere  she 
knows  this, — see  what  has  won  your  last  love." 

As  she  spoke,  into  the  shadows  of  the  chamber  of  death  Castalia  entered. 

She  knew  no  cause  for  his  long  absence;  she  knew  no  cause  for  that  misery 
with  which  his  arms  had  crushed  on  her  as  they  had  stood  waiting  the  volley  of 
the  guns.  She  had  borne  the  silence  a  while  with  the  absolute  submission  to 
him  that  mingled  with  the  passion  of  her  love;  at  last  the  latter  conquered; 
she  came  to  seek  him,  came  to  know  what  this  barrier  was  which  had  risen  up 
between  them  with  the  morning  light.  She  paused  as  she  saw  him  not  alone. 
Her  face  was  very  pale;  the  suffering  and  martyrdom  that  she  had  witnessed 
had  wrung  her  heart,  and  stirred  the  depths  of  a  nature  that  had  in  it  the  love 
of  liberty,  and  the  tenderness  for  the  people,  for  which  hef  father  had  died;  but 
the  brilliance  of  her  hair  flashed  to  gold  in  the  gloom  of  the  state-room,  out 
of  which  the  height  and  grace  of  her  form  rose;  and,  as  she  waited,  beyond 
the  gleam  of  the  funeral-lights,  the  royalty  was  on  her  which  had  seemed  to 
rest  like  a  crown  on  her  young  head  when  she  had  lived  among  the  peasants  of 
Tuscany,  and  had  made  them  speak  of  her  with  a  hushed  awe  as  a  fairy's 
changeling. 


CHAN  DOS.  401 

Beatrix  Lennox  looked  on  her  long  in  silence,  with  a  quick  deep  sigh;  there 
was  that  in  her  loveliness  which  far  passed  beyond  mere  beauty,  mere  youth; 
and  between  her  face  and  the  kingly  majesty  which  was  stretched  dead  on 
the  bier  there  was,  in  that  moment,  a  strange  likeness. 

The  heart  of  this  adventuress,  whom  the  world  had  long  condemned,  had 
thus  much  of  rare  nobility  and  self-forgetfulness  in  it;  it  could  rejoice  in  others' 
joy,  rejoice  that  what  it  had  itself  forfeited  still  lived  to  gladden  others.  It 
was  untainted  by  that  which  corrodes  many  whose  acts  are  blameless;  it  was 
untainted  by  the  gall  of  envy. 

Beatrix  Lennox  looked  on  this  life  that  opened  to  the  fulness  of  existence 
while  her  own  was  faded,  that  would  lie  in  the  bosom  of  the  man  she  loved, 
that  would  rest  in  the  golden  glory  of  joy  whilst  she  herself  had  nothing  left 
but  regret  and  remorse  and  the  phantoms  of  dead  years;  but  there  was  no 
bitterness  in  her;  there  was  only  a  heart-felt  thanksgiving  for  him. 

"She  is  worthy  even  of  you,  Chandos,"  she  said,  softly;  then  she  paused  a 
moment,  looking  down  into  the  lustrous,  meditative,  poetic  eyes  of  Castalia  with 
a  long,  searching,  thoughtful  gaze.  "  You  will  have  a  great  trust,"  she  said, 
simply,  "  and  a  great  treasure;  but  there  is  no  need  to  say  to  you,  guard  both 
dearer  than  life." 

Then,  silently,  with  one  backward  farewell  glance  at  the  dead  man  lying 
there,  she  passed  slowly  and  musingly  from  the  chamber.  Chandos  followed 
her,  and  took  her  hands  once  more  within  his  own. 

"  Wait,  /do  not  judge  as  the  world  judges.  You  have  come  as  the  angel 
of  mercy  to  me;  you  have  released  me  from  a  misery  passing  all  I  had  ever 
known.  You  will  live  in  our  love  and  reverence  forever;  you  will  let  us  both 
strive  to  repay  you  ?  " 

"You  have  more  than  repaid  me  by  those  words  only.  I  have  much  still 
to  tell  you, — to  place  with  you.  But  she  will  never  see  my  face  again.  You 
know  what  my  life  has  been!  " 

He  stooped  nearer,  and,  looking  upward,  she  saw  a  divine  compassion  on 
his  face. 

"  I  know  that  it  has  had  magnanimities  many  blameless  lives  have  never 
reached.  Hear  me.  Do  you  think  that,  in  view  of  such  an  act  as  yours,  I 
could  hold  a  Pharisee's  creed  ?  God  is  my  witness,  there  is  no  one  whom  I 
would  more  fearlessly  trust  with  her  than  you,  none  that  I  more  surely  know 
could  reverence  her  youth,  and  leave  untouched  her  innocence.  Can  I  say 
more  ? " 

"  More  !  You  have  said  far  above  what  I  merit.  But  what  you  mean  can- 
not be.  I  am  no  meet  associate  for  Philippe  d'Orvale's  daughter,  for  Ernest 
Chandos'  wife.  She  must  be  above  suspicion;  she  could  not  be  so  were  I  once 
seen  beside  her.  No,  my  years  have  been  too  evil  to  leave  me  any  place  with 


492  O  UIDA'S     WORKS. 

hers;  but  they  will  not  be  wholly  desolate  in  future,  for  I  shall  have  your  pity 
always,  and,  sometimes,  your  remembrance." 

She  touched  his  hand  with  her  lips  ere  he  could  stay  her,  and  hot  tears  fell 
on  it  as  she  stooped;  then  she  went  from  him, — content,  because  she  had  given 
him  happiness,  content,  because  it  had  been  hers  to  serve  him. 

"  Ah,  Heaven  !  will  even  she  love  him  better  than  I  have  loved  ?  "  thought 
the  woman  whom  the  world  had  called  as  evil,  perilous,  fatal  to  all  she  saw,  as 
Antonina;  and  in  truth  none  could  love  more  purely  or  more  deeply  than  she  did. 

He  passed  back  into  the  chamber  where  the  lights  burned  around  the  soli- 
tude of  the  dead,  and  his  arms  closed  on  what  he  cherished  with  a  convulsive 
pressure  as  though  she  were  just  rescued  from  her  grave.  He  could  not  speak 
for  many  moments,  but  held  her  there  as  a  man  holds  the  dearest  treasure 
of  his  life;  then  he  drew  her  to  the  bier,  where  the  brave,  serene  face  smiled 
on  them  in  eternal  rest. 

"Your  lips  were  the  last  to  touch  his;  thank  God  that  it  was  so.  I  have 
much  to  tell  you;  it  is  best  told  here.  My  love,  my  love  !  could  you  be  more 
sacred  to  me,  you  would  be  so  for  his  sake  ! " 


That  night,  in  the  palace  where  the  dead  man  lay, — the  palace  that,  with 
most  of  his  vast  chieftainship,  of  his  princely  appanage,  would  fall  to  the  only 
one  who  owned  his  name,— Guido  Lulli  stood  before  her  in  whose  eyes  the 
smile  of  his  lost  Valeria  looked  once  more  upon  him. 

"  Castalia,"  he  said,  softly,  "you  will  be  very  great  in  the  world's  sight;  but 
you  will  not  forget  that  your  mother  loved  me  once,  when  she  was  a  bright  and 
gracious  child,  and  I  had  no  thought  through  the  length  of  summer  days  and 
winter  nights  save  to  make  her  pleasure  ?  " 

She  stooped  to  him  with  that  grace  which,  even  when  the  ban  of  peasants' 
scorn  and  of  a  foundling's  shame  had  rested  on  her,  had  been  so  proud,  and 
had  so  much  of  royalty  in  it. 

"  Ah  !  can  you  think  so  basely  of  me  as  to  need  to  ask  it  ?  My  fondest 
reverence  will  be  ever  yours;  and  as  for  greatness,  what  greatness  can  there  be 
like " 

Her  eyes  turned  on  Chandos,  and  the  glance  spoke  what  was  mute  on 
her  lips. 

"  His  love  ?  "  added  the  musician,  gently,  while  his  own  gaze  dwelt  also  on 
the  man  who  had  come  to  him  as  his  savior  in  the  bleak  and  burning  heat  of 
Spain,  when  both  were  in  their  youth.  "  Right.  There  will  be  your  proudest 
coronal:  and  by  you,  through  you,  some  portion  of  my  debt  will  be  paid  to 
him." 


CHANDOS.  493 

Chandos  silenced  him  with  a  gesture. 

"Hush  !  You  paid  it  long  ago,  Lulli;  paid  it  afresh  to-day;  paid  it  when 
you  gave  me  a  rarer  thing  than  gold, — fidelity." 

"  Not  so.  There  are  debts  that,  I  have  told  you,  are  too  noble  to  be  repaid 
like  counted  coin.  Mine  is  one  of  them.  Let  it  rest  on  me  ever,  ever.  It  will 
be  my  last  thought,  and  my  sweetest  in  my  death-hour." 

There  was  an  exceeding  pathos  in  the  brief  and  simple  words;  with  them  he 
turned  and  passed  from  the  chamber.  He  looked  back  once,  himself  unseen, 
and  his  face  grew  pale  with  a  certain  pang.  The  light  that  shone  on  their  lives 
would  never  come  to  him;  the  lotus-lily  of  which  they  ate  his  lips  could  never 
touch.  There  was  no  bitterness  on  him,  no  sin  of  envy,  no  thought  save  a 
voiceless  prayer  for  them;  yet  still  the  pain  was  there.  No  joy  could  ever  be 
his  own,  no  fragrance  of  Eden  reach  him.  He  must  dwell  forever  an  exile 
from  that  golden  world  in  which  men  for  a  while  forget  that  no  dreams  last. 
Had  it  been  his  to  give,  he  would  have  poured  on  them  the  glory  of  the  life  of 
gods;  but  in  their  love  he  saw  all  his  own  life  had  missed,  all  his  own  life  for- 
ever was  denied. 

As  he  went  back  alone  into  his  desolate  home,  into  the  music  room  where 
the  things  of  his  art  were,  it  was  deep  in  shade;  only  across  the  keys  of  the 
organ  at  the  end  a  white  pure  light  was  streaming  from  the  rays  of  a  lamp  that 
swung  above. 

A  smile  came  on  his  lips  as  he  saw  it;  to  him  it  was  as  an  allegory,  Heaven- 
painted. 

"  Alone  !  while  I  have  you  ?  "  he  murmured. 

The  artist  was  true  to  his  genius,  he  knew  it  a  greater  gift  than  happiness; 
and  as  his  hands  wandered  by  instinct  over  the  familiar  notes,  the  power  of  his 
kingdom  came  to  him,  the  passion  of  his  mistress  was  on  him,  and  the  grandeur 
of  the  melody  swelled  out  to  mingle  with  the  night,  divine  as  consolation, 
supreme  as  victory. 

Where  he  had  left  them  in  the  solitude  of  a  happiness  hushed,  yet  only  deep- 
ened, by  the  memory  of  the  dead  that  bound  them  closer  still,  Castalia,  where 
she  leaned  in  her  lover's  arms,  looked  up  with  the  languor  and  the  fire  of 
Southern  love  burning  softer  and  richer  through  the  mist  of  unshed 
tears. 

"  Ah,  my  lord,  my  king  ? "  she  murmured,  with  a  smile  proud,  but  of  an 
unspeakable  tenderness,  "  I  rejoice  that  I  shall  be  no  shame  to  you,  that  you 
will  not  give  your  name  to  the  nameless,  that  I  have  that  noblest  heritage  of 
his  noble  death.  And  yet — almost  I  wish  it  had  been  ever  otherwise;  that  I 
had  owed  all  to  your  gift  only;  that  I  had  taken  honor  alone  from  you,  like 
the  broom-flower  that  was  worthless  until  Flantagenets  wore  it  on  their  hearts 


494  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

and  lent  it  their  own  royalties.     He  spoke  of  my  greatness  !     I  have  but  one 
greatness,  shall  have  but  one  while  my  life  lasts, — you!  " 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

LEX   TALIONIS. 

WITH  the  sunset  a  mad  storm  had  broken  over  Venice,  rolling  in  funeral 
mass  for  the  souls  of  those  who  had  died  for  liberty.  At  midnight  it  lulled 
somewhat;  the  thunder  grew  more  distant,  and  died  away  in  low,  hoarse  anger; 
sheets  of  heavy  rain  succeeded,  and  through  the  hot  sulphurous  air  the  wind  arose 
in  fitful  and  tempestuous  gusts.  In  its  violence,  the  Jew  kept  his  patient  vigil. 

All  through  the  day  he  had  heard  the  noise  of  the  tumult,  the  echoes  of  the 
firing,  the  shrieks  of  women,  the  clash  of  swords;  he  had  heard  the  terror- 
stricken  stillness  that  fell  over  the  city  when  a  great  man  was  slain ;  he  had 
heard  the  murmur  of  many  tongues,  that  told  him  many  strange,  conflicting 
tales.  And  his  heart  was  ill  at  rest;  he  feared  for  his  son.  Death  had  been 
abroad  in  the  streets;  death  had  smitten  the  innocent  with  the  guilty:  whom 
might  it  not  have  touched  ?  As  soon  as  darkness  gave  him  the  safety  and  the 
secrecy  that  for  Agostino's  sake  he  kept,  he  made  his  way  to  the  place  where 
his  son  dwelt.  He  heeded  neither  the  fury  of  the  winds  nor  the  beat  of  the 
rain;  he  thought  some  passing  sound,  some  echo  of  a  voice,  some  stray  word 
borne  to  his  eager  ear,  might  tell  him  what  he  sought.  From  sunset  to  mid- 
night he  waited  in  the  shadow  of  the  stone-work,  waited  and  listened.  Dark- 
ness and  light  were  alike  to  him;  no  sunrays  ever  pierced  the  gloom  before 
his  sight,  even  when  the  heat  of  a  Southern  noon  told  him  the  golden  glow 
that  shone  on  all  the  world,  denied  alone  to  him  and  to  the  Legion  of  the  Blind. 
He  stood  and  listened,  his  long  white  hair  blown  back  in  the  wild  wind,  the 
rushing  storm  of  driving  rain  beaten  against  him  unheeded;  he  waited  to  hear 
the  one  step  that  should  tell  him  the  son  he  loved  still  lived:  to  know  that  he 
was  near,  to  be  conscious  of  his  presence  for  one  fleeting  moment,  were  enough 
for  the  great  patient  heart  of  the  Hebrew. 

For  these  only  he  watched  now, — watched  in  vain.  No  sound  repaid  him; 
hours  had  passed,  and  there  had  been  nothing.  The  storm  had  drenched  his 
garments,  and  his  snowy  beard  was  heavy  with  water;  still  he  listened, — listened 
so  eagerly  that  the  caution  he  had  exercised  so  long  to  remain  unseen  was  for- 
gotten as  he  leaned  out  from  the  shadow,  hearkening  in  the  rush  of  the  rain 
for  the  footfall  he  knew  so  well.  He  forgot  that  the  darkness  which  veiled 
the  world  from  him  could  not  shroud  him  from  sight;  he  could  not  tell  that 


CHAN  DOS.  495 

the  wavering  light  of  the  lamp  which  swung  above  from  the  doorway  near  fell 
on  his  olive  brow,  upturned  as  though  in  the  Psalmist's  weariness  of  prayer. 
He  had  worn  the  fetters  of  his  taskmaster  so  long;  he  had  so  long  borne  the 
burden  and  the  weight  of  this  iron  silence  bound  on  him;  death  seemed  so  long 
in  its  coming  !  It  took  the  young,  the  beloved,  the  fair,  the  child  from  its 
mother's  bosom,  the  beauty  of  youth  from  the  lover's  embrace,  the  glory  of 
manhood  from  its  fruitage  of  ambition,  from  its  harvest  of  labor;  and  it  would 
not  come  to  him,  but  left  him  here,  poor,  old,  sightless,  solitary  alone  in  the 
midst  of  all  the  peopled  earth. 

And  yet  there  was  a  vague  hope  in  his  soul  to-night:  he  felt  as  though 
death  were  not  far  from  him,  as  though  the  release  of  its  sweet  pity  would  soon 
stoop  to  him,  and  touch  him,  and  bid  his  bitterness  cease;  and  ere  it  came,  he 
longed  to  hear  once  more  his  darling's  step, — to  feel  once  more  near  him  the 
existence  born  of  his  dead  love, — the  heart  to  which  once  he  had  been  dear. 
He  had  strength  in  him  to  be  silent  unto  death,  to  accept  his  martyrdom  and 
bear  it  onward  to  his  grave,  untold  to  any  living  thing:  all  he  asked  was  to  listen 
once  to  a  single  living  echo  of  his  lost  son's  voice.  Through  the  hush  of  the 
midnight  the  beat  of  oars  trembled;  a  gondola  grated  against  the  stairs.  It 
came, — that  sound  which  thrilled  through  the  rayless  darkness  which  was  ever 
around  him,  as  it  never  trembled  on  any  ear  whose  sense  was  linked  with  the 
power  of  sight, — that  sound  of  Agostino's  voice,  as  it  spoke  to  the  boatman, — 
that  sound  which  was  the  sole  joy  left  to  the  blind.  His  son  came  towards 
him  nearer  and  nearer  up  the  wet  stone  steps;  he  leaned  forward,  knowing  not 
how  the  light  shone  down  on  his  face,  and  an  unspoken  blessing  trembled  on  his 
lips  in  the  tongue  of  the  patriarchs  of  Judea:  if  he  died  to-night,  he  would 
have  prayed  with  his  last  breath  for  the  son  of  the  love  of  his  youth. 

The  footfall  paused:  it  was  beside  him  now,  so  close  that  he  could  hear 
every  breath.  A  loud,  wild  cry  broke  through  the  night.  Agostino  staggered 
back,  white-stricken,  ghastly  as  Saul  in  the  cave  of  Endor.  A  moment,  and  he 
gazed  there  paralyzed  with  spectral  awe,  with  superstitious  horror;  then,  un- 
witting what  he  did,  senseless  and  breathless,  and  prostrate,  he  fell  down  at  the 
old  man's  feet  in  the  supplication  of  his  childhood. 

"  Father  !  father  !  dead  or  living,  for  the  love  of  God  forgive  me  !  " 

The  Hebrew  stood  above  in  the  flickering  shadowy  light;  and  on  his  face 
there  was  the  strife  of  a  terrible  conflict.  All  his  soul  yearned  to  the  man  flung 
there  in  that  passionate  prayer  at  his  feet:  yet  for  his  very  sake  he  must  deny 
him! 

"  I  do  not  know  you,"  he  said,  and  his  voice  trembled  sorely.  "  None  call 
me  father." 

There  have  been  heroisms  far  less  noble  than  this  one  heroic  lie. 

Agostino  looked  up,  his  face  all  flushed  with  warmth,  his  eyes  alight  with 


496  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

bewildered,  questioning  amaze;  the  voice,  once  heard,  bore  back  a  thousand 
memories  of  by-gone  years.  The  words  might  deny,  but  the  voice  blessed 
him. 

"  Forgive  me!  "  he  implored,  scarce  conscious  of  what  he  said,  but  remem- 
bering alone  the  sin  with  which  he  had  wrung  the  old  man's  heart  so  long  ago 
in  the  days  of  his  boyhood, — the  sin  which  had  pursued  him  ever  since. 
"  Whether  you  come  to  me  in  spirit  or  in  life,  come  only  to  me  in  pardon,  by 
the  love  you  bore  me!  " 

The  Hebrew  stood  mute  and  motionless,  his  tall  and  wasted  frame  swaying 
like  a  reed,  his  face  changing  with  swift  and  uncontrollable  emotions,  under 
the  force  of  the  imploring  conjuration.  His  sightless  eyes  gazed  instinctively 
down  upon  his  son;  but  their  blindness  gave  them,  to  Agostino,  a  look  unearthly 
and  without  sense. 

"  Father!  speak,  O  God!  "  he  cried,  "  or  you  will  kill  me!  " 

The  infinite  love  restrained  in  him  broke  through  the  rigid  fixity  of  the 
old  man's  set  features  as  the  sun  breaks  through  the  darkness  of  a  winter 
dawn;  his  hands  were  stretched  out  seeking  to  touch  the  beloved  head  lifted  to 
him;  he  could  hold  his  silence  no  more, — no  more  be  as  one  dead  to  the  son 
who  knew  him  still. 

His  answer  trembled,  tender  beyond  all  words,  through  the  sighing  of  the 
wild  winds  and  the  rush  of  the  beating  rain. 

"  Agostino!  my  child!  what  have  /to  pardon  ?  Rise,  rise;  guide  my  hands 
to  you;  let  my  arms  feel  you  ere  I  die!  You  have  your  mother's  face,  and  I 
cannot  behold  it;  I  am  blind!  " 


In  the  dim  light  of  the  chamber  within,  kneeling  at  the  old  man's  feet  rev- 
erently as  ever  Isaac  knelt  at  the  feet  of  Abraham,  Agostino  heard  his  father's 
history, — heard  quivering  with  torture,  his  breath  caught  by  sobs,  his  kiss 
touching  the  withered  hands  that  were  to  him  as  the  hands  of  a  martyr,  great 
tears  in  his  eyes  that  never  left  their  gaze  upon  those  in  whose  darkness  he  could 
still  read  love.  He  heard  to  the  end.  Then,  when  he  had  heard,  he  wept  con- 
vulsively; the  torrent  of  his  agony  loosened. 

"  You  have  borne  this  martyrdom  through  him  !  this  curse  for  his  sake!  " 

The  Hebrew  stayed  him  with  one  gesture. 

"  Silence  !  His  name  is  sacred  to  me.  My  son,  he  had  mercy;  he  spared 
you." 

Agostino  sprang  to  his  feet  as  an  arrow  springs  from  the  bow. 
"  Spared  me  ?     Oh,  God,  you  have  thought  that  ?  " 

The  old  man  bent  his  head  with  the  patient  dignity  with  which  he  had 
ever  borne  the  burden  laid  upon  him. 


He  leaned  forward,  not  knowing  how  the  l^ht  shown  down  on  his  face,  etc. 

—Page  495,  Vol.  III. 


CHAN  DOS.  497 

"He  spared  you;  yes!  For  it  I  bless  his  name.  My  life  mattered 
nothing." 

"  Spared  me  ?  He  cursed  me  from  my  youth  up!  "  his  voice  rang  as  steel 
rings:  the  bondage  of  half  a  life  was  broken  at  last.  "  He  loosed  me  from  the 
law's  chastisement  to  break  me  down  into  slavery  worse  than  the  worst  tortures 
the  sternest  law  ever  dealt  yet.  He  let  me  escape  a  moment  to  fetter  me  for 
an  eternity.  He  traded  in  my  misery;  he  traded  in  my  crime.  He  set  me  to 
do  the  vilest  work,  and,  when  I  shrank  from  it,  threatened  me  with  my  buried 
sin.  He  made  my  life  one  endless  dread;  he  never  let  me  know  one  moment's 
peace,  one  hour's  security.  Ah,  Heaven!  why  do  I  speak  of  it  as  past  ?  He 
does  it  still.  I  am  his  tool,  his  serf,  his  hound.  Every  day  I  wake,  I  know 
that  I  may  rise  only  to  be  commanded  some  fresh  infamy  to  serve  him!  " 

The  old  man,  as  he  heard,  rose  also,  and  stood  erect;  his  sunken  eyes 
filled  with  the  fire  of  his  dead  manhood,  his  mouth  set  like  a  vice;  years  of 
living  vigor,  of  mighty  strength,  seemed  poured  into  his  veins:  his  olive  face 
was  dark  as  night. 

"  What!  he  was  faithless  to  me  ?    You  have  suffered  ? " 

His  words  were  brief,  but  they  carried  an  ominous  meaning. 

"  Suffered!  It  is  no  word  for  what  I  have  borne  through  him.  But  what  is 
his  crime  to  me,  beside  his  crime  to  you  ?  I  was  guilty,  I  merited  my  punish- 
ment; but  you, — you  who  endured  indignity  and  torment  for  my  sake  and  for 
his,  you  had  no  error,  save  too  firm  a  loyalty  to  him,  too  noble  a  tenderness  to 
me!  '  His  voice  fell  in  a  deep  tearless  sob;  he  had  the  heart  of  a  woman,  and 
his  father's  sacrifice  was  holy  in  his  sight  as  any  martyrdom. 

"  He  has  been  your  tyrant  ?  " 

The  question  was  hard  as  iron. 

Agostino  flung  himself  down  afresh  at  the  old  man's  feet;  he  felt  that  he 
could  kneel  there  forever  in  expiation  of  the  sin  of  his  youth  that  had  brought 
this  doom  darker  than  death  upon  his  father's  life. 

"  Mine!  what  matters  that  ?     It  is  nothing  beside  your  captivity!  " 

"Yes!  By  it  my  bonds  are  loosed;  by  it  my  oath  is  broken.  He  has 
had  my  patience  long,  my  truth  long,  my  servitude  long;  now  he  shall  have 
my  justice." 

His  whole  height  was  erect,  his  blind  eyes  blazed  with  fire,  his  arm  was 
out-stretched  in  imprecation;  he  stood  like  one  of  the  prophets  of  his  own 
Palestine,  cursing  in  the  name  of  Jehovah  a  hostile  host,  an  ingrate  land. 

Agostino,  looking  upward,  caught  the  same  fire  from  him,  caught  the  kind- 
ling glow  of  liberty  and  of  revenge.  He  had  writhed  and  rebelled  under  his 
own  bonds,  though  only  to  sink  more  hopelessly  under  the  fetters;  but  before 
the  martyrdom  of  his  father  there  rose  in  him  that  nobler  rage  for  another's 
wrong  which  would  have  made  him  content  to  perish  himself,  if  in  his  fall 


498  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

he  could  have  dragged  down  his  tyrant:  it  is  the  emotion  which  makes  tyran- 
nicides. 

"  Ay!  "  he  cried,  passionately,  "  let  us  be  avenged  if  the  power  be  still  with 
us.  Let  him  shame  me,  ruin  me,  kill  me;  but  let  me  see  him  struck  down  ere 
I  die.  His  guilty  secrets  have  been  the  curse  of  both  our  lives;  let  them  be 
told  against  him!  /was  impotent;  but  you " 

The  figure  of  the  aged  Hebrew  towered  in  the  gloom,  and  on  his  face  was 
the  stern  ruthless  justice  of  the  Mosaic  law. 

"  As  he  dealt  with  us,  so  will  I  deal  with  him;  there  is  no  bond  with  traitors. 
An  eye  for  an  eye,  a  tooth  for  a  tooth.  It  is  just.  Go!  fetch  the  man  he 
strove  hardest  to  destroy.  He  is  in  Venice;  bring  him  here." 

The  weaker  nature  of  his  son  trembled  as  he  touched,  at  last,  the  liberty, 
the  atonement,  the  avenging  blow  for  which  he  had  so  long  thirsted.  The  slave 
had  been  a  slave  so  long,  he  trembled  before  the  daring  that  would  loose  his 
chains. 

"  But  only  to  have  shared  such  infamy  was  so  vile  !  I  cannot  bear  that  he 
should  know  us  its  accomplices " 

"Silence!  What  matter?  We  were  beasts  of  burden;  we  carried  what 
loads  our  master  laid  on  us, — dead  men  or  blood-stained  weapons.  Go;  bring 
him  quickly  ! — quickly  !  Do  you  hear  ?  " 

An  ashen  hue  stole  over  the  bronze  of  his  face,  his  lips  were  pressed  in  a 
straight  line  under  the  flowing  of  his  beard,  his  hands  moved  with  a  swift 
impatient  movement.  Agostino  looked  up  at  him  in  fear. 

"  Father  !  wait.     You  are  too  weak." 

The  old  man's  voice  rung,  stern  and  imperious,  across  his  own. 

"I  shall  be  strong  to  do  this  ere  I  die.  Go  to  him;  tell  him  I  will  give  him 
his  vengeance.  Go  tD  him;  I  command  you — bring  him  here." 

The  inflexible  command  brooked  no  disobedience;  it  swayed  his  listener 
with  the  old  force  of  the  Jewish  parental  power.  Agostino  was  once  more  the 
youth  before  his  father's  might,  under  his  father's  hand.  He  dared  dispute 
no  longer. 

The  old  man  sat,  and  waited.  Moments  seemed  hours  to  him;  the  flame 
of  his  life  was  burning  low,  he  dreaded  lest  it  should  die  out  ere  it  should  have 
time  to  shine  upon  his  vengeance  and  light  the  fires  that  would  devour  his 
tyrant's  fame  and  crumble  it  to  ashes  in  the  sight  of  men.  His  pulse  beat 
faintly,  his  heart  was  oppressed,  his  limbs  felt  chill  as  ice;  but  he  had  said  that 
he  had  strength  in  him  to  do  this  thing  ere  he  passed  away  among  the  vanished 
crowds;  and  he  sat  there  with  his  ear  straining  eagerly,  his  lips  braced,  his 
whole  force  stung,  to  keep  in  him  the  powers  of  thought  and  speech  and  mem- 
ory, on  which  his  hold  was  now  fast  slackening. 

His  son  knelt  near  him;  he  had  sent  the  bidding  to  the  one  whom  it  sum- 


CHANDOS.  499 

moned,  and  he  crouched  near  like  a  beaten  dog.  For  the  moment,  he  had 
panted  to  break  his  bonds  at  any  cost;  but  the  vehemence  of  that  impulse  had 
its  reaction;  he  felt  sick  with  shame,  he  trembled  with  dread:  the  whip  had 
done  its  invariable,  inevitable  work;  it  had  made  the  spaniel  a  coward  to  the 
core.  Moreover,  he  loathed  his  own  sins;  he  held  himself  viler  than  the  harsh- 
est judge  would  ever  have  held  him,  and  he  feared  unspeakably  the  sight  of  the 
man  who  had  cleaved  to  honor  at  all  cost,  the  man  whom  he  might  have  saved, 
had  he  but  had  the  courage  to  risk  a  personal  peril. 

Where  the  Hebrew  sat  with  his  head  bent  forward,  his  hand  clenched  on  the 
wood-work  near  him,  his  quick  hearing  caught  a  distant  sound;  his  lips  moved 
eagerly. 

"  He  comes  !    Bring  him, — bring  him  quickly!    Let  me  speak  while  I  can  !  " 

Agostino  started  to  his  feet,  and  staggered  out,  at  the  imperious  command, 
— out  into  the  gloom  of  the  stone  passages.  From  the  wild  night  without, 
Chandos  entered.  The  storm  had  risen  afresh,  the  lashing  of  water  and  wind 
had  beaten  on  the  black  sea-piles,  the  darkness  of  the  hot  tempestuous  air  was 
impenetrable,  the  rains  were  pouring  down  in  torrents;  through  the  tempest, 
heedless  that  his  hair  was  drenched  and  that  the  lightning  scorched  his  eyes,  he 
had  come,  with  but  one  memory  on  him,  with  but  one  hope, — his  vengeance. 

Passionate  as  his  love  was,  dear  as  his  heritage,  closely  as  he  had  cloven  to 
a  barren  honor  through  barren  years  of  bitterness,  he  would  have  been  capable 
in  that  instant  of  throwing  honor  and  heritage  and  love  away,  if  by  them  only 
he  could  have  purchased  this  one  thing.  No  life  so  utterly  and  so  surely  attains 
strength,  that  it  may  not  give  way  and  fall  at  the  last;  no  life  is  so  absolutely 
free  of  baser  passions,  that  when  the  slaughter-lust  is  on  it,  it  may  not  reel 
headlong  into  crime. 

As  he  entered,  with  the  dignity  of  command,  the  glow  of  passion,  upon  his 
face,  on  which  the  grief  that  the  day  had  borne  and  the  light  of  recovered  hap- 
piness mingled,  there  was  in  him  the  beauty  that  the  Spanish  lad  had  likened 
in  the  days  of  his  youth  to  the  golden-haired  sovereign  of  Syria;  and  as  Agos- 
tino saw  him,  involuntarily,  unconsciously,  he  threw  himself  at  the  feet  of  this 
man,  whose  wrongs  he  had  buried  in  silence  through  the  pusillanimity  of  a  sel- 
fish terror;  he  abased  himself  there  as  Eastern  slaves  before  their  rulers. 

"  Forgive  me,  if  you  can  !  I  can  never  forgive  myself.  I  was  like  one  who 
sees  a  murder  done,  and  will  not  raise  his  voice  to  stay  the  lifted  blade,  lest  it 
be  thrust  into  his  own  throat  instead.  I  loved  you, — honored  you, — though 
your  eyes  never  fell  on  me  but  twice  in  my  boyhood;  and  yet  I  never  told  you 
where  the  assassin  hid  !  " 

Chandos  forced  him  upward  by  sheer  strength;  light  flashed  from  his  eyes, 
his  lips  parted  with  fevered  eagerness,  his  whole  frame  thrilled  with  one  desire 
alone. 


500  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

"  I  see  who  you  are;  I  see  what  you  know.  If  you  can  give  me  vengeance, 
there  is  no  guilt  on  earth  /  will  not  pardon  you.  Vengeance,  I  say  !  Give  me 
but  JUSTICE,  and  it  will  beggar  the  wildest  vengeance  that  men  ever  took.  Your 
father  sent  for  me:  lead  on, — quick  !  " 

The  softness  of  his  love,  the  bereavement  of  the  noon,  were  alike  flung  off 
him  as  though  they  had  no  place  in  his  life;  the  world  held  nothing  for  him 
save  this  only, — a  lifetime  of  wrong,  left  unavenged  so  long. 

Agostino  looked  at  him  in  one  fleeting  look;  then  the  crouched,  shuddering, 
beaten  shame  came  on  him  that  had  moved  him  when  in  the  oak-forest  he  had 
seen  the  hopeless  melancholy  of  the  face  that  he  had  once  known  brilliant  as 
the  Spanish  sun  that  had  shone  on  them  when  they  had  first  met.  He  had 
lived  in  the  world,  he  had  made  fame,  he  had  carried  himself  fairly  before  men; 
but  he  had  been  but  a  slave,  and  a  slave's  weakness  and  prostration  were  in  his 
nature  forever. 

He  gave  a  heart-sick,  shivering  sigh. 

"  Ah,  you  may  pardon,  but  I  cannot  pardon  myself.  You  have  known 
calamity  and  desolation;  but  you  have  never  known  the  worst  pang  of  all, — to 
be  disgraced  in  your  own  eyes  ! " 

Even  in  that  moment  the  anguish  of  the  accent  reached  and  touched 
Chandos.  He  turned  and  looked  an  instant  on  the  face  that  he  had  once  seen 
in  its  boyish  grace,  with  the  hot  amber  light  of  Granada  upon  it. 

"  He  who  feels  disgrace  so  keenly  is  on  the  surest  road  to  leave  it  behind 
him  forever.  Now,  lead  on, — quick,  for  the  sake  of  Heaven  !  " 

The  wax-like,  flexible,  impressive  nature  of  the  Castilian  Jew  was  awed  and 
stilled  by  the  might  of  the  avenging  power  he  had  summoned.  He  led  the  way 
in  silence, — led  him  into  the  great  chamber  where  the  blind  man  sat,  lonely, 
and  old  and  poor,  but  grand  as  the  sightless  seer  of  Chios. 

The  light  from  above  beamed  on  the  massive  bronze  of  his  forehead  and  on 
the  snow-white  falling  beard.  His  eyes  strained  into  the  gloom  they  could  not 
pierce;  he  rose  at  the  sound  of  the  footstep,  and  stood  erect  as  the  Prophet  of 
his  own  rabbinical  tale,  when  he  rose  to  bless  the  Israel  whom  his  taskmaster 
had  bade  him  curse. 

"  Come  hither,"  he  said,  briefly,  and  his  voice  gathered  the  force  of  his 
manhood.  "You  craved  a  perilous  thing,  and  I  refused  it;  the  lust  is  mine 
now,  and  I  will  yield  you  what  you  sought.  '  He  who  rises  by  the  sword  shall 
perish  by  the  sword: '  it  is  just.  You  shall  deal  with  him  as  by  the  law  of 
Moses: — •'  every  man  shall  be  put  to  death  according  to  his  sin.'  Come  hither 
and  listen  while  my  lips  have  still  speech." 

Where  Chandos  stood  against  him,  his  face  was  eager  with  a  fiery  hunger, 
flushed  and  set  with  a  mighty  passion;  his  breath  caught  in  quick  gasps, 

"  But — your  oath  ?  " 


CHAN  DOS.  501 

The  bond  was  not  his,  yet  he  remembered  the  sanctity  of  the  vow  that  had 
been  in  his  path  as  a  rock. 

His  slight  ironic  smile  wavered  an  instant  over  the  Jew's  stern  mouth. 

"  Sir,  you  are  thrice  a  madman!  You  guard  other  men's  honor  as  well  as 
your  own,  even  to  your  own  hindrance.  Beat  rest.  My  oath  is  broken  justly. 
It  was  sworn  for  so  long  as  my  son  was  saved  by  him.  He  has  cursed  my  son; 
I  am  released.  Traitors  shall  be  slain  by  their  own  weapons.  I  was  silent 
and  faithful  whilst  I  believed  silence  and  fidelity  due.  He  has  been  false  to 
me;  the  bond  is  rent  by  his  own  hand.  You  said  aright  in  the  night  that  is 
past;  he  whom  I  served  was  your  enemy." 

The  oak-wood  of  the  bench  on  which  his  hands  were  clenched  broke  like  a 
reed  in  Chandos'  grasp  as  he  heard.  He  had  known  this  iniquity  ere  yet  it 
had  been  told;  but  its  utterance  fell  on  him  like  the  stroke  of  an  iron  mace. 
His  foe's  life,  had  it  been  by  him  in  that  one  moment,  had  not  been  worth  a 
moment's  purchase;  it  would  have  been  broken  asunder  as  the  strong  rail  was 
snapped  in  his  hands. 

"  Tell  me  all,"  he  said,  briefly,  between  his  teeth,  that  fastened  together 
like  a  steel  lock. 

"  Sir,  to  tell  you  all  the  inquity  that  /wrought  were  to  speak  for  a  score  of 
years,  and  I  shall  not  live  as  many  minutes,"  said  the  Israelite,  in  his  grave, 
caustic  satire.  "  '  When  thou  cuttest  the  harvest  in  the  field,  leave  a  sheaf  for 
the  fatherless,'  said  the  law.  Well,  we  kept  law  so  well  that  we  sheared  the  last 
wheat-ear  from  every  land  in  our  reach.  '  No  man  shall  take  the  millstones 
to  pledge;  for  he  taketh  a  man's  life  to  pledge,"  the  law  has  written.  Well,  we 
obeyed  so  well  that  we  took  the  millstones  and  ground  the  life  to  powder  be- 
tween them.  But,  of  all  that  we  wronged,  we  wronged  you  most.  You  had 
had  mercy  on  him  when  he  was  a  debtor  and  wretched;  you  had  given  him 
food,  and  shelter,  and  comfort,  and  friendship,  and  the  smile  of  the  world;  and 
in  payment  he  wrung  your  life  dry  of  all  wealth  and  all  peace,  as  men  wring  a 
skin  dry  of  wine." 

He  paused;  life  was  flickering  dully  and  feebly  in  him.  Chandos  shook 
with  rage  where  he  heard. 

"  Do  you  think  I  have  not  known  that  ?  More, — more,  for  the  love  of  God! 
To  be  told  my  wrongs  is  no  vengeance." 

"  Patience.  Your  vengeance  lies  in  them.  Your  enemy  never  broke  the 
laws  of  his  land;  he  was  too  wary  in  wisdom:  he  plundered,  but  he  plundered 
within  the  statutes.  The  worst  felons  are  those  who  can  never  be  brought  to 
the  bar.  He  persuaded  you  to  waste  your  substance;  he  drew  it — much  of 
it — into  his  hands;  but  it  was  always  you  who  signed  your  own  death-warrant. 
I  have  had  your  signatures  by  the  hundred ;  the  sums  they  signed  away  were 
cheated  from  you,  because  lies  were  told  you  of  their  use  and  their  purport; 


502  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

but  you  were  very  careless  in  those  matters,  and  he  was  very  able.  There 
is  not  one  of  them  that  is  forged;  they  were  all  legal,  though  they  were 
villanies." 

"  Oh,  God  !  is  he  never  to  be  reached,  then  ?  " 

It  rang  out  from  him  in  a  loud  cry,  like  the  cry  of  a  drowning  man  from 
whose  hands  the  last  plank  slips. 

"  Patience  !  Have  I  not  said  you  shall  have  your  vengeance  and  mine  ! 
You  cannot  bring  him  to  the  felon's  dock,  but  you  shall  gibbet  him  in  the  sight 
of  the  nations;  you  shall  rend  his  robes  asunder;  you  shall  tread  his  crowns 
beneath  his  feet.  Half — nay,  a  tithe — of  what  I  can  tell  would  suffice  to  drive 
him  out  in  shame  and  cover  his  head  with  ignominy.  The  breath  of  his  life 
now  is  to  be  untainted  before  the  country  that  holds  him  a  chief;  lay  bare  his 
corruption,  and  ruin  will  blast  him,  he  will  fall,  stricken  to  the  roots." 

His  breath  caught,  his  cheek  grew  ashen;  the  strength  was  dying  in  him,  and 
the  stagnant  course  of  his  blood  was  nigh  ceasing  forever;  but  he  had  a  ruthless 
will,  he  forced  life  back  to  him,  and  his  words  rang  clear  as  a  herald's  menace. 

"Let  me  say  the  chief  thing  first;  my  breath  will  fail  ere  you  know  one- 
thousandth  part.  Briefly,  take  my  signet-ring,  here,  to  one  of  my  people  in 
Paris, — Joachim  Rosso,  a  worker  in  silver, — in  the  street  where  you  found  me. 
At  that  sign,  bid  him  give  you  the  sealed  papers  he  keeps  for  me.  He  knows 
nothing  of  what  is  in  them;  but  he  has  guarded  them  for  me  many  years.  He 
is  a  good  friend  and  faithful.  In  them  you  will  find  the  record  of  all  I  have  no 
strength  to  tell  you, — the  proofs  of  the  trade  that  your  foe  and  I  drove  in 
men's  necessities.  This  Englishman,  my  bondmaster,  was  very  keen,  very  wise; 
and  when  he  held  me  by  my  son's  danger  and  by  my  own  gratitude,  he  held  me 
by  iron  chains;  he  knew  he  could  trust  me  to  suffer  anything  and  keep  silence. 
But  " — his  sardonic  smile  passed  over  his  lips — "  he  dealt  with  a  Jew,  and  the 
Jew  could  meet  the  fox  with  a  fox's  skill.  He  had  heavily  weighted  me  into 
slavery;  and  while  I  believed  him  true  to  the  lad,  my  tongue  should  have  been 
rooted  out  rather  than  be  made  to  utter  one  syllable  against  him.  But  a  Jew's 
life  is  lived  only  to  cheat,  they  say;  and  I  outwitted  even  my  tyrant  so  far.  I 
kept  papers  he  never  knew;  I  complied  proofs  he  never  dreamed.  Had  he 
been  true  to  me  in  his  dealing  with  Agostino,  they  would  have  been  burnt  by 
Joachim  the  day  that  I  died.  He  broke  faith  with  me:  I  turn  the  blade  of  his 
own  knife  against  him;  I  net  him  in  the  threads  of  his  own  subtlety." 

There  was  the  sternness  of  the  Leviticus  law  in  the  words  as  they  rolled  out 
from  the  hollow  chest  of  the  sightless  man  where  he  sti etched  his  hands  in 
imprecation. 

"As  he  sowed,  so  let  him  reap;  as  he  dealt,  so  let  him  be  dealt  with:  as  he 
filled  his  unjust  ephah  with  ill-gotten  wheat,  so  let  the  bread  he  has  made  thereof 
be  like  poison  to  consume  him!  " 


CHAN  DOS.  503 

The  fierce  unflinching  justice  thrilled  like  a  curse  through  the  stillness  of 
the  chamber. 

Chandos'  hand  closed  on  the  signet-ring;  his  face  was  very  white,  and 
through  his  teeth  his  breathing  came  in  a  low  hissing  sound,  as  though 
the  weight  of  the  evil  of  his  traitor  lay  like  lead  on  his  chest. 

"  One  word; — my  ruin  was  worked  by  fraud  ?  " 

The  Hebrew  bent  his  head,  and  the  red  shame  that  had  before  come  there 
in  the  sight  of  Chandos  flickered  with  momentary  warmth  over  the  bloodless 
olive  of  his  cheek. 

"  Sir,  I  duped  men  without  a  pang  of  conscience.  I  have  said  I  was  very 
evil.  My  work  throve  in  my  hands  so  well  because  I  was  without  one  yielding 
or  gentle  thing  in  me.  But  when  we  duped  you,  even  I  shrank.  You  trusted 
him  so  utterly,  you  were  such  a  madman  in  your  generosity,  such  a  fool  in 
your  lack  of  suspicion,  so  noble  in  your  utter  carelessness  and  faith!  And  I 
knew  that  you  had  served  him,  fed  him,  sheltered  him, — that  you  trusted  him 
as  a  brother.  When  you  were  drawn  down  into  our  bottomless  pit,  even  / 
abhorred  the  work!  " 

"  There  was  fraud,  then  ? " 

His  voice  was  hoarse;  the  syllables  slowly  panted  out;  till  the  life  of  his 
foe  was  wholly  in  his  power,  he  felt  as  lions  feel  when  cage-bars  hold  them 
from  their  tormentors. 

"  Fraud  ? — surely!  But  I  doubt  if  the  law  could  touch  it;  it  was  deftly 
done.  He  led  you  on  into  a  million  extravagances;  he  blinded  your  sight; 
he  cheated  you  utterly.  You  set  your  name  to  your  friends'  bills,  and  we 
bought  those  bills  in,  and  then  we  wrung  the  money  out  of  you;  you  signed 
what  you  thought  leases  and  law  trifles,  and  you  signed  in  reality  what  made 
you  our  debtor  for  enormous  sums.  You  gave  him  blank  checks;  when  he 
filled  them  up  to  pay  for  your  pictures,  for  your  horses,  for  your  mistresses' 
jewels,  he  drew  his  own  percentage  on  them  all.  You  gave  him  fatal  power 
over  your  properties,  and  he  undermined  them.  Yet  I  doubt  if,  at  this  dis- 
tance of  time,  you  could  arraign  him  for  fraud.  You  disputed  nothing  then; 
you  could  scarce  dispute  now,  after  the  lapse  of  so  many  years.  It  was  viler 
work  than  murder;  he  killed  you  by  inches;  he  drained  your  blood  drop  by 
drop;  he  made  the  earth  under  your  feet  a  hollow  crust,  and  at  his  signal  the 
crust  broke,  and  you  sank  into  the  pit  that  he  had  dug.  But  he  kept  within 
the  law;  he  kept  within  the  law  !  " 

There  was  a  world-wide  sarcasm  in  the  acrid  words;  he  had  known  so  many 
criminals — great  men  in  their  nations — whose  crimes  were  never  guessed, 
because  "  within  the  law  !  " 

"  But  what  matter  ?  See  here."  His  withered  fingers  grasped  like  steel 
the  arm  of  the  man  he  had  aided  to  rob.  "  In  my  papers  you  will  find  the 


504  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

whole  detail  of  our  business  system.  You  will  find  the  list  of  the  men  we 
helped  to  ruin.  You  will  see  how  he  stripped  bare  to  the  bone  the  friends 
whom  he  fed,  and  drove  and  laughed  and  jested  with.  You  will  see  how  the 
chief  of  his  riches  were  made, — how  in  real  truth  he  was  but  a  usurer,  who 
churned  into  wealth  the  needs  of  his  associates  in  the  world  that  he  fooled. 
Tell  the  tale  to  the  world;  it  will  blast  him  forever.  Show  how  the  man  you 
succored  repaid  you.  Let  them  behold  the  first  steps  by  which  their  favorire 
rose  to  his  power;  trace  the  vile  subways  by  which  he  travelled  to  dignity. 
Point  to  the  dead,  the  exiled,  the  cursed,  whom  he  dwelt  with  in  friendship 
while  he  drove  his  barter  in  their  shame  and  their  want.  Go  and  unmask  him; 
go  and  condemn  him.  You  will  find  proofs  in  my  legacy  that  will  brand  him 
your  destroyer  and  theirs.  Go  !  though  he  be  brought  into  no  felon's  dock, 
you  will  scourge  him,  dishonored  forever,  out  of  the  land  where  he  stands  now 
a  chief ! " 

The  deep,  rich  voice  of  the  Hebrew  rolled  out  like  an  organ-swell;  the 
vitality  of  manhood  was  lent  for  a  moment  to  the  wasted  powers  of  age.  Faith- 
ful through  all  ordeals  to  his  very  grave,  he  turned  in  his  death-hour  to  stamp 
out  the  traitor  whom  in  that  hour  he  had  found  false  to  his  bond. 

Chandos  stood  beside  him,  his  lips  parted,  his  eyes  filled  with  fire;  his  face 
dark  with  the  passions  of  that  bloodthirst  which  had  risen  in  him. 

"  Dishonor  him  !  dishonor  him  !  "  he  said,  in  his  ground  teeth.  "  If  I  slew 
him,  I  should  be  too  merciful ! " 

There  was  silence  for  a  while  in  the  chamber;  they  who  heard  knew  the 
width  and  depth  of  his  vast  wrong,  knew  that  no  chastisement  his  hand  should 
take  could  be  too  deadly.  The  old  man's  white  head  sank,  his  hands  trembled 
where  they  were  knitted  together. 

"  And  forget  not  that  I  wronged  you  equally, — that  I  forged  the  steel  that 
pierced  and  wove  the  net  that  bound  you  !  To-night  my  soul  will  be  required 
of  me;  it  is  dark  with  evil,  as  the  night  is  dark  with  storm.  Could  it  be  free 
of  your  curse,  I  could  die  easier." 

Chandos  stooped  to  him;  and  his  voice,  though  the  fire  of  his  hate  burned 
in  it,  was  hushed  and  gentle  with  pity. 

"  My  curse  !  When  you  succored  what  I  love  ?  When  you  render  me  my 
vengeance  ?  Not  equally  did  you  wrong  me;  you  never  ate  my  bread,  you 
never  owned  my  trust.  Your  martyrdom  may  surely  avail  to  buy  your  pardon 
both  from  God  and  man." 

The  large,  slow  tears  of  age  welled  into  the  Hebrew's  sightless  eyes;  the 
hard,  brave,  ruthless  nature  was  stricken  to  the  core  by  the  mercy  it  had  never 
yielded;  he  lifted  his  hands  feebly,  and  rested  them  on  the  bowed  head  of  the 
man  whom  he  had  wronged. 

"  May  the  desire  of  thine  eyes  be  given  thee,  and  thine  offspring  reign  long 


CHAN  DOS.  505 

in  the  land  !  May  peace  rest  on  thee  forever  !  for  thou  art  just  to  the  end, — 
to  the  end." 

Purer  blessing  was  never  breathed  upon  his  life  than  this  which  his  spoiler 
and  his  foe  now  uttered. 

Then,  as  the  darkness  that  had  veiled  his  sight  so  long  was  lost  in  the  dark- 
ness of  death,  the  old  man  stretched  his  arms  outward  to  his  son,  seeking  what 
his  silent  unrequited  love  had  found  at  last  only  to  lose  forever. 

"  Nearer  to  my  heart !  nearer, — nearer.  God  cherish  thee  ! — God  pardon 
thee  !  Ah  !  will  any  love  thee  as  I  have  loved  ?  Death  is  rest;  yet  it  is  bitter. 
In  the  grave  I  cannot  hear  thy  coming,  I  cannot  hearken  for  thy  step  !  " 

And,  with  his  blind  eyes  seeking  thirstly  the  face  so  well  beloved,  on  which 
they  could  not  look,  even  to  take  one  farewell  gaze,  a  deep  drawn  sigh  heaved 
the  heart  that  had  been  bound  under  its  iron  bonds  of  silence  for  so  long,  the 
weary  limbs  stretched  outward  as  a  worn  wayfarer's  stretch  upon  a  bed  of  rest, 
and,  in  a  hush  of  stillness  as  the  tempest  lulled,  the  long  life  of  pain  was  ended. 


CHAPTER    IX. 

"  KING    OVER   HIMSELF." 

THERE  was  a  great  banquet  in  the  city  of  London, — a  banquet  held  chiefly 
in  honor  of  the  brilliant  statesman,  the  popular  favorite,  who  had  quelled  the 
riots  of  the  North  with  so  fearless  a  courage,  so  admirable  an  address, — who 
was  the  keystone  of  his  party,  the  master-mind  of  his  cabinet,  the  inspirer  of  his 
colleagues,  the  triumphant  and  assured  possesser  of  that  virtue  of  Success  which 
vouches  for,  and  which  confers,  all  other  virtues  in  the  world's  sight.  The 
gorgeous  barbarism,  the  heavy  splendor,  the  ill-assorted  costly  food,  the  pon- 
derous elephantine  festivity,  were  in  his  honor;  the  seas  of  wine  flowed  for  his 
name;  the  civic  dignities  were  gathered  for  his  sake;  the  words  he  spoke  were 
treasured  as  though  they  were  pearls  and  rubbies;  the  great  capital  crowned 
him,  and  would  have  none  other  than  him.  These  things  wearied  other  men; 
this  pomp,  so  coarse  and  so  senseless  and  so  repeated  in  their  lives,  sickened 
most  whom  it  caressed  as  it  caressed  him;  but  on  Trevenna  it  never  palled. 
The  rich  and  racy  temper  in  him  never  lost  its  relish  for  the  comedy  of  life; 
and  the  vain-glorious  pleasure  of  his  victories  was  never  sated  by  the  repetitions 
that  assured  him  of  them.  The  Ave  Imperator  was  always  music  on  his  ear, 
whatever  voices  shouted  it;  the  sense  of  his  own  achievement  was  ever  delight- 
ful to  his  heart,  and  was  never  more  fully  realized  than  when  there  were  about 
him  those  public  celebrations  of  it, — the  feasting  and  cheering  and  toasting  and 


50G  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

servile  prostrating  which  to  most  statesmen  are  the  hardest  and  most  hateful 
penalty  of  power,  but  in  which  he  took  an  unflagging  and  uneffected  pleasure 
with  every  fresh  assurance  of  his  celebrity  that  they  brought  him.  His  part  in 
the  mighty  farce  was  played  with  the  elastic  vivacity,  the  genuine  enjoyment, 
of  a  jovial  humorist;  it  had  no  assumption  in  it,  for  it  was  literally  incessant 
amusement  and  infinite  jest  to  him;  and  the  good  humor,  the  mirth,  and  vital- 
ity with  which  he  came  ever  among  the  people,  and  went  through  all  the  course 
of  public  homage  and  public  conviviality,  were  but  the  cordial  expression  of  the 
temper  with  which  he  met  life. 

To-night,  at  the  civic  dinner  given  in  his  honor,  all  eyes  turned  on  him, 
acclamations  had  welcomed  his  entrance,  no  distinction  was  held  sufficient  for 
such  a  guest,  and  compliment  and  tribute  and  reverential  admiration  were 
poured  on  him  in  the  speeches  that  toasted  his  name  and  quoted  his  acts,  his 
fame,  his  ever-growing  strength,  his  master-intellect,  his  place  in  the  councils 
and  in  the  love  of  the  nation;  and  he  enjoyed  with  all  a  wit's  keen  relish  the 
verbiage  and  the  hyperbole  and  the  cant,  and  enjoyed  but  the  more  for  them 
the  ascendency  he  held,  the  fearless  footing  he  had  made,  the  ambitions  crowned 
to  their  apex,  and  the  future  of  ambitions  even  higher  yet,  which  had  come  to 
the  force  of  his  hand,  to  the  compelling  of  his  genius.  Of  a  truth  he  was  a  great 
man,  and  he  knew  it;  he  had  brought  to  his  conquest  such  patience  and  such 
qualities  as  only  great  men  poccess;  he  was  a  giant  whose  tread  was. ever  certain, 
who  eyes  ever  saw  beyond  his  fellows,  whose  armor  was  ever  bright,  whose 
grasp  was  ever  sure.  It  was  natural  that  on  the  breathless,  pushing,  toiling 
weaknesses  of  the  liliputians  around  him  he  should  look  with  a  Rabelaisan 
laugh,  with  a  Sullan  contemptuousness  of  unflinching  and  unsparing  victory. 

The  banquet  ended  somewhat  early;  for  a  measure  of  considerable  moment 
was  passing, — a  measure  framed  and  carried  through  two  readings  by  himself, 
and  its  third  reading  was  to  take  place  with  the  present  night.  The  crowded 
feast  had  given  him  all  the  idolatry  and  applause  of  the  city  of  London, — given 
it  with  wines,  and  massive  meats,  and  soups,  and  sauces,  and  gold  plate,  and 
interminable  speeches,  as  is  its  custom  in  that  strange  antithetical  relic  of  bar- 
barism which  must  gluttonously  feed  what  it  intellectually  admires;  and  from  it 
he  went  to  the  arena  of  his  proudest  conquest,  to  the  field  in  which  it  is  so  hard 
to  keep  a  footing  when  against  the  wrestler  is  flung  the  stone  "adventurer," — to 
the  place  where  many  mediocrities  pass  muster,  but  where  a  combination  of 
qualities  the  most  difficult  to  gain  and  the  most  rarely  met  in  unison  can 
alone  achieve  and  sustain  a  permanent  and  high  success.  If  any  had  asked 
him  to  what  crown  among  his  many  crowns  he  attached  the  proudest  value,  he 
would  have  answered,  and  answered  rightly,  to  the  sway  that  he  had  mastered 
over  the  House  of  Commons. 

As  he  drove  to  Westminster,  the  carriage  rolled  passed  the  statue  of  Philip 


CHANDOS,  507 

Chandos,  at  which,  going  and  coming  from  the  councils  of  his  country,  he 
oftentimes  glanced  with  the  sweetness  of  his  attainments  made  sweeter  by  the 
look  he  cast  at  that  colossal  marble,  which  he  would  banter  and  talk  to  and 
jeer  at  with  that  dash  of  buffoonery  which  mingled  with  the  virile  sagacious 
force  of  his.nature  as  it  has  mingled  with  many  a  great  man's  acumen. 

"Ah,  tres-cher!  "  he  murmured  to  himself  now,  with  a  cigar  in  his  teeth,  as 
he  caught  sight  of  it  in  the  gaslight,  "the  Mad  Duke's  been  shot  in  a  brawl 
they  say, — in  the  only  end  fit  for  him.  /will  have  your  Clarencieux,  now. 
Crash  shall  go  the  old  oaks,  and  we'll  smelt  down  the  last  marquis's  coronet 
into  a  hunting-cup  for  me  to  drink  out  of;  my  hounds  should  have  their  mash 
in  it,  only  the  nation  might  think  me  insane.  Is  there  anything  you  particu- 
larly loved  there,  I  wonder  ?  If  there  were,  it  should,  be  flung  in  the  fire. 
The  great  hall  was  your  beggared  successor's  special  pride.  Well,  we'll  burn 
it  down  when  I  get  there, — by  accident  on  purpose!  A  flue  too  hot  will  soon 
lay  its  glories  in  ashes.  Tout  vient  a  point  a  qui  salt  attendre." 

All  things  had  come  to  his  hand,  and  ripened  there  to  a  marvellous  harvest; 
but  even  the  exultation  of  success  and  the  gravity  of  power  had  not  changed  in 
him  the  womanlike  avidity  of  hatred,  the  grotesque  rapacity  of  spoliation, 
which  he  still  cherished  against  the  inanimate  things  of  gold  and  silver  and 
stone  and  wood  which  had  been  the  household  gods  of  the  race  he  cursed.  It 
remained  the  single  weakness  in  a  steel-clad  life. 

As  he  entered  the  House,  to  which  he  had  once  come  on  suffrage,  and 
which  he  had  made  the  scene  of  as  complete  a  triumph  as  the  perseverance 
and  the  ability  of  man  ever  wrung  from  hostile  fortune  and  hostile  faction,  all 
eyes  turned  eagerly  on  him.  There  was  the  murmur  of  welcome  and  im- 
patience; the  benches  were  all  full,  at  midnight,  with  a  crowded  and  heated 
audience.  His  measure  had  been  received  with  a  vehement  partisanship, 
violence  in  opposition,  violence  in  alliance;  and  his  coming  was  watched  for 
at  once  with  irritation  and  anxiety.  He  made  his  way  to  his  seat,  cool,  keen, 
bright, — as  he  would  have  gone  alike  to  be  crowned  as  a  king  or  be  hanged  as 
a  scoundrel.  Moments  of  emergency  were  the  tonics  that  he  loved  best,  the  wine 
that  gave  the  fullest  flavor  of  his  life;  and  none  could  have  arrived  to  him  that 
would  ever  have  found  him  unprepared, — none  save  one  which  to-night  waited 
for  him. 

Other  members  had  risen  as  he  entered,  but  there  were  loud  imperious  cries 
for  his  name;  the  Commons  were  in  one  of  their  turbulent  tempers,  when  they 
riot  like  ill-broke  hounds,  and  they  would  have  none  other  than  the  man  who  had 
learned  to  play  upon  their  varying  moods  as  a  skilled  hand  plays  on  an  organ. 
He  had  brought  his  measure  through  the  tempestuous  surf  of  two  readings; 
it  was  now  for  him  to  ride  it  through  the  last  breakers  and  pass  it  into  the 
haven  by  which  it  would  become  a  law.  It  was  thought  strangely  careless  that 


508  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

he  should  be  late  on  such  a  night;  but  this  was  the  temper  of  the  man, — to  be 
daringly  independent  at  all  hazards,  and  to  take  his  revenge  on  a  party  that 
had  been  glad  of  him,  but  that  had  never  fairly  relished  his  alliance,  by 
caprices  which  made  them  wait  his  pleasure,  which  kept  them  ever  uncertain  of 
his  intentions,  and  for  which  his  popularity  gave  him  full  and  free  immunity. 

As  he  rose  to  speak,  the  winged  words  paused  on  his  lips,  his  eyes  grew 
fixed  with  a  set,  astonished  gaze;  he  stood  for  a  moment  silent,  with  his  hand 
lying  on  the  rail;  his  glance  met  that  of  Chandos. 

Among  the  nobles  and  the  strangers  who  had  come  down  to  listen  to  the  de- 
bate, he  saw  the  form  that  he  had  once  seen  senseless  and  strengthless  on  the 
wretched  pallet  in  a  Paris  garret,  where  he  had  watched  the  throbbing  of  the 
heart  under  the  naked  breast,  and  had  thought  that  he  would  have  well  loved 
to  still  it  forever  with  an  inch  of  steel,  had  not  a  wider  torture  been  found  in 
letting  it  beat  on  to  suffer.  The  burden  of  the  years  seemed  fallen  from 
Chandos,  and  to  him  had  returned,  though  saddened  and  grave  with  thought, 
and  with  a  melancholy  that  would  never  now  wholly  pass  away,  much  of  the 
proud,  sun-lightened  beauty  of  his  early  manhood.  The  vivid  sweetness  of 
passion  was  once  more  his;  the  inheritance  of  his  fathers  was  recovered;  the 
might  of  avenging  justice  had  been  given  to  his  hand;  above  all,  he  was  an 
exile  no  more.  He  looked  as  he  had  looked  in  the  days  of  the  past. 

The  animal  thirst  to  kill,  of  which  he  had  spoken,  had  risen;  his  veins 
seemed  to  run  fire;  there  was  a  wild  triumph  in  his  blood  even  while  the  heart- 
sickness  at  his  traitor's  baseness  was  upon  him.  It  was  his  to  avenge,  to 
chastise,  to  pay  back  a  lifelong  wrong,  to  unmask  a  lifelong  infamy,  to  hurl  his 
foe  from  the  purples  of  power  and  point  out  in  the  sight  of  the  people  the 
plague-spot  on  the  breast  of  the  man  they  caressed.  It  was  his,  this  ven- 
geance which  would  cast  his  traitor  down,  in  the  midst  of  the  fulness  of  life, 
from  the  height  of  his  throned  successes.  It  was  his  at  last,  this  power  denied 
so  long,  which  should  pierce  the  bronze  of  his  enemy's  laughing  mockery  and 
shatter  to  dust  the  adamant  of  his  invulnerable  strength.  It  was  his  at  last, 
this  avenging  might  which  should  reach  even  the  brute  heart  that  had  seemed 
of  granite,  callous  to  feel,  impenetrable  to  strike.  And  he  felt  drunk  with  it 
as  with  alcohol;  he  felt  that  its  worst  work  would  never  plough  deep  enough, 
never  blast  wide  enough. 

"  O  God,"  he  thought,  "  how  can  vengeance  enough  strike  him  ?  None  can 
give  me  back  all  that  he  killed  forever  !  '  Just  to  the  end.'  He  shall  have 
justice, — the  justice  of  the  old  law, — a  'life  for  a  life.'  " 

And,  as  their  eyes  met,  the  chill  of  the  first  fear  his  life  had  ever  known 
passed  over  Trevenna;  a  vague,  shapeless  horror  seized  him;  he  knew  that 
never  would  the  disinherited  have  returned  to  his  forsaken  land  unless  the 
doom  of  banishment  had  been  taken  from  him,  unless  some  power  of  all  that 


CHAN  DOS.  509 

he  had  been  dispossessed  of  had  recoiled  back  into  his  grasp.  For  the  moment 
— one  brief,  fleeting,  uncounted  second — he  stood  paralyzed  there,  the  un- 
formed dread,  the  venomous  hatred  in  him  making  him  forgetful  of  all,  save 
the  eyes  that  were  turned  on  him,  eyes  that  seemed  to  quote  against  him  the 
whole  history  of  his  life.  He  had  no  conscience,  he  had  no  shame,  he  had 
never  known  what  fear  was,  and  he  had  ascended  to  an  eminence  from  which 
he  would  have  defied  the  force  of  the  world  to  eject  him;  and  yet  in  that  single 
instant  a  terror  scarce  less  keen,  less  ghastly,  than  that  which  an  assassin 
would  feel  at  sight  of  the  living  form  of  the  prey  he  had  left  for  dead  came  on  him, 
as  in  the  lighted  assembly,  in  the  midnight  silence  in  which  his  own  words  were 
awaited  he  saw  the  face  of  Chandos.  It  passed  away  almost  as  instantaneously 
as  it  had  moved  him;  the  bold  audacity,  the  dauntless  courage,  the  caustic 
mirth,  the  mocking  triumph  of  his  temper  reasserted  themselves;  instantly,  ere 
any  others  had  had  space  to  note  the  momentary  pause,  and  the  momentary 
paralysis  which  had  arrested  the  eloquence  on  his  lips  and  chained  his  gaze  to 
the  features  of  the  man  whom  he  had  wronged,  he  was  himself  again;  he  recov- 
ered the  shaken  balance  of  his  priceless  coolness;  he  looked  across  the  long 
space  parting  him  from  his  antagonist  with  a  full,  firm,  laughing  insolence  in 
the  sunny  bravery  of  his  blue  eyes;  his  voice  rolled  out  on  the  hushing  mur- 
murs and  the  broken  whispers  of  the  great  gathering,  mellow,  resonant,  far- 
reaching  as  a  clarion,  clear  as  though  each  syllable  were  told  out  on  a  silver 
drum. 

The  man  he  hated  was  before  him;  the  man  in  whom  he  had  seen  incarnated 
all  the  things  against  which  his  life  had  been  arrayed,  all  the  wrongs  that  he 
cherished  till  the  cockatrice  brood  had  bred  a  giant  vengeance;  the  man  whom 
he  hated  but  the  more,  the  more  he  injured  him;  the  man  whom  he  best  loved, 
of  any  in  the  world,  should  see  the  eminence,  the  power,  the  sovereignty  which 
he — the  adventurer,  the  outsider — had  aspired  to  and  won.  Chandos  was 
before  him,  witness  of  his  sway,  spectator  of  his  triumph,  hearer  of  his  words. 
He  swore  in  his  teeth,  even  in  that  moment  when  their  glance  first  met,  that 
oratory  and  triumph  and  sway  should  never  be  so  victorious  as  they  should  be 
to-night;  that  he  would  fight  as  he  had  never  fought  before,  that  he  would  win 
as  he  had  never  won,  this  chamber  should  ring  with  acclamations  for  him  as  it 
had  never  yet  rung  with  them,  favored  and  crowned  there  though  he  was.  The 
one  whom  of  all  others  in  the  breadth  of  the  empires  he  would  have  chosen  as 
the  beholder  of  his  fame  fronted  him.  To  Trevenna  the  hour  was  as  it  was  to 
Sulla  when  the  great  Desert  King  whom  he  had  conquered  and  weighted  with 
chains,  and  brought  from  the  golden  suns  and  royal  freedom  of  his  own  warm 
land  to  the  bath  of  ice  of  the  Tullianum,  stood  fettered  to  behold  the  ovation 
given  to  the  welcomed  victor  of  the  Jugurthine  War. 

To  Trevenna  it  was  the  crown  of  the  edifice  that  his  own  mighty  patience 


510  O  UIDA '  S     WORKS. 

and  unresting  brain  had  raised  out  of  the  dust  and  ashes  of  a  banned  and  name- 
less life,  when  into  his  own  arena,  before  his  own  idolaters,  the  man  in  whom 
the  whole  passions  of  that  life  had  seen  their  deepest  hate  embodied  came  to 
behold  his  triumph.  Though  he  should  have  died  for  it  with  the  dawn,  he 
would  have  made  that  night  the  night  of  his  supreme  success,  or  perished. 
There  was  in  him  the  temper  which  in  old  days  made  men  take  oath  to  their 
gods  to  gain  the  battle  though  they  should,  as  its  price,  be  cast  headlong  to 
the  foe.  In  that  moment  he  rose  beyond  egotism  into  something  infinitely 
grander;  in  that  moment,  however  guilty,  he  was  great. 

And  he  spoke  greatly. 

The  fire  of  personal  hate,  the  weakness  of  personal  triumph,  did  but  serve 
as  spur  and  as  stimulant  to  the  genius  in  him.  To  know  that  the  eyes  of  Chan- 
dos  looked  on  him  was  to  lash  his  strength  into  tenfold  performance;  to  know 
that  Chandos  heard  his  words  was  to  form  them  into  tenfold  eloquence.  It 
was  not  only  to  invective,  to  rehetoric,  that  he  rose;  but  the  brilliance  of 
thought,  the  closeness  of  argument,  the  fineness  of  subtlety,  the  vastness  of 
memory,  were  beyond  compare.  Men  who  had  held  him  a  master  ere  this  lis- 
tened breathless,  and  marvelled  that  even  they  never  had  known  what  his  power 
could  be.  Wit,  reason,  learning,  ralliery,  wisdom,  and  logic  were  pressed,  turn 
by  turn,  into  his  service,  and  used  with  such  oratory  as  had  rarely  rung  through 
that  chamber.  He  was  what  he  had  never  been;  he  surpassed  all  that  he  ever 
achieved;  and  when  his  last  words  closed,  thunder  on  thunder  of  applause 
rolled  out  as  in  the  days  when  Sheridan  bewitched  or  Chatham  awed  the  listen- 
ing and  enchanted  crowds.  Once  his  eyes  flashed  on  Chandos  as  the  cheers 
reeled  through  the  body  of  the  House;  no  other  caught  that  glance  in  which 
the  victory  of  a  lifetime  was  expressed. 

He  to  whom  it  was  given  saw  it;  and  his  head  sank  slightly;  darkness 
gathered  over  his  face;  the  thought  of  his  heart  was  bitter,  less  in  that  mo- 
ment for  himself  than  of  mankind.  He  thought,  "  How  great,  to  be  so  vile!  " 

That  night  was  the  proudest  of  John  Trevenna's  triumphs. 

The  bill  passed,  carried  by  an  overwhelming  majority,  which  secured 
stability  to  the  Treasury  benches  and  sealed  the  trust  of  the  nation  in  them. 
If  he  had  been  high  in  men's  fame  and  favor  before,  he  was  unapproached 
now,  as  on  their  tongues  through  the  whole  of  the  late  night  his  name  and  his 
genius  alone  were  spoken.  For  it  had  been  genius  to  which  he  had  risen,  genius 
that  had  given  the  fire  to  his  words,  the  persuasion  to  his  speech,  the  resistless 
force  to  his  command,  that  had  borne  him  out  of  himself  into  that  loftier  power 
which  makes  of  men  as  they  listen  the  reeds  that  sway  to  the  wind  of  the  magi- 
cal voice, — genius  that  had  wakened  in  him  under  the  consciousness  of  one 
glance  that  watched,  of  one  ear  that  heard.  And  for  once,  in  its  pride  and  its 
dominion,  caution,  and  coolness  slightly  forsook  him;  his  eyes  glittered,  his 


CHAN  DOS.  Dll 

forehead  was  flushed,  his  smile  laughed  as  one  warmed  with  wine,  as  he  ivent 
out  to  the  night. 

As  the  air  of  the  dawn  blew  on  his  face,  his  shoulder  was  grasped  by  a 
hand  that  forced  him  forward.  Chandos'  words  were  spoken  low  on  his  ear: — 

"  Out  yonder! — come  in  peace,  or  I  shall  forget  myself,  and  deal  with  you 
before  the  men  you  fool." 

Trevenna  gave  one  swift  glance  upward.  Though  bold  to  the  core  with  a 
leonine  courage,  he  shrank,  and  quailed,  and  sickened.  That  one  glance  told 
him  more  than  hours  could  have  spoken.  He  felt  as  though  a  knife  had  been 
plunged  and  plunged  again  into  his  heart,  seeking  the  life  and  draining  the 
blood. 

"  Lead  on  !  "  he  said,  between  his  teeth;  "lead  on,  whatever  you  want. 
You  and  I  need  not  waste  pretty  words,  beau  sire." 

He  felt  the  hand  that  was  on  his  shoulder  clench  closer  and  closer  till  it 
tightened  like  an  iron  clasp.  In  the  darkness,  through  the  throngs,  under  the 
fitful  glare  of  the  gas,  the  pressure  of  that  hand  forced  him  away  out  of  the 
masses  and  the  noise  and  the  tumult  of  the  streets,  down  into  the  quiet  of  the 
cloisters,  where  the  gray  beauty  of  the  Abbey  rose  in  the  haze  of  the  starless 
mists  of  earliest  dawn.  Then,  where  they  stood  alone  under  the  darkling  pile, 
that  clasp  loosed  its  hold  and  flung  him  backwards  as  men  fling  snakes  off  their 
wrist.  Chandos  faced  him  in  the  dim  gray  solitude;  the  passions  that  had  been 
held  in  rein  whilst  he  watched  for  his  foe  broke  loose  as  he  stood  alone  with  the 
man  whose  present  held  so  proud  an  eminence,  whose  past  he  had  traced  into 
such  sinks  of  villany,  whose  favor  was  so  sightless  in  the  nation's  sight,  whose 
guilt  had  been  so  vile  to  net,  and  pierce  and  drain,  and  rob,  and  ruin  him. 

"You  have  fooled  your  world  for  the  last  time  to-night;  with  another  day  it 
will  know  you  as  you  are, — you  usurer  who  traded  in  your  friends'  worst  needs  ! " 

The  words  cut  the  air  like  the  cords  of  a  scourge  lead-weighted.  In  that 
instant  it  was  all  he  could  do  not  to  stamp  out  under  his  feet  the  life  before  him, 
as  men  tread  out  an  unclean  beast  whose  breath  is  poison.  Ere  the  words  were 
spoken,  Trevenna  had  known  that  the  day  of  his  retribution  had  come  to  him, 
— a  day  his  acumen  had  never  foreseen,  a  day  his  skill  had  never  forecast. 
One  glance  had  told  him  that  his  prey  had  changed  to  his  accuser,  that  the 
man  he  had  exiled  and  beggared  and  reviled  had  come  back  to  take  his  ven- 
geance. For  a  moment  the  sickness  of  the  dispair  that  he  had  often  dealt,  and 
and  often  laughed  at,  blinded  him,  and  made  the  pale  shadow  of  a  stormy  dawn 
reel  round  him;  the  next,  his  blood  rose  before  peril,  and  his  wit  grew  but 
keener  in  danger.  He  planted  himself  firmly,  with  his  arms  folded  across  his 
chest. 

"We  need  not  waste  pretty  words,  but  we  need  not  use  such  ugly  ones,"  he 
said,  coolly.  "  If  you  called  me  out  to  take  libel,  why — there  are  courts  in 


512  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

which  you'll  have  to  make  it  good.  You  always  were  bitter  about  my  success; 
but  you  needn't  be  tragic.  You're  savage,  I  suppose,  because  the  Mad  Duke's 
dead,  and  I  shall  get  my  way  and  buy  up  Clarencieux  for  auld  lang  syne  ! " 

Chandos'  hands  fell  once  more  on  both  his  shoulders,  swaying  him  back, 
and  holding  him  motionless  there,  as  they  had  held  the  frail  form  of  the  musi- 
cian under  the  marble  Crucifixion  at  Venice.  In  the  gloom  his  eyes  turned 
down  into  his  foe's;  his  face  was  darkly  flushed  and  mercilessly  set,  as  though 
it  were  cast  in  stone:  the  muscles  swelled  like  cords  upon  his  arms  and  throat. 
He  could  have  strangled  this  vampire  that  had  drained  all  the  best  life  of  his 
youth  ! — the  worst  chastisement  that  he  could  ever  wreak  was  so  tardy,  so 
tame,  so  vain,  so  ill-proportioned,  besides  the  vastness  of  his  wrongs  ! 

"Speak  one  more  lie,  and  I  shall  kill  you.  Clarencieux  is  mine;  but  for 
your  infamy,  I  had  never  lost  it.  Silence  ! — silence,  I  tell  you,  or  I  shall  choke 
you  like  a  dog  !  The  Jew  who  was  your  victim  and  your  tool  confessed  all  to 
me  in  his  dying  hour.  Not  a  thing  in  your  life  is  hidden  from  me;  not  a 
thread  in  your  network  of  villany  has  escaped  me.  You  are  free  of  the  law, 
perhaps, — you  were  too  wise  to  break  it  in  the  letter;  but  the  world  shall  know 
you  as  I  know  you;  the  world  shall  be  your  judge  and  my  avenger.  I  will  give 
you  justice, — pure  justice.  I  will  unmask  you  as  you  are,  and  leave  the  rest  to 
follow.  The  men  you  ruined,  the  friends  you  traded  in,  the  usuries  that  made 
your  wealth,  the  frauds  you  worked  under  a  legal  shield,  the  treacherous, 
shameless,  accursed  trade  you  drove  in  the  lives  of  those  who  trusted  you  and  fed 
you  and  sheltered  you, — I  shall  leave- my  vengeance  to  them;  they  will  repay 
it  more  utterly  than  I  could  now  if  I  laid  you  dead,  like  the  snake  you 
are ! " 

Where  John  Trevenna  stood,  his  bright  and  fearless  face  grew  white  as  a 
woman's,  a  tremor  shook  him  as  the  wind  shakes  a  leaf,  a  cold  sweat  was  dank 
on  his  forehead:  he  answered  nothing;  he  was  too  wise  to  dream  of  vain  denial, 
too  bold  still  to  betray  terror;  but  he  knew  that  he  had  fallen  into  the  power  of 
the  one  living  man  whose  most  merciless  vengeance  would  be  but  sheer  and 
simple  justice,  he  knew  that  the  serpent  of  his  unsparing  hate  had  recoiled  and 
fastened  its  venomous  fangs  into  his  own  veins;  he  jcnew  that  the  antagonist 
who  stood  above  him,  holding  him  there  in  that  grasp  of  steel,  would  speak  no 
more  than  he  had  power  to  work  out  to  the  uttermost  latter;  he  knew  that 
from  that  hour,  at  Chandos'  will  and  choice,  the  magnificent  superstructure  of 
his  proud  ambitions  would  crumble  like  a  toy  of  sand,  and  the  bead-roll  of  his 
riches  and  his  dignities  wither  like  a  scroll  in  fire  under  the  scorch  of  shame. 
The  agony  and  desolation  of  a  lifetime  were  pressed  into  that  one  instant,  which 
seemed  eternity. 

Yet  the  courage  in  him  neither  cowed  nor  pleaded.  "  It  is  easy  to  put  lies 
in  dead  men's  mouths!  "  he  said,  with  his  old  insolence,  with  his  old  coolness; 


CHAN  DOS.  513 

"and  Jews  have  borne  false  witness  since  the  world  began.  It  will  take  a  little 
more  than  a  vamped-up  slander  to  unseat  me,  mon  beau  monsieur!  " 

Chandos  swayed  him  to  and  fro  as  though  he  were  a  child.  The  voice,  the 
glance,  the  presence  of  his  enemy  maddened  him;  he  feared  the  work  of  his 
own  passions;  he  felt  drunk  with  the  delirium  of  hate  and  wrong. 

"  Silence! — if  you  care  for  your  own  life, — you  traitor,  who  ate  my  bread 
and  betrayed  me,  who  took  my  shelter,  and  robbed  me!  The  commerce  you 
drove  in  men's  miseries,  the  friends  you  netted  into  your  bondage,  the  thefts 
that  made  up  your  wealth,  the  secrets  you  stole  to  trade  in,  the  slaves  you  ruled 
with  your  own  tyrannies, — I 'know  them;  with  another  day,  the  world  will  know 
them  through  me.  Listen  !  All  the  evil  you  churned  into  gold  with  that 
dead  Hebrew  for  your  tool,  all  the  years  that  you  throve  on  that  barter  of  men's 
disgrace  and  men's  fears,  all  the  iniquities  that  went  to  make  up  your  rise  into 
wealth,  all  the  tortures  you  dealt  on  the  servant  who  served  you  so  faithfully, 
when,  to  screen  your  own  crime,  you  sent  him  out  in  old  age  among  felons,  all 
the  shame  and  sin,  of  your  past,  I  know,  and  can  prove  to  disgrace  you  for- 
ever. I  warn  you;  I  will  not  have  so  much  likeness  with  you,  as  to  steal  on 
you,  even  in  justice,  like  a  thief  in  the  night;  but — as  God  lives — if  the  law 
fail  to  give  me  redress,  I  will  so  blast  your  name  through  all  Europe,  that  the 
foulest  criminal  who  hides  for  a  murder  shall  be  held  to  be  worthier  than  you, 
— you  who  slew  like  Iscariot,  never  knowing  Iscariot's  remorse.  Sum  up  the 
lives  you  destroyed;  they  will  be  your  accusers,  they  will  be  my  avengers!  " 

The  breathless  magnificence  of  the  fiery  wrath  was  poured  out  on  the  hush 
of  the  night;  the  moment  in  which  every  joy  and  power  he  had  possessed  had 
been  struck  down  by  his  enemy's  hand  was  dealt  back  at  last,  as  with  one 
blow  he  shivered  to  the  dust  the  honors,  the  dignities,  the  ambitions,  the  vic- 
torious and  secure  successes  of  the  career  that  had  so  bitterly  mocked,  so 
mercilessly  cursed,  his  own. 

Trevenna  staggered  slightly,  and  an  oath  of  prurient  blasphemy  was  crashed 
through  the  locked  firmness  of  his  clenched  teeth.  He  saw  at  a  glance  how 
he  had  been  given  over  to  his  antagonist's  power;  he  knew  without  words  how 
out  of  the  multitude  of  his  unmatched  successes  one  rope-strand  had  given 
away  and  dragged  the  whole  superb  edifice  of  a  life's  labor  with  it  He  never 
denied :  he  was  too  keen  to  sham  a  guiltlessness  that  would  have  availed  noth- 
ing save  to  render  him  contemptible;  he  never  gave  a  sign  of  terror:  he  was 
too  bold  not  even  in  that  moment  to  retain  his  courage.  But  he  laughed, — a 
hard  rasped,  bitter  laugh,  that  sounded  horribly  on  the  silence.  In  that  instant 
of  supreme  peril,  of  utter  desolation,  the  keenest  pang  to  him  was  not  even  his 
own  extremity,  his  own  shame,  but  was  the  restoration  of  the  disinherited  to 
the  land  of  his  birth  and  of  his  love;  it  was  stranger  still,  though  part  and  par- 
cel of  his  nature,  that  the  cynic  humor  of  his  temper  found  a  broad  farcical 

VOL.  III.— 17 


514  O  UIDAS     WORKS. 

mockery  of  himself  in  the  ruin  that  recoiled  on  him  in  the  hour  of  the  most 
splendid  domination  his  genius  had  ever  yet  attained. 

He  saw  that  the  man  he  had  wronged  knew  how  he  had  wronged  him;  he 
saw  that  enough  had  been  told  of  the  ruined  lives  which  had  been  the  stones  to 
upbuild  the  stately  temple  of  his  celebrity  and  his  eminence,  to  drive  him  out 
forever  a  dishonored  outlaw;  but  he  laughed  for  all  that,  and  his  eyes,  glitter- 
ing like  blue  steel  through  the  mists,  met  those  of  Chandos  without  flinching. 

"  Life's  a  see-saw;  I  always  said  so.  Are  you  going  to  ride  atop  again  ? 
Scarcely  fair;  you  fooled  away  such  lordly  chances  !  " 

"  I  fooled  away  my  faith,  and  gave  it  to  a  liar  and  a  trickster,  who  took  my 
hand  in  friendship  while  he  stabbed  me  in  the  back  !  " 

"  Damn  you  !  I  hated  you;  I  never  said  I  didn't.  I  cursed  you  '  in  your 
uprising  and  your  downlying,'  as  the  '  man  after  God's  own  heart '  cursed  his 
enemies." 

"  And  why  ?     How  had  I  ever  wronged  you  ? " 

"  Did  you  never  guess  ?  " 

He  spoke  with  the  snarl  of  a  bulldog  at  bay;  an  agony  was  on  him  as  intense 
as  the  worst  torture  he  had  ever  dealt  to  others;  but  the  firmness  of  his  attitude 
never  changed,  and  his  voice,  though  bitter  as  gall,  never  shook. 

Chandos'  eyes  dwelt  on  him  with  the  kingly  lustre  of  scorn  with  which  the 
eyes  of  Viriathus  might  have  looked  upon  the  traitor  lieges  who  sold  him  for 
Roman  gold  to  Roman  steel. 

"  You  ate  my  bread,  and  betrayed  me;  it  was  enough  to  beget  your  hate." 

Wider  rebuke  no  words  ever  uttered. 

Under  them,  for  the  instant  of  their  utterance,  a  red  flush  burnt  in  Tre- 
venna's  face,  a  pang  of  shame  smote  a  shameless  heart.  The  memory  of  both 
went  backward  to  that  distant  time  when  no  gift  had  been  too  great  for  the 
royal  largesse  of  the  one  to  lavish  on  the  other,  whose  only  coin  of  requital  had 
been — treachery. 

Trevenna's  white,  close-shut  lips  laughed  slightly  with  the  ironic  truth  which 
he  had  never  spared  himself. 

"Well,  that  was  enough, — more  than  enough.  We're  all  cuckoos  at  soul, 
and  kick  out  those  who  feed  us.  But  my  hate  went  further  back  than  that.  I 
hated  you  when  you  were  a  child,  and  I  trampled  out  your  sweetmeats  in  the 
street.  I  hated  you  when  I  was  an  ugly  young  clown,  and  you  rode  with  your 
servants  after  you  and  your  gold  hair  a-flying  in  the  wind.  I  hated  you  when 
you  were  a  baby-aristocrat,  when  you  were  a  boy-patrician.  I  hated  your 
laugh,  and  your  voice,  and  your  womanish  beauty;  and  I  swore  to  pull  you 
down  and  get  up  in  your  place,  I  cursed  you  then  as  I  curse  you  now  !  " 

The  intense  virulence  that  ran  through  the  words  left  no  doubt  of  their 
veracity. 


CHAN  DOS.  515 

Chandos,  where  he  stood,  gazed  at  htm  mute  with  amaze;  to  his  own  knowl- 
edge, he  had  never  beheld  this  enemy  of  his  whole  life  until  the  days  of  his 
young  manhood,  when  with  his  gold  he  had  released  from  a  debtor's  prison  one 
who  had  proved  the  tempter  and  destroyer  of  all  he  owned  on  earth.  This 
animosity  that  stretched  out  to  the  childish  years  of  his  bright  infancy  stole  on 
him  like  the  cold,  clinging,  sickly  coils  of  an  asp. 

"Are  you  a  madman?"  he  said,  under  his  breath.  "  In  my  childhood!— 
how  could  I  wrong  you  then  ?  " 

Trevenna  looked  at  him  doggedly,  with  a  red  sullen  fire  in  his  blue  eyes, 
like  the  angry  flame  in  a  mastiff's  eyeballs.  It  was  deadly  as  death  to  him  to 
part  with  that  one  secret, — the  secret  of  his  life. 

"Answer  me!  answer!  or,  by  God,  I  shall  do  worse  to  you!     Why  was  it?" 

"  Because  I  was  your  father's  bastard!  " 

The  reply  left  Trevenna's  lips  very  slowly;  to  him  it  was  as  the  drawing  of 
a  jagged  steel  out  of  a  deep  festering  wound. 

His  listener  fell  back  as  though  a  shot  had  struck  him,  his  face  death-white, 
his  eyes  dilated  with  abhorrence. 

"Great  God!     My  father's " 

Trevenna  laughed, — a  short,  contemptuous  laugh. 

"  Ay!  why  not  ?  You  dainty  gentlemen  never  remember  your  illegitimate 
sons  and  brothers  that  are  flung  off  to  go  to  hell  as  they  will;  but  they  may 
crop  up  awkwardly  in  spite  of  you.  They  are  unowned  mongrels,  banned 
before  they're  born;  but  they've  the  same  blood  in  them  as  you  have." 

Chandos  breathed  heavily;  a  sickening  loathing  was  upon  him. 

"  It  is  false!  false  as  your  own  life! — a  fraud  vamped  up  to  to  cover  your 
own  villany.  You  have  no  bond  of  blood  with  mine!  " 

"  But  for  that  bond  of  blood,  you  would  have  been  free  from  me.  I  have 
as  much  of  your  ancestry  in  me  as  you  have." 

The  words  were  dogged,  but  they  bore  truth  with  them.  Chandos  lifted 
his  arm  with  an  involuntary  gesture  to  silence  with  a  blow  the  lips  that  claimed 
kinship  with  him. 

"You  hound!  you  dare  to  say  that  Philip  Chandos " 

"  Was  my  father  just  as  much  as  he  was  yours.  Curse  him  and  his  memory 
both!  Pshaw!  You  can  strike  me  if  you  like;  I  only  say  the  truth.  Look 
here.  I  loved  my  mother;  I  never  loved  anything  else; — even  mongrels 
love  their  dams,  you  know! — and  she  was  one  of  your  father's  mistresses. 
He  paid  her  off  when  he  married  a  duke's  daughter, — paid  handsomely, 
that  I  don't  deny;  but  she  never  forgot  nor  forgave,  and  she  trained  me  to 
avenge  her.  She  used  to  take  and  show  me  you  in  all  your  grace  and  your  lux- 
ury, and  she  would  say  in  my  ear,  '  There  is  your  father's  heir:  when  you  are 
both  men,  make  him  change  places  with  you.'  I  was  taught  to  hate  and  destroy 


516  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

you,  as  other  boys  are  taught  their  prayers.  I  did  it  thoroughly,  I  fancy.  I'd 
vengeance  for  a  foster-nurse,  and  sucked  hate  as  Caligula  sucked  blood:  both 
Caligula  and  I  took  to  the  milk  kindly  !  I  had  as  much  of  the  famous  '  Claren- 
cieux  race'  in  me  as  you  had;  and  you  had  all  the  gifts  of  the  gods  while  I  was 
a  nameless  cross-breed  cur,  only  bred  to  be  kicked  to  the  streets.  You  won  the 
charoit-race,  while  the  people  shouted,  '  A  patrician  ! ' — /  was  sent  out  to 
wrestle  with  the  base-born  in  the  Ring  of  Cynosarges.  Well,  I  swore  with 
Themistocles  to  drag  in  the  Eupatrid  to  wrestle  with  the  Bastard,  and  teach  him 
that  the  Bastard  could  throw  him.  Don't  you  know  now  why  I  hated  you  ?  " 

Chandos  stood  silent,  livid,  breathless;  this  endless  hate  borne  to  him  from 
his  birth  up  seemed  to  press  on  him  with  a  weight  like  granite;  this  kinship 
claimed  to  him  by  the  traitor,  whose  guilt  he  would  have  compassed  heaven  and 
earth  to  have  exposed  and  have  arraigned,  revolted  him  with  a  loathing  horror. 

"  Why  ? — why  ? "  he  echoed,  mechanically.  "  No  ! — you  are  only  viler  than 
I  knew  before.  What  wrong  had  I  ever  wrought  you  ?  " 

"  How  had  Abel  wronged  Cain  ?  By  having  the  favor  of  earth  and  heaven?  " 
said  Trevenna  between  his  teeth,  that  were  still  tight-shut.  "  I  hated  you  be- 
cause I  was  not  as  you  were.  Every  good  you  did  me,  every  gift  you  gave  me, 
every  liberality  that  marked  you  the  noble  and  I  the  adventurer, — you  the  pa- 
tron and  I  the  debtor, — only  made  me  hate  you  the  more,  only  made  me  swear 
the  more  to  tempt  and  hunt  and  drag  you  down,  and  see  your  pride  in  the  dust, 
and  your  heritage  given  to  the  spoilers,  my  brilliant,  careless,  kingly  brother  /" 

The  word  hissed  through  the  stillness  of  the  dawn  with  the  lust  of  a  Cain 
centred  in  it.  If  a  word  could  have  slain,  that  word  should  have  slaughtered 
with  the  slaughter  of  Cain. 

Chandos  shivered  as  he  heard  it, — such  a  shiver  as  will  pass  through  the 
bravest  blood  when  the  gleam  of  an  assassin's  knife  flashes  out  through  the 
gloom.  The  bond  that  his  vilest  foe  claimed  to  him  seemed  to  taint  and  shame 
him  with  its  own  pollution. 

"  This  cuts  you  hard  !  Come  !  that  is  a  comfort !  I  have  some  vengeance 
yet,  then.  You  can't  break  your  kinship  !  But — you  are  just;  you  will  be  just 
to  me,"  pursued  Trevenna.  "  I  knew  that  I  had  the  making  of  a  great  man  in 
me,  and  I  was  born  into  the  world  cursed  beforehand  as  a  harlot's  son  whom 
every  fool  could  jibe  at.  I  knew  that  I  had  the  brain  and  strength  and  the 
power  to  reach  the  highest  ambitions,  and  I  found  myself  clogged  at  the  start- 
ing-point with  the  ton-weight  of  bastardy.  I  was  shut  out  from  every  fair 
chance,  because  my  mother  had  worn  no  gold  toy  on  her  ringer;  my  whole  ex- 
istence was  damned,  because  a  bar  sinister  stretched  across  it.  The  blot  on 
my  birth,  as  idiots  call  it,  was  the  devil  that  tempted  me;  and  no  gifts  and  no 
good  faith  of  yours  could  touch  me  while  you  remained  what  I  envied:  they 
only  made  me  hate  you  the  more,  because  now  and  then  they  burned  down 


CHAN  DOS.  517 

into  what  cant  will  call  Conscience.  I  hated  the  world;  I  hated  your  order;  I 
hated  your  race  and  your  house,  and  all  things  that  were  yours.  I  swore  that  I 
would  win  in  the  teeth  of  it  all;  I  swore  that  I  would  conquer,  cost  what  it 
should.  I  was  guilty,  you'd  say;  pshaw  !  what  of  that?  '  He  who  wins  is  the 
saint;  he  who  loses,  the  sinner.'  What  did  I  care  for  guilt,  so  long  as  I  once 
had  success?  I  proved  the  mettle  I  was  made  of;  I  carved  my  own  fortunes; 
I  trod  down  my  own  shame  under  foot  so  that  none  ever  guessed  it;  I  vindi- 
cated my  own  rights  against  all  the  world.  I  triumphed:  what  else  mattered 
to  me?" 

There  was  a  certain  dauntless  grandeur  in  the  words,  despite  all  the  shame- 
less hardihood,  the  brutalized  idolatry  of  self,  that  ran  in  them;  his  means  had 
been  vile,  but  his  indomitable  resolve  had  its  element  of  greatness,  and  the  hour 
of  his  direst  extremity  could  not  make  this  man  a  coward.  There  was  that  in 
the  words  which,  foul  as  they  were  to  himself,  touched  Chandos  to  the  same 
passionate  regret  for  his  vileness  of  nature  that  ran  side  by  side  with  this 
splendor  of  courage,  as  had  moved  him  when  he  listened  to  the  genius  of  the 
traitor  whose  secret  villanies  he  came  to  unmask  and  avenge. 

"  Oh,  Christ !  "  he  cried  involuntarily,  "  with  so  much  greatness,  how  could 
you  sink  into  such  utter  shame  !  Why  have  hated  and  tortured  me  ?  Why 
not  have  trusted  me?" 

For  the  moment,  over  Trevenna's  face  a  softer,  better  looked  passed,  though 
it  died  instantly.  This  man,  whom  he  had  wrought  worse  work  on  than  mur- 
derers do,  knew  the  depths  of  his  iniquity,  and  yet  had  a  noble  regret  for  him  ? 

"Why?  Don't  you  know  what  hate  is,  that  you  ask?"  he  said,  savagely. 
"  Oh,  I  don't  lie  to  you  now,  because  you  have  got  me  at  last  in  your  power  ? 
I  would  not  recall  one  thing  in  the  past  if  I  could.  You  suffered:  I  would 
suffer  a  hell  myself  to  know  that.  You  have  your  Clarencieux  back  ?  Well, 
that  is  more  bitter  to  me  than  the  shame  that  you  threaten.  But  you  will  never 
have  back  the  years  that  I  ruined  !  " 

Chandos  moved  to  him  with  a  sudden  impulse,  as  a  Ijon  moves  to  spring. 

"  Are  you  devil  incarnate  ?  God  !  can  you  face  me  now  and  think  without 
one  pang  of  remorse  of  all  you  robbed  of  me  forever  ?  My  wealth,  my  treas- 
ures, my  lands,  were  as  nothing;  it  was  the  years  that  you  killed,  the  youth 
that  you  murdered,  the  faith  that  you  withered,  that  you  can  never  restore!  I 
would  forgive  you  the  gold  that  you  stole,  and  the  riches  you  scattered;  but 
the  life  that  you  slew  in  me, — never!  " 

He  turned  away;  he  was  sick  at  heart,  and  he  could  not  bear  to  look  on  the 
face  of  this  man  who  had  betrayed  him  as  Judas  betrayed,  and  now  claimed 
the  kinship  of  blood. 

Trevenna  placed  himself  in  his  path. 

"  One  word.     You  will  take  your  vengeance  ? " 


518  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

"  I  will  have  justice.     You  know  its  measure!" 

"Very  well!  I  thank  you  for  your  warning.  I  shall  be  dead  before  the 
sun  rises.  I  do  not  wait  for  disgrace  while  the  world  holds  an  ounce  of  lead 
in  it." 

It  was  no  empty  menace,  no  stage-trick  of  artifice,  no  piece  of  melodrame: 
it  was  a  set  and  firm  resolve.  He  who  had  counted  no  cost  all  his  life  through 
to  attain  triumph,  would  not  have  counted  a  death-pang  to  escape  defeat. 

Chandos'  face  was  dark  and  weary  beyond  words,  as  the  paleness  of  the 
early  dawn  shone  on  it. 

"You  will  end  a  traitor's  life  by  a  suicide's  death?  So  be  it:  so  died 
Iscariot." 

Trevenna  said  nothing  in  either  prayer  or  plea;  he  stood  with  a  bold,  dogged 
determination  on  the  features  that  had  a  few  moments  ago  flushed  with  victo- 
rious pride  and  lightened  with  the  glow  of  intellect.  He  was  made  of  too  tough 
a  courage,  too  bright  a  temper,  to  know  a  coward's  fear  of  death;  and  death  to 
him  meant  only  annihilation,  and  conveyed  no  thought  of  a  possible  "  here- 
after." Yet,  as  he  felt  the  course  of  the  brave  blood  through  his  veins,  the 
strength  of  the  virile  lite  in  his  limbs,  as  he  felt  the  might  and  force  of  his 
brain,  and  the  power  of  his  genius  to  achieve,  an  anguish  passing  any  physical 
pain  or  poltroon's  terror  came  upon  him. 

"  To  kill  all  that,  while  fools  live  on,  and  beget  fools  by  the  million  !  "  he 
said,  ferociously,  in  his  ground  teeth. 

It  was  the  man's  involuntary  homage  to  his  own  intellect,  his  irrepressible 
longing  to  save,  not  his  body  from  its  dissolution,  but  his  mind  from  its  ex- 
tinction. It  was  a  suffering  that  had  its  dignity;  it  was  a  regret  far  higher  and 
far  nobler  than  a  mere  regret  for  the  loss  of  life. 

Chandos  stood  silent,  his  face  white  and  set.  He  thought  how  mercilessly 
his  foe  had  done  his  best  to  stamp  out  all  intellect  and  peace  and  power  from 
his  own  existence, — how  brutally  he  had  doomed  him  to  perish  like  a  dog  in 
the  years  of  his  youth,  in  the  brilliance  of  his  gladness.  Trevenna  would  have 
but  the  fate  himself  that  he  had  dealt  with  an  unsparing  hand.  It  was  no  more 
than  justice,  tardy  and  insufficient  justice,  take  it  at  its  widest.  He  lifted  his 
eyes,  and  turned  them  full  upon  his  betrayer. 

"  Did  you  ever  remember  that  with  me  ?  " 

The  one  reproach  struck  a  throb  that  was  near  akin  to  shame  from  the 
mailed  callousness  of  Trevenna's  conscience;  but  his  gaze  did  not  flinch. 

"  No,"  he  said,  sullenly,  "  I  never  did.  I  would  have  killed  you  a  thou- 
sand times,  if  you  could  have  died  a  thousand  deaths.  You  are  right  enough; 
I  don't  deny  it.  You  only  take  blood  for  blood." 

"  I  do  not  take  even  that.  I  but  give  you  to  the  world's  chastisement,  that 
the  world  may  know  what  it  harbors." 


CHANDOS.  519 

"  Call  it  what  name  you  like  !  Words  matter  nothing.  You  will  have  your 
vengeance, — a  swift  one,  but  a  sure.  See  here,  Ernest  Chandos.  You  know 
what  I  am,  what  I  have  been.  You  have  seen  how  I  could  keep  hold  of  one 
purpose  through  a  lifetime;  you  have  seen  what  eminence  and  what  power  I 
have  gained  in  the  teeth  of  all  arrayed  against  me.  And  you  know,  as  we 
stand  here  to-night,  that  I  will  never  live  for  one  taste  of  Defeat.  I  don't 
complain;  I  don't  plead, — not  I  !  You  are  acting  fairly  enough.  Only  put 
no  disguise  on  it.  Let  us  understand  one  another.  You  will  take  your  ven- 
geance, of  course,  since  you  have  got  one;  but  you  may  be  sure  as  we  both 
live  to-night  that  you  shall  only  find  my  dead  body  to  give  to  the  public  to  kick 
and  to  strip.  That's  all.  It  is  good  Hebrew  law, — a  life  for  a  life.  You've 
fair  title  to  follow  it  Only,  know  what  I  mean  to  do;  I  shall  die  in  an 
hour." 

There  was  no  quiver  in  his  voice;  there  was  no  tone  of  entreaty:  he  spoke 
resolutely,  coolly;  but  to  the  uttermost  iota  he  meant  what  he  said,  and  his  own 
death  was  as  sure  as  though  he  had  plunged  a  knife  in  his  entrails.  Chandos 
shuddered  as  he  heard.  All  his  life  through,  the  web  of  Trevenna's  subtlety 
had  encompassed  him,  and  it  netted  him  now.  He  had  a  justice  to  do,  in 
which  the  rights  of  the  world  met  the  rights  of  his  own  vengeance;  and  by  it  he 
would  drive  out  this  man,  who  claimed  the  same  blood  as  his  own,  to  a  suicide's 
grave,  by  it  he  was  made  to  stand  and  to  feel  as  a  murderer  !  He  knew  that 
the  hour  which  should  find  his  traitor  self-slaughtered  would  be  but  late  and 
meet  chastisement  of  a  lifetime's  triumphant  guilt;  and  the  burden  of  that 
slaughter  was  flung  on  his  hands,  so  that,  giving  to  justice  its  course  and  its 
due,  he  was  weighted  with  the  life  that  through  justice  would  fall. 

"  So  be  it  !  "  he  said  in  his  throat;  "if  you  die  for  your  crimes,  what  is  that 
to  me  ?  Murderers  die  for  theirs;  your  brute  hatred  has  been  viler  than  any 
murderer's  single  stroke." 

"  Perhaps  so!  Well,  you  can  hang  me,  when  I  am  dead,  as  high  as  Haman; 
but  you  shall  never  pillory  me  alive.  You  give  me  my  death-warrant,  and  I 
daresay  it's  just  enough;  only  remember  it's  the  blood  of  the  man  that  lies 
yonder  you  shed,  and  but  for  that  blood  you  had  never  had  my  hate  or  envy. 
You  are  just;  you'll  be  just  even  to  me,  and  put  so  much  down  to  the  credit 
side  when  you  tell  the  world  of  my  wickedness.  Farewell!  If  you  are 
to  reign  again  at  Clarencieux,  tell  your  heir,  when  you  have  one,  that  the 
Bastard  of  your  House  beat  you  hollow  till  he  was  betrayed  by  a  Jew's  fluke, 
and  that  even  when  he  was  beaten  he  showed  himself  still  of  your  cursed  race, 
and  died — game  to  the  last." 

There  was  not  a  touch  of  entreaty  or  of  shrinking  in  the  firm,  contemptuous 
words;  he  laughed  shortly,  as  he  ended  them,  and  turned  away.  The  caustic 
mirth,  the  ironic  audacity  of  his  temper,  found  a  terrible  satire  in  his  own  fall, 


520  OUIDAS     WORKS. 

and  triumphed  still  in  the  thought  of  how  long  and  how  proudly  he  had 
vanquished  the  race  against  which  he  had  pitted  himself. 

Chandos  stood  motionless;  his  forehead  was  wet  with  dew;  he  breathed 
heavily  in  the  gray  twilight,  out  of  whose  mists  the  beauty  of  the  great  pile 
where  his  father's  ashes  lay  rose  dim  and  shadowy,  and  mighty  as  the  dead  it 
guarded. 

"  Just  to  the  end." 

The  dying  words  of  the  Hebrew's  blessing  came  back  upon  his  memory. 
Which  was  justice  ? — to  yield  up  the  traitor  to  the  death  he  merited  and  the 
obloquy  he  had  earned,  or  to  remember  the  birth  and  the  breeding  that 
from  its  first  hour  had  stained  and  warped  the  strong  tree  which  without  their 
fatal  bias  might  have  grown  up  straight  and  goodly  and  rich  in  fruit? 
Vengeance  lay  in  the  hollow  of  his  hand,  to  slay  with  or  to  spare.  With  the 
dawn  this  man  would  perish, — perish  justly  in  late-dealt  retribution  for  a  long 
career  of  guilt,  of  treachery,  of  base  and  pitiless  hate.  He  merited  a  felon's 
death;  let  him  drift  on  to  a  suicide's! 

Trevenna  stood  a  moment,  in  his  eyes  the  red,  angry  fire  of  a  chained 
hound  still  burning,  but  on  his  close-braced  lips  no  tremor, — all  the  courage, 
all  the  insolence,  all  the  resolve  that  were  in  him  summoned  to  meet  the  awful 
chastisement  that  had  suddenly  fallen  upon  him  in  the  plentitude  of  his  power 
and  his  pride. 

" Beau  sire"  he  said,  with  a  staunch  bravery  in  him  to  the  last,  and  that 
pride  of  intellect  which  in  its  arrogance  was  far  above  vanity  or  egotism, 
"there  is  not  one  of  your  haughty  line  who  will  beat  the  mongrel  for  power! 
You  and  your  people  were  born  crowned;  but  I  have  won  my  diadem  out  of  the 
mud  of  the  sewers  and  in  the  face  of  the  whole  world  set  against  me.  You 
have  nothing  so  grand  in  all  your  princely  escutcheon  as  that.  Pshaw  !  if  a 
dying  Hebrew  had  not  turned  virtuous  and  played  king's  evidence,  I'd  have  had 
my  grave  by  Philip  Chandos  yonder,  and  been  even  with  him  to  my  death.  You 
have  a  fine  vengeance  at  last!  Few  men  kill  as  much  brain  as  you'll  killin  mef 

He  motioned  his  right  hand  towards  the  Abbey,  and  turned  away, — to  die 
before  the  dawn.  The  action  was  slight,  and  had  no  supplication  in  it;  but  it 
was  very  eloquent, — eloquent  as  were  the  words  in  their  contemptuous  self- 
vindication,  their  insolence  of  self-homage. 

Chandos  involuntarily  made  a  gesture  to  arrest  him. 

"  Wait!  " 

The  word  had  the  command  of  a  monarch  in  it.  His  head  sank  on  his 
hands,  his  whole  frame  quivered;  one  who  had  brotherhood  with  him  went  out 
to  lie  dead  with  the  breaking  of  day. 

"  Oh,  God!  "  he  moaned,  in  a  mortal  suffering.  "  I  cannot  send  you  to 
your  death;  and  yet " 


CHAN  DOS.  5->l 

And  yet — his  whole  soul  clung  to  the  justice  that  would  strike  the  traitor 
down  in  his  crime:  half  a  lifetime  of  torture  claimed  its  meet  requital.  To 
spare  this  man  passed  his  strength. 

Trevenna  mutely  watched  him  without  a  sign  of  supplication,  but  with  an 
acrid,  ruthless  hate, — the  hate  of  a  Cain  who  saw  his  brother  rise  from  the 
murderous  blow  that  had  struck  him  to  the  earth,  and  deal  back  into  his  own 
heart  the  fratricidal  stroke. 

Chandos  stood  with  his  head  dropped  on  his  chest,  his  breathing  loud  and 
fast;  to  let  go  his  vengeance  was  harder  than  to  part  with  his  own  life.  The 
wrongs  of  years  that  seemed  endless  in  their  desolation  bound  him  to  it  with 
bands  of  iron.  Yet  he  knew  that  if  he  took  it,  his  foe  would  die  ere  the  sun 
rose, — die  in  his  guilt,  cursing  God  and  men,  as  he  had  once  bidden  his  own 
existence  end. 

There  was  a  long,  unbroken  silence. 

A  justice  higher,  purer,  loftier  than  the  justice  of  revenge  stirred  in  him; 
a  light  like  the  coming  of  the  day  came  on  his  face.  He  remained  true  to  the 
vow  of  the  days  of  his  youth,  and,  though  men  had  abandoned  him,  he  forsook 
not  them  nor  their  God.  He  was  king  over  himself, — sovereign  over  his  pas- 
sions. He  lifted  his  eyes  and  looked  at  his  betrayer;  there  was  that  in  the  gaze 
of  which  Shakspeare  thought  when  he  wrote,  "  This  look  of  thine  will  hurl  my 
soul  from  heaven  !  "  It  spoke  wider  than  words;  it  pierced  more  deeply  than 
a  death-thrust. 

"  I  give  you  your  life,"  he  said,  briefly;  "  learn  remorse  in  it,  if  you  can  ! 
I  will  spare  you  to  the  world;  it  will  be  vengeance  enough  that  I  know  your 
shame.  Go, — and  show  to  others  hereafter  the  mercy  you  need  now." 

The  words  fell  gravely,  gently,  on  the  stillness.  Over  his  enemy's  brow  a 
red  flush  of  shame  leaped  suddenly,  his  firm  limbs  trembled,  he  shook  for  a 
moment  like  a  reed  under  the  condemnation  which  alone  bade  him  go  and  sin 
no  more.  Of  mercy  he  had  never  thought;  as  he  had  never  known  it,  so  he 
had  never  hoped  it.  It  pierced  and  beat  him  down  as  no  revenge  could  ever 
have  power  to  do;  under  it  he  suffered  what  he  had  never  suffered.  While 
their  lives  should  last,  he  knew  that  bond  of  pardon  would  be  held  unbroken; 
and  for  once  he  was  vile  and  loathsome  in  his  own  sight. 

"  Damn  you  !  "  he  said,  fiercely,  while  his  white  lips  trembled,  "  you  are 
greater  than  I  at  the  last  !  For  the  first  time  in  my  life,  I  wish  to  God  I  had 
not  harmed  you  ! " 

In  the  savage  words,  as  they  choked  in  their  utterance,  was  the  only  pang  of 
remorse  that  John  Trevenna  had  ever  known. 


522  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

In  the  vast  shadowy  space  of  the  porphyry  chamber  Chandos  stood,  with 
the  white  lustre  of  starlight  sleeping  at  his  feet,  and  the  glories  of  his  race 
made  his  once  more.  In  the  silence,  that  was  only  broken  by  the  dreamy  dis- 
tant sound  of  many  waters,  he  looked  upon  his  birthright, — looked  as  the  long- 
banished  alone  look  on  the  land  for  whose  beauty  they  have  been  an-hungered 
through  a  deadly  travail,  for  whose  mere  fragrance  they  have  been  athirst 
through  the  scorch  and  solitude  of  desert  wastes. 

Every  sigh  of  forest  leafage  came  to  him  like  a  familiar  voice;  every  breath 
of  woodland  air  touched  his  forehead  like  a  caress  of  one  beloved;  the  odor  of 
the  grasses,  as  the  deer  trod  them  out,  was  sweet  to  him  as  joy;  the  free  fresh 
wind  seemed  bearing  back  his  youth;  the  desire  of  his  eyes  was  given  back  to 
him,  the  passion  of  his  heart  was  granted  him.  He  gazed,  and  felt  as  though 
no  gaze  were  long  enough,  on  all  for  which  his  sight  had  ached  in  blindness 
through  so  many  years  of  absence;  and,  where  he  stood,  with  the  life  that  he 
loved  folded  in  his  arms  and  gathered  to  his  heart,  his  head  was  bowed,  his  lips 
trembled  on  hers,  his  strength  broke  down:  the  sentence  of  severance  fell  off 
him  for  evermore. 

Through  the  hush  of  the  night  a  murmur  like  the  sough  of  the  sea  swelled 
through  the  silence, — the  murmur  of  a  great  multitude  whose  joy  lay  deep  as 
tears.  It  was  the  welcome  of  a  people. 

The  sound  rose,  hushed  by  the  death  which  had  given  them  back  their  lord, 
through  the  stillness  of  the  night,  through  the  endless  aisles  of  forest,  reaching 
the  halls  of  the  great  race  whose  sovereignty  had  returned  and  whose  name  was 
once  more  in  the  land. 

Where  he  stood,  they  saw  him;  his  eyes  rested  on  them  in  the  soft  shadows 
of  the  night,  and  his  hands  were  stretched  to  them  in  silence, — a  silence  that 
spoke  beyond  words,  and  fell  in  turn  on  them,  upon  the  vast  throngs  that  looked 
upward  to  his  face,  unseen  so  long,  upon  the  strong  men  who  wept  as  children, 
upon  the  aged  who  were  content  to  lay  them  down  and  die  because  the  one 
they  loved  had  come  to  them  from  his  exile;  and  that  hour  repaid  him  for  his 
agony. 

He  had  dealt  with  his  enemy,  and  reached  a  mercy  that  the  world  would 
never  honor,  laid  down  a  vengeance  that  the  world  would  never  know.  No 
homage  would  ever  greet  his  sacrifice;  when  death  should  come  to  him  he  must 
fall  beneath  the  stroke  with  that  victory  untold,  that  foe  unarraigned.  He 
would  see  his  traitor  triumph,  and  lift  up  no  voice  to  accuse  him;  he  would  be- 
hold men  worship  their  false  god,  and  hold  back  his  hand  from  the  righteous 
blow.  But  through  bitterness  he  had  cleaved  to  truth,  through  desolation  he 
had  followed  justice,  and  while  men  forsook  him  he  had  remained  constant  to 
them,  constant  to  himself.  He  had  followed  the  words  of  the  Greek  poet;  he 


CHAN  DOS. 


523 


had  been  "  faithful  to  the  dreams  of  his  youth,"  and  peace  was  with  him  to  the 
end. 

In  the  hush  of  the  night,  with  the  sanctity  of  a  people's  love  upon  him,  the 
bitterness  of  the  past  died;  the  crucifixion  of  his  passions  lost  its  anguish;  the 
serenity  of  a  pardon  hard  to  yield,  yet  godlike  when  attained,  came  to  him  with 
the  self-conquest  he  had  reached,  and  the  promise  of  the  future  rose  before 
him, — 

Even  as  the  bow  which  God  hath  bent  in  heaven. 


524  OU IDA'S     WORKS. 


RANDOLPH    GORDON. 


PART     THE     FIRST. 
I. 

OUR   CORPS,  AND   WHO   COMPOSED   IT. 

I  AM  sorry  to  record  it,  our  county  is  a  very  big  fellow  on  the  map,  and  it 
is  very  celebrated  for  corn,  cattle,  and  cheese,  as  the  geography  says,  whose 
kindly  alliteration  helped  me  to  escape  the  dire  wrath  of  that  odious  governess 
of  my  sister's  who  first  made  study  hateful  to  me  when  I  was  a  little  chap  in 
the  nursery;  our  county  is  picturesque,  fruitful,  and  aristocratic,  but  it  is  a 
weathercock,  as  twirling  and  whirling  and  changing  a  girouette  as  the  very 
fierce  cock  who  sits  on  the  top  of  our  village  church,  looking  as  tremendous  as 
the  Gallic  cock  looks  in  alarmists'  letters,  but  in  reality  is  only  innocently  ready 
for  squalls,  as  perhaps  the  Gallic  cock  is  too,  desperately  as  we  vilify  him. 

Our  country  is  a  weathercock,  and  changes  its  manners  as  a  beauty  her 
dresses,  careful  only  of  one  thing — to  be  in  the  fashion.  When  Uncle  Tom 
was  the  popular  idol,  we  talked  of  nothing  but  niggers;  in  '54,  we  were  solely 
Crimean,  and  ladies,  working  away  at  Chersonnese  comforters,  almost  wished 
the  war  were  in  England,  that  they  might  have  "  those  darlings  "  near  them, 
ignorant  of  the  fact  that  when  the  darlings  were  bayoneted,  and  they  pinned 
against  the  wall  till  they  told  where  there  jewelry  was  hidden,  the  proximity 
would  not  have  been  altogether  so  pleasurable.  In  '58,  we  were  petris  with 
Indian  mutiny,  and  would  not  hear  of  any  massacre  that  was  not  most  fright- 
fully and  impossibly  horrible,  or  of  any  vengeance  less  than  the  instant  impal- 
ing of  every  separate  Hindoo,  and  now,  of  course,  we,  who  talked  the  most 
beautiful  Odes  to  Peace  that  can  be  imagined  when  the  Great  Exhibition  was 
up,  and  would  have  turned  our  swords  into  ploughshares  if  any  agriculturists 
had  taken  a  fancy  to  use  such  implements,  have  veered  round  the  other  way, 
and  have  fallen  down  before  butts,  Long  Enfields,  and  cock's-tails,  in  the  wor- 
ship common  just  now  to  all  England.  We  were  a  little  bitten  with  Garibaldism, 
and,  should  the  promised  February  campaign  come  on,  nothing  will  go  down 


RANDOLPH    GORDON.  505 

but  a  man  who  has  fired  a  shot  in  the  Calabrian  battle;  but  at  present  we  are 
inoculated  with  volunteering  as  strongly  as  small  boys  with  passion  for  smok- 
ing, or  city  dandies  with  that  abominable  patchouli,  a  whiff  of  which  would  have 
killed  poor  Brummel,  who  counselled  us,  "  No  perfumes,  only  country-washed 
linen." 

When  the  Toadyshire  Militia  was  all  in  its  glory,  the  county  thought  that 
nothing  ever  would  equal  them;  but  militia  are  gone  down  now — so  very  far 
down  as  to  be  clean  out  of  sight  and  out  of  mind,  and  nothing  is  heard  of  but 
the  Volunteer  Rifles.  Sweetly  bray  the  bran-new  bugles  down  road  and  street, 
through  town  and  country;  swiftly  through  the  turnpikes  dash  scores  of  those 
pepper-salt  coats,  whose  wearing  saves  their  gallant  owners  from  all  two- 
penny taxations;  pop  go  our  rifles  all  the  livelong  day,  with  a  crack  of 
doom  which,  we  believe,  must  shake  the  Tuileries  to  its  foundations; 
the  cock-tails  we  require  must  have,  shorn  every  barn-door  mon- 
arch in  the  kingdom;  ladies  give  up  their  thirteenth  new  bonnet  to  subscribe 
for  our  silver  bugles;  and  the  stiffest  of  governors,  who  would  not  let  us  out 
with  a  latch-key  to  save  our  lives,  believes,  without  a  murmur,  that  we  have  been 
at  the  butt  till  midnight.  We  can  cover  any  short-comings  we  like  with  the  patri- 
otic click  of  our  blessed  rifles;  our  mothers  and  wives  fully  accredit  us  when  we 
tell  them  we  have  spent  the  evening  in  practising,  though,  if  we  made  any  other 
excuse,  they  would  pounce  straightway  with  feminine  shrewdness  on  suspicion 
of  that  "  abominable  little  fright  at  the  cigar-shop,"  or  that  "  detestable  man 
Captain  Birdseye,  who  teaches  you  such  bad  habits;"  en  un  mot,  our  county  in 
toto  is  gone  mad  about  rifles,  and  its  capital,  Boshcumbury,  in  particular,  turns 
out  to  a  gamin;  and  shouts,  as  Duke  Constantine  when  he  saw  the  Guards. 
"  Ces  hommes  marchent  comme  des  dieux  !  "  when  they  behold  us,  tramping 
in  our  small  boys'  bugle  calls,  self-confident  as  Alexander,  patriotic  as  Her- 
manicus,  our  cock-tails  waving  grandly  as  the  Roman  eagles,  each  rifle  as 
omnipotent  as  William  Tell's  bow;  and  we — the  West  Goosestep  Volunteers — 
if  we  never  do  anything  else  more  martial,  at  least  have  carried  our  county  by 
storm.  We  are  in  very  large  numbers;  we  swarm,  in  fact;  we  are  tall  and 
short;  we  are  fat  and  lean;  we  are  of  all  statures,  from  that  of  Daniel  Lambert 
to  that  of  Jeffrey  Hudson,  which  is  somewhat  detrimental  to  the  comparison 
to  the  gods,  mentioned  above;  but,  n'importe,  we  are  Volunteers,  and  our  uni- 
form does  what  charity  is  stated,  but  never  discovered  to  do — cover  a  multitude 
of  sins,  and  what  is  much  more  detrimental  to  a  man  in  feminine  eyes  than  the 
biggest  sin  he  can  commit,  personal  defects;  and  to  be  cased  in  it  passes  over 
a  man's  short-comings  in  Toadyshire,  as  to  be  rolled  up  in  a  black  sermon-case 
or  printed  by  a  religious  publisher  passes  over  bad  English  and  false  reasoning, 
which  would  be  pulled  up  mercilessly  if  found  in  an  "  exceptional  novel,"  what- 
ever that  new  style  of  romance  may  be  in  these  raftine  days,  when  Henry 


526  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

Fielding,  I  presume,  would  have  had  the  circulating  libraries'  doors  shut  upon 
him  lest  he  should  demoralize  the  morals  of  his  readers,  who  must  all  be  under 
age,  I  suppose,  if  they  cannot  be  trusted  to  choose  their  literature  for  them- 
selves. 

Our  corps  presents  every  possible  variety  of  that  genus  homo  concerning 
whose  parentage  Mr.  Huxley  answered  the  Bishop  of  Oxford  so  wittily  the 
other  day.  There  is  my  cousin,  Randolph  Gordon,  of  Eton  Chase,  who  had 
been  captain  and  lieutenant-colonel  in  the  Guards,  till  knocking  down  another 
man  for  killing  a  pet  dog  of  his  with  a  savage  kick,  led  to  a  duel,  which  led, 
in  turn,  to  his  selling  out  nolens  volens,  and  who,  having  one  of  the  finest 
places  in  the  country,  was  applied  to,  to  head  the  "  movement;"  there  is 
Freddy  Audley,  twenty-two,  five  feet  three,  pretty  as  a  girl,  and  as  afraid 
of  wetting  his  feet  as  his  maiden  Aunt  Clementina's  pet  Tom;  there  is  Lacquer's 
of  Grassmere,  who,  having  a  dragon  of  a  wife,  and  a  secret  and  unholy 
passion  for  cards,  returns  daily  thanks -for  the  volunteer  movement  that 
enables  him  to  have  such  snug  loo  parties  sub  rosa  at  the  Angel  in  Snob- 
bleton  and  to  go  home  looking  innocent  and  professedly  fagged  to  death 
with  his  patriotic  efforts  to  hit  the  bull's-eye;  there  is  old  Turbot,  the  town 
clerk,  who  suffers  frightfully  in  struggling  into  his  uniform  and  in  frantic 
efforts  to  buckle  his  belt,  but  who  sleeps  with  his  Enfield  under  his  pillow, 
in  constant  apprehension  of  burglarious  approaches  from  Louis  Napoleon; 
there  is  little  Jemmy  Fitzpop,  who  went  to-day  to  Boulogne,  firmly  impressed 
that  the  sight  of  his  harness,  which  he  persisted  in  sporting  on  all  possible  and 
impossible  occasions,  will  produce  such  an  effect  on  French  nerves  as  will 
make  them  quiet  by  force  of  terror,  as  his  used  to  be  at  whisper  of  "  Bogey; " 
there  is  Bassompierre  Delafield,  the  pet  physician  of  Snobbleton,  who  shares 
the  town-worship  with  the  popular  preacher  of  St.  Faithandgrace,  who,  being  of 
a  nervous,  not  to  say  timorous  character,  suffers  silent  agonies  when  he  hears 
the  rear  rank  man  capping  at  full-cock,  and  feels  in  vivid  imaginings  a  little 
accidental  jar  discharging  all  the  contents  of  the  barrel  sans  ceremonie  into  his 
spinal  cord;  there  is  little  Beak,  the  coroner,  who,  not  content  with  holding  in- 
quests on  the  accidental  deaths  that  fill  his  purse,  does  his  very  best  to  cause 
them  when  aspiring  to  be  martial,  and  forgetting  his  gun's  not  a  quill,  carries 
his  rifle  in  such  a  gracefully  lassier  aller  manner,  that  it  went  off  the  other  day 
in  a  totally  unexpected  freak,  and  singing  playfully  on  its  path,  grazed  a  knife- 
grinder's  donkey,  carried  a  buuch  of  wheat-ears  off  a  lady's  bonnet,  bowled 
between  Piper,  the  mayor's  little  fat  legs,  causing  him  next  door  to  apoplexy, 
and  finally  lodged  itself  in  a  perambulator,  whose  nurse  fled,  with  a  shrill 
shriek,  into  the  murderous  Beak's  paralysed  arms,  leaving  her  unharmed 
charge  in  infantine  calm,  the  only  individual  present  that  wasn't  in  hysterics  or 
a  syncope;  there  is  Simmons,  the  cashier  at  the  bank,  who,  from  the  first  hour 


RANDOLPH    GORDON.  527 

he  was  at  drill,  when  he  pricked  Doddington,  the  county-court  judge's  son,  with 
the  point  of  his  bayonet,  causing  grave  Dodd  to  jump  in  a  most  unpremeditated 
and  un-Spartan  manner,  has  never  gone  through  the  manoeuvres  right  as  yet,  and 
never  will,  it  is  my  firm  belief,  till  he  marches  shoulder  to  shoulder  with  Ulysses 
in  the  Elysian  Fields;  there  is  your  humbler  serviteur  myself,  Cosmo  Lyle,  who 
am  in  it  because  the  governor  is  Colonel-commandmant,  a  county  member,  and 
a  very  opinionated  individual,  riding,  as  his  present  hobby,  that  England  can  only 
be   saved  by  the  crack  of   Long  Enfields,   as  at  the  Great  Exhibition    he 
held  it  was  to  be  saved  by  peace  at  any  price,  at  the  Spithead  review  by  Jack 
Tar,  and  at  the   era   of  the  Alma  by   "  the   Queen's "  (who,   when  they're 
wanted  are  called  "  our  gallant  troops,"  but,  when  they've  done  the  service, 
get  grumbled  at  as  a  "standing  army;  ")  and  there  are,  besides  us,  innumer- 
able lawyers  and  bankers  and  gentry  of   all    degrees;  clerks,  who  are  dream- 
ing  of   platoon    firing   while    drawing    up    settlements;    drapers,  who  catch 
themselves  bringing  their  measure  well  up  to  shoulder,  to  the  imminent  peril 
of    affrighted    customers'  eyes;    grocers,  whose    martial    eyes   flash   at  the 
mere  sight  of  the  delicious  word  "Gunpowder"  on  their  tea-papers;    hair- 
dressers,  who  lacerate  their  subjects  in  the  most  terrible  manner   in  their 
having  to  fling  down  their  razor  for  their  rifle — gentry,   in  fact,  who  made 
Boshcumbury  and  all  Toadyshire  the  fac simile  of  Edinburgh  when  the  "Anti- 
quary "    saw  it,  bitten  with   martial  hydrophobia,  and    found   his   solicitor's 
quill  turned  to  a  sabre,  and  his  physician  learning  to  kill  instead  of  cure, 
and  all  the  world   gone  volunteer-crazy,  as  he  tells  us  in   his  racy  Scotch. 
And  the  women  are  gone   as   mad  about  us;  not  for  our  beauty,  for  our 
jackets,  like  Mr.  Tupman's  brigand  jacket  at  Mrs.   Leo  Hunter's  fete;    our 
sleeves,  so  symmetrically  full  at  the  top  and  meagre  at  the  bottom,  our  little 
hats,  with  those  wonderf  ul  before-mentioned  panaches  de  coq  waving  therefrom, 
like  the  little  funny  forelock  with  which  poor  old  Time  is  always  decorated,  are 
not  embellishing;  at  least,  not  to  my  fancy,  though  little  Fitzpop,  and  a  good 
many  others  I  could  mention,  will  think  treason  for  me  to  say  so,  deeming  I 
believe,  that  it  is  the  perfection  of  neatness,  elegance,  and  military  style,  and 
that  the  Belvedere  Apollo  himself  would  look  even  more  superb  if  we  could 
deck  his  marble  limbs  in  volunteer  uniform. 

N'importe,  the  women  have  lost  their  pretty  little,  glossy,  empty  heads 
after  us,  and  cherished  pets,  the  parsons,  are  at  a  discount— so  much  at 
a  discount,  that  one  daring  young  curate,  driven  to  desperation  at  the  con- 
tempt his  black  surplice  met  with  from  his  quasi-worshippers,  joined  us, 
seeing  no  reason  why  he  shouldn't  fight,  like  William  of  Ely,  and  got  lectured, 
on  consequence,  in  humiliating  style,  by  his  diocesan,  who  forbade  him  all 
combat,  save  that  peculiar  privilege  of  parsons  and  spinsters,  the  war  of  words. 
Our  file-firing  has  taken  all  the  shine  out  of  pulpit  philippics,  and  the  assembly 


528  OUJDAS     WORKS. 

and  the  roll-call  drown  the  bell  for  early  matins,  to  which  the  fair  daughters  of 
the  Church  used  to  swarm  in  flocks  to  the  sanctuary  of  their  best-looking  and 
biggest-whiskered  high-priests.  They  are  all  at  a  discount;  nothing  goes  down 
but  the  Toadyshire  Rifles,  and  even  little  Fitspop,  that  infinitesimal  morsel, 
that  smallest  of  boys,  who  could  be  put  under  his  own  cock-plumed  tile,  as 
Robin  used  to  put  his  wife  under  the  extinguisher,  brags  of  his  being  a  "good 
soldier,"  (!)  and  gets  petted  by  the  ladies  who  six  months  ago  gave  him  sugar- 
plums, because  he  is  a  "  defender  of  his  country,"  and  carries  a  rifle  that  is 
longer  than  himself. 

There  is  but  one  heterodox  sceptic  and  scoffer  in  Toadyshire;  she  will 
persist  in  making  fun — most  cruel  fun — of  us.  "  Learn  to  shoot,  most  noble 
seigneurs,  it's  the  very  best  thing  you  can  do,  but,  for  Heaven's  sake  don't 
call  yourselves  soldiers  !  Soldiers,  indeed  !  a  lot  of  lawyers,  and  bankers, 
land  merchants,  and  brewers,  and  grocers,  and  tailors,  who  just  pop  away  at 
a  butt,  out  of  business  hours  !  "  cries  that  most  mechante  and  provoking  of 
all  pretty  women,  with  a  toss  of  her  chestnut-haired,  gold-netted  head,  who 
takes  a  malicious  delight  in  scoffing  at  the  Goosestep  Volunteers,  at  all  the 
great  things  we  plan,  and  all  the  small  things  we  do,  just  because  she  is  the 
idol  before  whom  the  majority  of  our  corps  do  most  love  to  bow  and  tumble 
down  in  abject  humiliation.  This  abominable  little  unbeliever  is  Miss  Fanny's 
(Fred  Audley's  you  know)  sister.  He  has  three  of  them;  what  their  nom  de 
bapteme  may  be,  I  hardly  believe  I  know  to  this  day;  everybody  that  ever  I 
heard  calls  them  Sunshine,  Pearl,  and  Rosebud — poetic  nicknames  given  them 
in  the  nursery  from  their  respective  exteriors,  and  clinging  to  them,  as  nick- 
names generally  do,  ever  since.  Freddy  and  his  sisters  dwell  with  their  maiden 
aunt,  Miss  Clementina  Audley,  who,  though  possessing  Audley  Court,  and  much 
property  in  those. weather-glasses  of  political  affairs,  the  funds,  is  Miss  Clem- 
entina still,  so  rigid  a  martinet  that  we  did  think  of  her  for  commandant  of  our 
corps,  and  so  petrie  with  conventionalities,  that  she  is  generally  supposed  to  be 
the  author  of  those  mysterious  works  on  etiquette,  whose  manufacture  must 
emanate  from  such  a  very  rare  and  peculiar  stamp  of  genius,  that  it  is  a  pity 
we  refuse  so  obstinately  to  follow  their  rules.  Freddy  is  her  heir,  and  she  pets 
him  much  as  she  pets  her  black  Tom,  which  she  elegantly  christens  Koh-i-noor, 
but  which  the  girls  send  her  straight  into  hysterics  by  calling  Saturnus,  and  the 
Diable  a  Quatre.  Her  nieces  are  her  betes  noires.  Freddy  is  quiet,  lady- 
like, and,  for  his  silky  hair,  his  aversion  to  cold,  his  affection  for  soft  cush- 
ions, and  laziness,  exactly  like  his  co-pet  the  black  Tom.  But  the  girls  ? 
"  They  are  dreadful,"  Miss  Clementina  informs  her  bosom  friend,  Mrs.  Tom- 
tit, the  vicaress;  "they  are  never  still,  they  are  never  quiet;  they  ride  as  be- 
come only  rough-riders;  they  play  battledore  and  shuttlecock  in  the  picture- 
gallery,  till  the  horrible  pat,  pat,  pat,  of  these  odious  things  are  enough  to 


RANDOLPH    GORDON.  520 

drive  anybody  distracted,"  she  assures  her,  "to  say  nothing  of  the  waste 
of  time;  they  do  nothing  that's  useful;  they  can't  work;  if  Sunshine  did 
try  to  make  a  cobweb  pocket-handkerchief,  she  took  a  needle  the  size 
of  a  hedge-stake;  they  can  only  make  one's  head  ache  almost  to  vertigo, 
with  singing,  and  playing;  they  talk  and  laugh  so  ridiculously,  all  through 
breakfast  and  dinner,  that  they  hardly  know  whether  they  are  eating  grouse  or 
broad  beans,  mock  turtle  or  skilligalee;  and  their  conduct  with  gentlemen — 
she  believes  it  passes  now  under  that  odious  new  word,  flirtation,  but — 
And  Miss  Clementina  throws  up  her  eyes  and  hands,  and  thinks  of  the  modest 
and  maidenly  times  of  her  girlhood,  when  D'Orville  bowed  over  Evelina's  hand 
when  she  had  promised  to  be  his  wife,  and  knelt  down,  respectfully,  to  touch 
that  main  blanche  with  his  moustaches,  when  he  had  rescued  her  from  a  yawn- 
ing tomb.  What  a  pity  it  was  all  that  modesty  and  maidenliness  were  unap- 
preciated by  the  sex  who  could  have  rewarded  them,  and  that  where  these 
demoralized  young  ladies  had  twenty  soupireurs,  Miss  Clementina  had  not  had 
one! 

At  Audley  Court  our  corps  was  worshipped.  Freddy  was  in  them 
(Frederick  Augustus  she  termed  him;)  that  was  enough  for  Miss  Clementina, 
who  having,  moreover,  horrible  visions  of  ruthless  and  savage  Zouaves,  who 
would  break  one  night  in  on  her  slumbers,  and  behold  her  in  all  the 
sublimities  of  her  toilette  de  nuit  (a  sight,  I  have  been  told,  quite  sufficient 
in  itself  to  frighten  any  amount  of  Zouaves  back  again  across  the  channel), 
was  filled  with  solemn  gratitude  towards  us  "  British  legions,"  as  she  grandly 
termed  us,  and  poured  fearful  and  terrible  abuse  upon  heterodox  Sunshine, 
when  she  declared  she  would  "  rather  have  one  troop  of  the  Queen's  to 
take  care  of  her  than  all  the  battalions  of  bourgeois  they  could -muster."  Sun- 
shine, you  will  perceive,  was,  as  I  say,  the  only  scoffer  in  Audley  Court 
and  in  Toadyshire  Pearl  and  Rosebud  admired,  nay,  adored  us;  in  fact, 
gazed  on  our  evolutions  at  battalion  drill,  skirmishing,  forming  squares,  file 
firing,  and  all  the  rest  of  it,  with  worshipping  eyes,  and  had  started  a  subscrip- 
tion for  a  silver  bugle  for  us.  They  had  not  been  long  at  Audley  Court, 
when  the  "  movement "  began  which  has  heaved  England  up  into  so  many 
mounds  called  butts,  and  elevated  her  into  so  many  flat  portions  called  prac- 
tising-grounds,  as  if  the  amount  of  powder  required  in  the  country  had  produced 
a  general  violent  earthquake.  The  first  time  I  saw  them  was,  when  we  were 
first  formed,  just  budding,  just  beginning  to  enroll  ourselves,  and  admire  our- 
selves, and  swell  ourselves  into,  what  we  are  just  now,  gallant  1st  West  Goose- 
step  Volunteer  Rifles,  when  my  cousin,  Randolph  Gordon,  Freddy  Audley,  and 
I,  were  riding  home  from  drill  at  Snobbleton,  and  were  passed  at  full  gallop  by 
three  ponies,  with  young  ladies  on  their  backs,  who  laughed  as  they  flashed 
past  us. 


530  OVID  AS     WORKS. 

"  Take  care  Freddy,  it  is  going  to  rain,  and  Aunt  Tina  will  be  so  anxious 
about  you  ! " 

"Hallo  !  who  are  those  acquaintances  of  yours?"  said  Gordon,  whose  eye- 
glass was  up  in  a  second,  our  gallant  captain  being  as  keen  after  pretty  women  as 
a  terrier  after  rats. 

"My  sisters,"  said  Fred,  rather  sulkily;  "they  are  such  chaffy  girls,  they 
make  game  of  everything." 

"  And  you  in  particular,  I  suppose  ?  Well,  you  are  rather  tempting,  Fanny. 
By  George  !  how  well  they  ride;  that  front  one  in  especial — wouldn't  she  go 
straight  over  a  bullfinch  !  " 

"That's  Sunshine,"  said  Freddy,  still  gloomily;  "she's  a  regular  little 
devil." 

"  Vraiment  !  that's  attractive,"  said  Randolph.  "  Women  are  so  given  to 
swearing  they're  angels,  and  the  newspapers  to  repeating  it,  nowadays,  when 
they  take  up  the  strict  morality  line,  because  it  pays  cent,  percent,  and  induces 
'  the  clergy  '  to  subscribe,  that  to  hear  of  anybody  who's  a  little  demonical  is  a 
positive  treat.  She  hasn't  a  cloven  foot,  though,  I  hope,  because  I  do  like  a 
small  brodequin;  but  what  in  the  world  do  you  call  her  ?  " 

"  Sunshine,"  yawned  Fred.  "  Deuce  take  that  rifle,  how  my  shoulder  aches  ! 
That  ain't  her  name,  of  course,  but  everybody  calls  her  so;  the  house  would  be 
as  dull  as  death  without  her,  though  she  does  teaze  one  horribly.  She  makes 
no  end  of  game  of  the  volunteers." 

"  No  great  difficulty  to  do  that,  my  dear  fellow,"  laughed  Randolph.  "  If  I 
illustrated  for  Punch,  I'd  engage  to  draw  some  scenes  from  the  life,  the  antithe- 
sis of  the  martial,  and  the  perfection  of  the  ludicrous:  Little  Fitzpop,  who's 
only  fit  to  shoot  sparrows  with  a  popgun,  but  who  thinks  himself  individually  a 
match  for  a  whole  regiment  of  Chasseurs  Indiennes;  my  worthy  Sergeant 
Stitcher,  who  uncurls  his  legs  and  sets  down  his  goose  to  come  and  play  at  sol- 
diers for  an  hour,  when  he's  sent  home  Mr.  A.'s  coat  and  Mr.  B.'s  trousers; 
those  young  fellows  from  the  Bank,  who  jump  off  their  stools  to  rush  at  their 
uniforms  as  vehemently  as  they  used  to  rush  at  the  inkstands  to  indite  sonnets 
to  Miss  Mary's  eyelash,  or  Miss  Emma's  flounces.  Oh,  you  are  all  wonderfully 
good  fun;  and  if  I  don't  laugh  when  I  form  you  into  line  for  inspection  next 
month,  I  shall  deserve  as  much  credit  as  an  alderman  who  does't  tumble  when 
he  backs  before  her  majesty." 

"  Confound  you  !  "  said  I,  "  you,  too,  make  fun  of  everything.  Why  the 
deuce  did  you  join  us,  then  ? " 

"  Because  I  was  solicited,  my  dear  Lyle,  and  a  man  as  amiable  as  I  am  al- 
ways does  what  he's  asked.  Besides,  sans  doute,  it's  a  very  good  movement; 
all  movements  are  that  tend  to  make  a  nation  strong,  self-reliant,  and  able  to 
take  care  of  itself;  all  those  countries  are  greatest  where  the  use  of  arms  forms 


RANDOLPH    GORDON.  531 

a  part  of  every  individual's  education.  En  meme  temps,  why  you  should  all 
trouble  yourselves  to  buy  cock-tailed  hats — /  assure  you  there's  no  particular 
military  virtue  in  them — why  you  should  persist  in  going  about  in  uniform,  at 
every  unseemly  hour,  when  we,  the  lawful  owners  of  uniform,  cast  it,  and  get  out 
of  harness  and  into  mufti  as  soon  as  ever  we  can;  why  you  make  such  fools  of 
yourselves  by  going  over  to  France,  and  exhibiting  your  bran-new  livery  to 
frighten  Napoleon's  four  hundred  thousand  men,  and  brag  of  what  you  would 
do  in  such  very  outrageous  bad  taste,  I  can't  imagine;  and  while  you  will  per- 
sist in  such  betises,  I  must  make  game  of  you.  I'll  get  acquainted  with  Miss 
— what  is  her  name  ? — Sunshine;  we  can  have  some  chaff  together.  Come  in 
and  dine  with  me;  it  is  going  to  rain,  as  the  young  ladies  said,  and  the  Goose- 
step  Volunteers  haven't  had  their  regulation  goloshes  yet — have  they,  Audley  ? 
Come  in;  I  can  promise  you  some  good  claret  and  some  first-rate  Latakia." 

We  did  go  in,  and  had  a  very  jolly  evening  over  Randolph's  venison  and 
olives.  His  place,  Eton  Chase,  having  as  many  agremens  and  as  good  an 
establishment  as  the  epicurean  heart  of  man  could  desire,  though  he  did  not 
often  abide  there  to  enjoy  them,  having  certain  faithless,  restless  tastes  for 
wandering,  and  an  attachment  to  excitment  and  pleasure  which  would  have 
made  him  supremely  wretched  to  be  tied  down  in  Toadyshire,  even  though  one 
of  the  lords  and  kings  of  that  very  stuck-up,  but,  I  must  confess,  not  very 
brilliant  county. 


II. 

HOW   SUNSHINE,    PEARL,    AND   ROSEBUD   SHOT     AT     BULL'S-EYES     AND   HIT  OTHER 

MARKS. 

RANDOLPH  and  I  made  a  point  of  calling  at  Audley  Court,  a  courtesy  we 
had  always  confined  before  to  leaving  cards,  when  we  were  quite  sure  Miss 
Clementina  was  out,  a  tete-a-tete  with  that  awful  lady  being  a  point  much  to 
far  for  the  politeness  of  either  of  us  to  stretch.  Freddy  had  always  been  at  the 
Court,  but  his  sisters  had  lived  in  Ireland  with  their  mother's  sister,  till  she, 
going  with  her  husband  to  Jamaica,  had  thrown  them  on  the  tender  mercies  of 
Miss  Clementina,  their  mother  having  died  when  they  were  all  little,  and  their 
father  having  been  shot  out  at  the  Cape  some  few  years  afterwards. 

"  If  we  can  find  anything  to  give  us  a  little  fun  in  Toadyshire,  tant 
mieux  !  "  said  Randolph;  and  when  we  got  well  acquainted  they  did  give  us  a 
good  deal  of  fun.  Miss  Clementina  used  to  look  very  black — black  as  night 
black  as  her  pet  Tom — whenever  Gordon  or  I  were  shown  into  her  draw- 
ing-room. "It  is  my  opinion,"  she  averred  to  Mrs.  Tomtit,  "  that  they 


532  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

are  two  of  the  worst  men  in  England.  Colonel  Gordon  never  bore  a  good 
character,  and  he  has  the  most  impertinent  manner  of  staring  at  Sunshine, 
and  leaning  over  her  chair  and  talking  to  her  just  as  if  she  were  his  own 
property,  like  that  nasty  chattering  parrot  of  his.  And  as  for  Mr.  Lyle,  he 
is  no  better,  with  his  flowers,  and  compliments,  and  trumpery  to  Pearl.  How- 
ever, if  girls  will  cheapen  themselves  to  men,  we  can  hardly  blame  men  for 
taking  advantage  of  it.  /  kept  gentlemen  in  their  proper  places,  but  the  young 
women  of  the  present  day  know  nothing  of  that  self-respect  which  compels  the 
respect  of  the  opposite  sex."  And  Miss  Clementina  shut  the  steel  clasp  of  her 
district  bag  with  a  resentful  snap,  perhaps  at  the  recollection  that  she  had  made 
the  opposite  sex  a  trifle  too  respectful — so  much  so,  that  they  had  never 
proffered  anything  at  all  warmer.  Randolph  and  I  were  no  favorites  with  Miss 
Clementina:  she  required  for  her  beau-ideal  some  such  spotless  collet-monte 
individual  as  the  virtuous  tanners  and  pure-minded  coal  merchants  of  the 
present  day  novels,  who  can  never  drink  anything  stronger  than  milk-and- 
water,  and  who  are  as  hideously  unattractive  as  they  are  impossibly  virtuous. 
Randolph's  life  and  mine  were  calculated  to  alarm  her  more  than  seance  a 
nervous  lady.  We  smoked,  we  talked  slang,  we  read  French  novels,  we  flirted 
with  every  woman  who  came  near  us  worth  the  attention.  We  were  over  thirty, 
but  we  hadn't  taken  any  "  mission,"  nor  headed  any  "  philanthropical  move- 
ment;" in  fact,  there  was  no  end  to  our  sins.  We  were  her  antipodes  and 
pet  betes  noires  after  her  nieces,  and  Miss  Clementina  looked  black  at  us 
accordingly.  "  The  Audley  girls "  became  the  idols,  the  stars,  the  queens 
of  our  corps.  Sunshine,  the  eldest,  with  her  riant  smile,  her  radiant  eyes, 
and  her  gay  spirits,  her  moquant  laugh,  more  fascinating  than  strictly  pretty; 
Pearl;  dark,  stately,  beautiful  as  you  could  wish  a  woman,  but  a  little 
severe,  with  that  pure  Grecian  profile  of  hers;  Rosebud,  a  lovely  pink  and 
white,  lazy,  lovable  little  thing,  just  seventeen — they  all  had  their  separate 
troops  of  worshippers;  and  when  Randolph  was  playing  pool  in  the  Boshcum- 
bury  Supscription  Rooms,  or  lunching  at  the  pretty  pastry-cook's  over  the 
way,  he  would  laugh  till  he  cried  when  the  Audley  pony  trap  stood  at  a  shop- 
door,  to  see  the  frantic  haste  with  which  little  Fitzpop  would  dash  down  a 
neighboring  street  in  that  brilliant  uniform,  in  which  popular  report  had  it  that 
he  slept;  and  young  Simmons  dash  open  the  door  of  his  governor's  bank, 
where  he  was  cruelly  immured  till  the  tower  clock  struck  four;  and  Lacquers 
fly  into  the  same  shop  for  something  for  his  sister,  for  whom  he  was  never 
known  to  purchase  presents  at  any  subsequent  or  previous  period  of  his  life; 
and  Doddington  flee  from  Stubbley's  the  tobacconist's,  as  if  he  wouldn't  be 
seen  talking  to  Fanny  Stubbley  for  a  million,  leaving  his  Manillas  on  the  counter, 
and  poor  Fanny  inconsolable  behind  it;  and  all  the  others  in  view  gather  and 
cluster  and  hover  round  that  little  Shetland  trap  till  the  small  quadrupeds  were 


RANDOLPH    GORDON.  533 

quite  hidden  in  the  moving  sea  of  peper-and-salt  coats  and  green  cock-tails 
swaying  round  them.  Randolph  laughed;  but  he  would  as  often  as  not  lose 
his  three  lives  in  double  quick  time,  or  leave  his  lobster  salad  half  finished, 
and  lounge  up  the  street  with  his  glass  in  his  eye,  as  if  he,  too,  had  come  there 
from  accident,  till  he  came  to  the  Shetlands,  where  he  would  stand,  leaning 
against  the  dash-board,  and  talking  witty  nonsense  with  Miss  Sunshine,  their 
conductress,  while  Fitzpop,  and  Simmons,  and  Lacquers,  and  Dodd,  and  all  the 
rest  of  them,  fell  back  respectfully,  but  swore  with  very  small  reverence  at  their 
Captain  in  their  own  minds,  or  I  am  much  mistaken  in  the  nature  of  man  in 
general,  and  our  corps  in  particular. 

"  You  seem  to  like  that  girl's  devilry,"  said  I  to  him  one  day,  when  Ran- 
dolph and  I  rode  to  an  archery  fete,  where  those  trois  sceurs,  separately  voted 
by  their  separate  worshippers  the  "  most  charming  things  in  the  county,"  were 
expected  to  be  in  due  Toxopholite  glory. 

Randolph  stroked  his  moustaches,  and  smiled  the  same  sort  of  smile  with 
which  a  man  regards  a  stag  with  nine  points,  or  thirty- six  brace  in  a  morning, 
or  any  other  pleasant  game. 

"  Yes,  I  like  her  devilry,  as  you  term  it;  it's  very  innocuous  mischief,  and 
has  a  sweet  temper  to  soften  it.  She  can  do  a  thousand  mechancetes  I'd  defy 
another  girl  to  attempt;  yet  she's  a  thorough-bred  lady  through  it  all.  Yes,  I 
like  Sunshine;  it's  such  fun  to  hear  her  talk.  And  you  seem  to  like  that  dark- 
eyed  sister  of  hers — eh,  old  boy  ?  Well,  she's  a  very  handsome  girl,  I  grant 
you,  but  she's  too  stately  for  me;  besides,  I  don't  care  for  your  brunes;  tall 
women  haven't,  generally,  much  fun  in  them." 

"  Pearl's  plenty  of  fun  in  her,  I  assure  you,"  said  I;  "  only  it's  her  hobby — at 
eighteen  ! — to  talk  of  woman's  rights,  and  woman's  intellect,  and  such-like 
themes  of  dignity  and  grandiloquence." 

"  Ah  !  "  laughed  Randolph,  "  '  Pearl's  Martineau's  bristles/  as  Sunshine 
calls  them.  I  bet  you,  if  it  came  to  the  trial,  that  my  little  devil,  as  you  politely 
term  her,  with  all  her  satire  and  her  quick  wits,  would  be  easier  to  coax,  and 
gentler  to  judge  one,  than  your  Pearl,  though  seemingly  she's  milder  and 
quieter.  If  ever  any  of  our  naughty  stories  come  to  light,  Lyle,  and  those 
young  ladies  are  on  the  jury,  you'll  see  we  shall  get  most  mercy  from  the  one 
whose  tongue  seems  the  keenest,  as  it  is,  I  grant  you,  the  sharpest." 

"  I  bet  you  five  pounds  Pearl  would  be  merciful  to  my  peccadilloes  ! " 

"  I  bet  you  five  pounds  she  wouldn't  be  so  kind  to  yours,  as  her  sister 
would  be  to  mine." 

"  Done  ! " 

"  Done  !  There  they  are,  both  of  them.  I  must  go  and  teaze  her  a  little, 
it  is  such  fun  to  see  her  when  her  blood's  up." 

With  which  Gordon  made  his  way  to  Sunshine,  who  shot  utterly  wide  of  the 


534  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

target  in  her  hurry  to  turn  and  talk  to  him,  and  I  made  mine  to  her  sister,  who 
stood  leaning  on  her  bow,  looking  like  a  young  Polycrita,  or  Queen  Carcus,  in 
her  plus  beaux  jours. 

"  So  you  are  going  to  have  a  silver  bugle  given  you,  Colonel  Gordon  ?  " 
said  Sunshine,  welcoming  her  ally  and  friend. 

"  Yes;  and  you  won't  present  it;  it  is  very  cruel  of  you." 

"  Not  I  !  "  laughed  Sunshine,  with  a  toss  of  her  head.  "  I  leave  it  for  Aunt 
Clementina.  I  am  no  patroness  of  gentlemen  who  boast  of  having  learnt  in  a 
year  what  a  drill  sergeant  teaches  Hodge  or  Ambrose  in  a  quarter;  and  rush 
with  such  a  true  amateur  ardor  to  their  Enfields  that  the  dog  killed,  and  the  win- 
dows smashed,  and  the  old  ladies  frightened  into  apoplexy,  must  distract  the 
magistrates  and  swell  the  bills  of  mortality  most  fearfully.  Pray  do  you  pay 
for  all  the  damages  done  by  your  corps  ?  because,  if  you  do,  Mr.  Fitzpop  shot 
my  King  Charles  one  day  in  his  martial  ardor,  and  I  shall  come  upon  you  for 
another." 

"  You  shall  have  the  best  dog  in  England  if  I  can  find  him.  But  you  should 
have  made  a  sacrifice  and  given  us  the  bugle,  as  I  made  a  sacrifice  and 
took  command  of  the  corps.  After  the  Coldstreams  these  gentlemen  in 
Melton  seem  painfully  slow,  and  the  way  in  which  they  rush  about  in  cross  belts 
and  shakos,  haversack  and  uniform,  is  most  curious.  The  idea  of  showing 
in  harness  whenever  one  can  get  out  of  it !  But  amateurs  always  overdo. 
So  does  England  when  she  takes  a  fit  of  enthusiasm.  It  doesn't  sit  well 
on  her;  she's  a  calm,  strong  nation,  who  can  make  her  voice  heard  in 
Europe  without  any  boasting,  and  is  grandest  when  she  is  quietest,  like 
her  own  lion  couchant.  But  now  and  then  she  goes  mad  about  some  hobby — 
once  or  twice  in  a  century — and  then  she  dins  it  into  everybody's  ears  till  they 
are  so  heartily  sick  of  it  that  it  looks  ludicrous,  however  good  it  may  be  in  the 
main;  the  kitten's  freaks  sit  very  clumsily  on  the  old  lion.  Vivacity,  vehe- 
mence, red-hot  elan  and  adventure  are  French  characteristics,  but,  when  Eng- 
land imitates  them,  she  is  sure  to  make  a  blunder;  it  isn't  her  style,  and  her 
hobbies  perish  in  the  vehement  hug  she  gives  them.  Men  certainly  can't  do 
better  than  to  learn  the  use  of  their  rifle,  and  however  hypothetical  invasion 
may  be,  it  is  no  use  locking  the  door  after  the  horse  is  stolen;  but  we  can't  do 
it  quietly.  We  must  go  and  rave  about  it,  and  brag  of  it,  and  call  all  Europe 
to  look  at  it,  till,  bothering  them  to  admire  the  glory  of  our/r0  tempo  sun,  we 
force  the  spots  on  it  on  their  notice.  Why  the  deuce  civilians  can't  practise  at 
butts  without  people's  comparing  them  to  a  regular  army  with  whom  they  can't 
possibly  form  any  parallel  yet,  at  the  least,  and  believing  in  some  speeches 
from  soldiers,  who  as  the  Athenceum  lately  said,  '  invite  a  cheer  by  lavishing 
praises  which  pass  with  an  unmilitary  people,'  does  puzzle  me,  I  confess.  But 
we  are  a  singular  nation,  you  know;  we  scribbled  nothing  but  peace-at-any- 


RANDOLPH    GORDON.  535 

price  poems  in  '51,  and  in  '60  we  think  of  nothing  but  cartridges  and  percus- 
sion-caps, ties  and  butts,  wars  and  rumors  of  wars.  Look  !  your  sister  has  hit 
the  centre.  She  has  hit  something  else,  or  I  am  mistaken:  I  never  saw  Lyle 
so  devoue." 

"  Who  is  that  very  pretty  woman  who  is  now  taking  aim  ?"  asked  Sunshine. 

Randolph  looked,  and  f  swore  a  little  mentally,  for  causes  best  known  to 
himself. 

"  That  ?     Mrs.  Rocksilver." 

"  You  look  rather  irritated  at  her  presence,"  laughed  Sunshine.  "  Do  you 
know  her  ?  " 

"Oh,  yes;  slightly." 

"  And  who  is  she  ?     A  name  tells  me  nothing." 

"  Unless  it  is  as  expressive  as  Sunshine,"  said  Randolph.  "  Well,  she  is — 
Mrs.  Rocksilver.  She  married  poor  Rock  when  he  was  only  twenty-three,  and 
she  has  flirted,  a  outrance,  ever  since.  Of  course,  before  a  week  of  the  honey- 
moon was  out,  they  were  bored  to  death.  I  never  heard  of  anybody  yet  who 
wasn't.  Any  two  human  love-birds,  caged  up  together,  will  fret  their  very 
feathers  off  in  ennui,  and  hate  each  other  like  fighting-cocks,  before  a  month 
is  out." 

"  If  they  do,"  said  Sunshine,  with  that  rapid  anger  which  it  was  Gordon's 
inhuman  delight  to  arouse,  "you  may  depend  on  it  that  it  is  because  the  soft- 
ness of  the  love-bird  has  only  been  put  on  for  some  purpose  of  convenience, 
and  that  the  hate  of  the  game-cock  has  always  been  au  fond." 

"Oh  no,"  answered  Randolph,  "that  doesn't  follow;  a  man  may  worship  a 
woman,  but  if  he  isn't  desillusione  in  a  month,  she  must  be  of  something  more 
than  mortal  mold " 

"  Yet  he  will  swear  to  pass  a  lifetime  with  her  !  "  interrupted  Sunshine,  too 
indignant  to  let  him  finish.  "  Good  Heavens  !  if  two  people  are  to  be  weary 
of  one  another  in  a  month,  how  dare  they  undertake  to  spend  a  whole  exist- 
ence together  ?  No  wonder  marriages  are  unhappy  if  such  is  their  creed. 
How  will  they  smooth  each  other's  trials,  bear  with  each  other's  faults,  learn 
to  feel  for  each  other's  errors,  if  they  love  no  better  than  that  ?  And  if  poverty 
overtake  them,  and  they  are  thrown  on  their  own  society  for  resources,  what 
affection  will  they  have  to  solace  each  other  and  support  their  ruin  ? " 

"  Affection  !  you  don't  look  for  that  in  the  world,  do  you  ? "  laughed  Ran- 
dolph, true  to  his  laudable  intention  to  teaze  her.  "  We  don't  form  love  unions 
nowadays;  we  only  make  'good  matches.'  " 

"No;  and  that  is  why  Sir  Cresswell's  is  fuller  than  it  can  hold,"  said  Sun- 
shine, with  dire  contempt  for  his  prosaic  views.  "  What  people  term  '  good 
matches '  too  often  bring  bad  fruit.  From  a  wife  who  accepts  him  for  position, 
what  man  can  expect  fidelity?" 


536  OUIDAS     WORKS. 

"  Most  visionary  of  sunbeams,  no  man  expects  it !  "  said  Randolph  caress- 
ing his  moustaches  to  hide  a  smile  of  more  gratification  than  he  cared  his  com- 
panion to  see;  "and  he  has  no  right,  for  women  will  never  give  it.  If  ever  I 
marry,  three  days  will  be  the  limit  of  my  constancy,  and  I  doubt  if  I  shan't  be 
tired  of  my  wife  before  that.  Three  days  alone  with  one  woman  is  an  ordeal  to 
try  the  devotion  of  any  man  ! " 

"  Then,  Heaven  grant  that  no  man  with  views  like  yours  may  ever  marry  a 
woman  that  loves  him,  or  he  will  break  her  heart." 

"  Hearts  don't  break.  I  don't  know  whether  they  used  to  be  Sevres,  to 
make  the  poet's  expression  correct,  but  they're  all  stone-china  now,  and  won't 
even  crack,  I  assure  you;  but  you  dwell  in  the  clouds — sunbeams  always  do — 
so  that  the  earth,  when  it  is  just  warm  enough  for  its  sensible  inhabitants,  strikes 
them  as  most  chillily  cold." 

"Especially,"  said  the  young  lady,  half  laughingly,  half  petulantly,  "when 
they  fall  upon  hard  iron  icicles  like  you,  that  are  so  incrusted  with  society's 
hoar  frost  that  nothing  will  dissolve  them." 

"  Except  Sunshine,"  said  Randolph,  with  a  smile,  and  a  glance  from  his 
beautiful  velvet  eyes,  as  ladies  called  them,  astonishingly  warm  for  an  icicle  ! 
He  an  icicle  !  By  Jove,  Miss  Sunshine  should  have  had  a  glimpse  into  his  past  ! 

"  You  here,  Randolph  ?  Why,  you  wrote  me  word  last  time  you  were  going 
yachting  to  the  Levant.  It  is  wonderful  to  see  you  in  your  own  country.  Are 
you  thinking  that  il  faut  vous  ranger  at  last  ?  " 

Randolph  swore  again  under  his  moustaches,  and  glanced  impatiently  at 
Sunshine.  He  lifted  his  hat  to  Mrs.  Rocksilver,  and  took  her  proffered  Jouvins 
as  she  floated  up  to  him — a  pretty,  affected,  bold-eyed,  dashing-looking  woman, 
of  eight-and-twenty  or  thirty. 

"  I  thought  you  said  you  only  knew  her  slightly  ? "  said  Sunshine,  with  a 
lift  of  her  contemptuous  pencilled  eyebrows,  as  Mrs.  Rocksilver  passed  on  with 
old  Lord  Saltire,  at  whose  house  she  was  staying,  giving  Gordon  a  very  familiar 
nod,  smile,  and  au  revoir. 

"  Did  I  ?      Well,  what  of  that  ? " 

"  Why,  that  your  slight  acquaintances  seem  very  intimate  ones.  You  write 
to  her,  and  she  calls  you  Randolph,"  said  Miss  Sunshine,  quickly,  who,  having 
had  his  exclusive  attention  for  the  last  two  months,  could  have  slain  any  other 
human  being  who  got  a  word  from  him. 

"  Oh  !  that's  nothing.  In  some  sets  one  soon  becomes  familiar,  and  one 
has  to  write  to  lots  of  people  one  doesn't  care  a  button  about.  Her  mail- 
phaeton  horses  were  not  broken  well  enough  for  her  to  drive,  and  I  offered  to 
break  them  for  her,  and  had  to  write  about  them.  Won't  you  come  and  have 
an  ice?  We  can't  talk  pleasantly  with  all  these  people  about  us." 

Tete-a-tete  over  glace  a  la  vanille,  he  did  talk,  very  pleasantly,  too;  but 


RANDOLPH    GORDON.  537 

Sunshine  was  disquieted,  like  a  brood  of  partridges  at  sight  of  a  pointer's  nose 
among  the  turnips.  She  would  have  liked  to  call  him  Randolph  herself,  and  allow 
nobody  to  do  so  besides.  That  story  of  the  phaeton  horses  didn't  quite  satisfy 
her  and  she  hated  Mrs.  Rocksilver  instantly  and  vehemently,  being  a  young 
lady  of  very  hot  and  rapid  impulses,  accustomed  to  treasure  Randolph's  notes 
of  acceptation  of  the  Audley  Court  invitation  as  if  they  had  been  deeds  of  gift 
to  all  the  money  in  Barclay's. 


PART  THE   SECOND. 
III. 

HOW    A   SILVER    BUGLE   SOUNDED   DIFFERENT    NOTES,    AND    RANDOLPH    LOST    A 

PONY-RACE. 

Miss  CLEMENTINA,  the  richest  woman  in  Toadyshire,  had  bought  in  common 
with  other  feminine  county  magnates,  a  silver  bugle  for  her  beloved  "  British 
Legions;  "  it  being  the  custom  nowadays  to  reward  those  defenders  of  their 
nation  who  pop  away  at  butts  with  a  portion  of  Potosi  ore,  as  righteous  god- 
mothers give  young  Christians  a  drinking-mug  on  the  occasion  of  their  being 
entered  into  the  kingdom  of  Heaven,  and  zealous  congregations  present  pious 
pastors  with  costly  soup-tureens  to  hold  their  mock-turtle,  as  a  reward  for  the 
elaborate  periods  with  which  he  has  taught  them  to  turn  away  their  eyes  from 
beholding  vanity,  and  to  reject  all  the  pomps  and  vanities  of  this  wicked  world, 
giving  all  their  goods  unto  the  poor.  If  Miss  Clementina  had  been  poor,  the 
whole  of  East  Toadyshire  would  have  shouted  with  laughter  at  the  idea  of  a 
middle-aged  lady  filling  so  prominent  a  place,  to  the  exclusion  of  all  the  pretty 
women  with  which  the  county  was  glutted;  but  Miss  Clementina  being  Miss 
Audley,  of  Audley  Court,  paying  the  heaviest  income-tax  in  the  shire,  all  the 
volunteers  were  bound  to  be  excessively  flattered  by  the  condescension,  and 
everybody  thought  her  the  most  proper  person  that  could  possibly  have  been 
selected,  except  certain  of  the  disaffected  among  us,  who  swore  at  the  old  lady's 
office  tomfoolery,  as  we  politely  termed  it,  in  not  delegating  the  office  to  one 
of  her  charming  nieces. 

"  Confound  it!  "  said  Randolph,  savagely;  "  what  folly  it  all  is!  And  here 
am  I,  who  hate  humbug  worse  than  any  man  going,  forced  to  take  a  share  in 
it.  It  is  enough  to  make  one  sick  only  to  think  of  all  the  bosh  that  old  lady 
will  talk  about  her  '  noble  defenders,'  and  /  shall  have  to  listen  to  it  all,  and— 
reply  to  it!"  With  which,  Sunshine's  quondam  Guardsman  struck  a  fusee 
wrathfully,  and  lamented,  with  extreme  pathos,  his  own  weakness  and  amiabil- 


538  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

ity  in  consenting  to  accept  the  honor  of  commanding  the  East  Goosestep. 
The  East  Goosestep,  however,  notwithstanding  his  and  his  ally  Sunshine's 
scorn,  considered  themselves  more  killing  than  those  very  dazzling  gentlemen 
the  St.  Georges  or  the  Six  Footers,  and  quite  able,  by  the  mere  sight  of  their 
serried  ranks,  to  carry  terror  into  the  bosoms  of  every  French,  Austrian,  and 
Russian  soldier  in  Europe,  if  Europe  could  have  looked  on  when  we  marched 
up  the  wide  elm  avenues  of  Audley  Court,  where  the  inspection  by  Lord  Saltire, 
the  Lord-Lieutenant  and  Gustos  Rotulorum  of  the  county,  and  the  presentation 
of  the  silver  bugle  were  to  take  place.  How  glorious  we  were!  though  little  Fitz- 
pop  did  fall  flat  on  his  face,  owing  to  the  extreme  torture  of  some  very  new  boots 
he  had  donned  for  the  occasion,  and  Mr.  Turbot,  the  town-clerk,  did  puff  and 
blow  under  the  burden  of  his  epicure's  tons  of  adipose  tissue,  and  the  anguish 
of  that  horrible  belt,  which  would  never  come  to  without  the  united  strength 
of  his  wife  and  his  footman  at  either  end;  and  young  Simmons  did  get  out  of 
step  in  a  manner  calculated  to  drive  himself  and  everybody  distracted,  and  try 
to  get  right  with  such  frantic  efforts  that  he  made  himself  black  in  the  face,  and 
had  to  partake  of  brandy  from  some  humane  pocket-pistol, — barring  these  and 
other  small  detrimental  accidents,  we  were  very  grand,  very  grand  indeed — at 
least  we  thought  ourselves  so,  and  that  is  the  primary  thing  after  all;  if  a 
woman  thinks  herself  the  belle  of  a  ballroom,  it  will  be  very  difficult  to  per- 
suade her  that  others  don't  consider  her  so  too.  Most  of  the  spectators, 
however,  concurred  in  our  self-adoration;  for  we  were  their  pet  hobby,  and 
love  made  them  blind  to  all  faults  in  us  or  our  manoeuvres. 

"  How  splendid  they  look  !  "  said  Pearl,  gazing  upon  us  like  a  young  Semir- 
amis  on  her  battalions,  as  we  passed  her  at  double-quick.  "  Don't  they  walk 
as  if  they  said  '  We  are  gentlemen,  not  common  soldiers  ? ' ' 

"  Well,  dear,  as  the  individuals  at  the  present  moment  closest  to  my  eyes 
are  that  diminutive  shoemaker  of  Snobbleton  who  sent  home  my  kid  boots 
this  morning,  and  Mr.  Turbot,  who  has  about  as  unmilitary  an  aspect  as  an 
alderman  after  a  corporation  dinner,  I  can't  see  the  force  of  your  remark  as 
much  as  I  could  wish,"  returned  mechante  Sunshine,  "  and  a  '  common  soldier ' 
is  no  inglorious  appellative.  /  haven't  forgotten  the  Crimea,  though  every- 
body else  has." 

I  don't  suppose  she  had,  with  Randolph  there  in  front  of  her,  with  his  C.  B. 
cordon  and  his  medals  on  that  grizzled  Melton  that  had  replaced  his  Cold- 
stream  scarlet! 

We  went  through  position,  and  battalion,  and  skirmishing;  we  performed 
manual  and  platoon  exercise;  we  formed  into  line,  and  we  formed  into  square; 
fired  in  file,  and  we  fired  in  volleys;  and  we  marched  in  open  column  and  in 
quarter  distance  column;  and  we  did  everything  contained  in  those  volunteer 
manuals,  which  have  been  to  us  of  late  what  her  breviary  is  to  a  good 


RANDOLPH    GORDON.  539 

Catholic;  and,  what  with  the  clash  of  the  ramrods,  and  the  tramp  of  the  march- 
ing, and  the  smell  of  the  powder,  and  the  sight  of  the  cartridge-strewn  turf, 
all  Toadyshire  was  stricken  with  the  deepest  admiration  of  us,  and  perfectly 
persuaded  that  neither  Caesar's  legions,  nor  Attila's  hordes,  nor  Scipio's  con- 
querors, were  ever  fit  to  hold  a  candle  to  us,  which  flattering  sentiment  our 
Lord-Lieutenant  conveyed  to  us  in  a  speech  sweet  as  milk-punch  and  fragrant 
as  attar  of  roses,  calculated  to  fill  us  with  the  most  delicious  self-adoration, 
and  to  secure  our  votes  to  a  man  for  his  son  in  the  coming  county  election. 

Lord  Saltire  having  concluded  with  much  applause,  as  reporters  say,  Miss 
Clementina  advanced,  stately,  solemn,  severe,  as  Miss  Clementina  ever  was, 
amidst  as  much  cheering  as  Three  per  Cents,  ever  obtained  for  a  lady,  and 
made  us,  I  think  I  may  say,  one  of  the  most  sublime  perorations  that  ever  issued 
from  female  lips  since  the  Virgin  Queen  harangued  the  troops  at  Tilbury  Fort. 
Hersillia,  Hortensia,  Aldrude,  Bertinora,  Isabel  of  Arundel,  Marthar  Glar,  all 
their  eloquence  was  nothing  to  it,  and  I  grieve  that,  instead  of  being  handed 
down  to  posterity,  Miss  Clementina's  oration  will  only  live  to  line  portmanteaus 
and  butter-tubs,  in  company  with  the  Toadyshire  Post  and  the  Boshcumbury 
Herald.  She  called  us  "the  saviors  of  England;"  she  spoke  of  the  homes 
and  hearths  we  were  banded  together  to  protect;  she  enlarged  on  the  defence- 
less sex,  for  whose  safety  we  were  armed.  Altogether  she  was  so  touching 
that  all  Toadyshire  was  strung  up  to  the  most  rapturous  pitch  of  enthusiasm, 
and  many  ladies  present  were  moved  even  to  tears.  Mrs.  Turbot  wept  plente- 
ously  at  the  thought  of  that  dear  twelve-stone  lord  of  hers  going  out  to  stick 
invaders,  dinnerless  andgrogless;  Fitzpop's  mother  nearly  went  into  hysterics 
at  the  vision  of  her  dear  boy,  with  gory  wounds,  defending  that  "  hearth  " 
where  it  was  her  delight  to  behold  him  every  evening  warming  his  slippers  and 
going  into  muffins;  and  even  flinty-hearted  Sunshine  was  fain  to  hide  her  face 
in  her  cambric  handkerchief,  and  give  one  little  sob,  but  I  am  half  afraid  it 
was  of  a  cachinnatory  character,  for,  catching  Randolph's  ear,  it  sent  him 
straight  into  agonies  of  suppressed  laughtei,  which  his  pet  ruse  of  stroking  his 
moustaches  could  not  hide  so  entirely  but  Miss  Clementina,  saw  it,  paused 
one  second,  continued  with  extra  solemnity,  and  presented  him  his  silver  bugle, 
with  a  mental  vow  that  the  captain  of  the  East  Goosestep  Rifles  should  never 
blacken  the  doors  of  Audley  Court  again,  by  her  invitation  at  least.  That 
smile  was  never  forgiven  him;  it  was  blacker  in  Miss  Clementina's  eyes  than 
the  blackest  of  Randolph's  sins — which  were  d'une  latitude  enorme  ! 

I  question  if  Knowsley,  lavish  as  it  was,  was  better  in  its  way  than  the  Aud- 
ley Court  luncheon  with  which  Miss  Clementina  regaled  her  beloved  British 
Legions  to  a  man — I  ought  to  say  to  a  boy,  for  our  smallest  bugler,  aged  ten, 
eat  as  much  as  a  parish  overseer  would  consider  maintenance  for  six  whole 
families  for  a  month,  in  the  tent  prepared  for  their  regalement — while  we,  the  offi- 


540  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

cers  of  the  gallant  Goosestep,  walked  into  Strasbourg  pates  and  Moe't's  best  in  the 
great  old  hall  of  Audley  Court,  where  Miss  Clementina,  boiling  with  rage  at 
Randolph's  unpardonable  sin,  which  was  not  assuaged  by  the  three  times  three 
we  gave  her,  presided  with  solemn  majesty,  with  Lord  Saltire  on  her  right,  and 
my  governor  on  her  left — Pallas  herself  was  never  more  imposing.  I  had  Pearl 
all  to  myself,  a  proximity,  I  believe,  I  managed  to  make  as  agreeable  to  the 
young  lady  as  it  was  to  me;  and  Randolph  was  so  devoue  to  Sunshine,  that 
Mrs.  Rocksilver's  handsome  eyes  scintillated  with  annoyance  as  she  sat  oppo- 
site to  him,  and  gave  him  now  and  then  a  peculiar  smile,  which  made  him  rest- 
less, and  think  to  himself  what  a  confounded  fool  he  had  been  the  previous  sea- 
son when  the  Rocksilver  box,  boudoir,  and  barouche  had  seen  more  of  him 
than  was  wise,  and  a  certain  Buhl  writing-case  in  the  Rocksilver  Davenport  had 
been  the  receptacle  for  notes  signed  Randolph  Gordon,  which  would  have  been 
much  better  left  unwritten,  especially  now  that  a  pair  of  softer  eyes  had  chased 
the  Rocksilver's  sparkling  black  ones  out  of  his  mind. 

"  Do  you  like  her  ?  "  asked  Sunshine,  noticing  an  anxious  glance  which  Ran- 
dolph gave  across  the  table. 

"  Her — whom  ?  "  asked  he,  the  quick  and  exceedingly  unwelcome  question 
upsetting  that  sang  froid  which  Randolph  was  accustomed  to  boast  a  man  going 
into  a  fit  of  apoplexy  at  his  side,  intelligence  that  the  house  was  on  fire,  the 
receipt  of  a  challenge,  an  order  for  active  service, 'and  a  summons  for  breach, 
all  at  the  same  moment,  would  be  powerless  to  disturb. 

"  Your  friend  Mrs.  Rocksilver,"  said  Sunshine,  with  that  impatience  with 
which  a  woman  always  speaks  of  a  rival,  real  or  imaginary. 

"  Like  her  ?  Oh  no  !  She  can  be  very  agreeable,  but  she  is  a  frivolous, 
heartless  woman  of  the  world — nothing  in  her — nothing  that  I  should  admire 
now,  at  the  least,"  said  Randolph,  with  an  assurance  by  his  eyes  that  Sunshine 
had  spoilt  him  for  every  other  breathing  woman. 

"  Merci,  mon  ami."  The  whisper  was  very  low,  but  both  Randolph  and  his 
new  favorite  heard  it,  and  there  was  a  smile  soft  and  amused,  it  is  true,  which 
said  to  him  as  plainly  as  smiles  can  speak,  "  I  will  pay  you  for  that,  monsieur  !  " 
on  the  Rocksilver's  handsome  passe  face. 

"Hark  !  your  aunt  is  off  upon  spiritualism,"  began  Randolpli,  £  propos  de 
bottes,  to  draw  Sunshine's  attention  from  the  very  malin  glance  of  the  Rock- 
silver's  beautifully  tinted  eyes.  "  What  a  dear  woman  it  is  to  to  take  up  fash- 
ionable follies,  and  I'm  always  tilting  up  against  them.  This  very  morning  you 
made  me  laugh  in  the  most  mal-a-propos  and  ill-bred  manner  in  the  very  midst 
of  her  most  pathetic  peroration  !  She's  a  firm  believer  in  Mr.  Howitt  and  Mr. 
Home,  isn't  she?  I  was  looking  at  Mackay's  Popular  Delusions  the  other  day, 
and  thought  we  could  scarcely  laugh  much  longer,  with  any  show  of  justice  at 
the  least,  at  the  witch  Mamia,  the  mesmerism  furore,  or  the  philosopher's  stone, 


RANDOLPH    GORDON.  541 

now  that  people  of  education,  intelligence,  and  accredited  position  can  be  found 
who  will  lend  their  drawing-rooms  and  give  their  credence  to  the  legerdemain  and 
vulgarities  of  clever  charlatanism.  The  generation  of  a  century  hence  will  cer- 
tainly be  puzzled  whether  to  vote  us  wilful  fools  or  helpless  idiots.  It  seems 
very  curious  to  me  that  (with  the  power  these  mediums  claim  to  possess  of  con- 
constant  contact  and  intimate  liaison  with  the  spirit  world,  who  in  their  turn 
know  everything  that  has  taken  and  will  take  place  in  the  world  they  have 
quitted),  instead  of  going  about  in  such  very  infra  dig.  style,  earning  their  few 
guineas  a  night  at  a  seance,  they  don't  make  their  fortunes  by  some  noteworthy 
prophecy  that  would  do  some  credit  to  their  powers  of  vaticination:  tell  us  the 
fate  of  Gaeta  or  Venice,  or  what  the  state  of  the  funds  will  be  a  week  before- 
hand, or  how  long  Louis  Napoleon  will  keep  as  his  motto  '  L'empire  c'est  la 
paix,'  or  something  worth  hearing.  Ah  !  there  is  Miss  Audley  rising.  Shall  I 
ever  make  my  peace  with  her  I  wonder  ? " 

Sunshine  didn't  answer  him  with  her  usual  readiness  and  zest.  She  was 
pondering  over  Mrs.  Rocksilver,  a  problem  she  could  not  solve  to  her  liking; 
and  she  was  probably  wishing  with  all  her  heart  that  she  had  a  medium  for 
her  friend,  who  would  tell  her  the  meaning  of  the  sort  of  by-play  that  went  on 
between  the  Captain-commandant  of  the  Toadyshire  Rifles  and  Lord  Saltire's 
dashing  and  dangerous  guest. 

"  So  you  are  entete  with  one  of  the  Audley  girls,  I  hear,  Randolph,"  said 
that  lady,  with  a  laugh  and  a  sneer,  as,  after  the  luncheon  was  over,  we  broke 
into  groups  to  go  and  see  the  shooting-match  for  a  beautifully-mounted  rifle 
and  a  silver  cup  Lord  Saltire  and  my  governor  had  offered  for  the  best  shot  in 
Toadyshire.  "You  were  not  made  for  a  marrying  man,  mon  cher;  the  Bene- 
dict role  won't  suit  you,  though  you  are  thirty-four.  I  doubt  if  you  ever  keep 
the  same  thought  through  twelve  hours.  Miss  Audley  is  very  charming,  sans 
doute,  still  I  have  half  a  mind  to  do  a  good  deed  and  save  you  from  your 
doom." 

"  What  do  you  mean  ? "  said  Randolph,  with  a  carelessness  that  did  him 
infinite  credit  as  an  actor. 

"  N'importe  !  "  laughed  Mrs.  Rocksilver,  gaily,  with  a  glitter  in  her  eyes. 
"  I  was  only  thinking  of  some  letters  I  have,  which  might  postpone  your  sacri- 
fice; but  if  sacrifice  is  to  your  taste,  I  don't  see  why  I  should  interfere  to  rescue 
you  from  it." 

Randolph  stroked  his  moustaches  with  an  impatient  frown  on  his  brow. 

"  You  can  exhibit  your  correspondence  where  you  please,  of  course;  but 
whether  it  will  be  more  to  your  credit  than  mine " 

"  Fear  makes  you  discourteous,  mon  ami,"  cried  Mrs.  Rocksilver,  with 
another  light,  pleasant  laugh,  her  sweet  temper  in  no  wise  disturbed.  "  Don't 
be  afraid,  you  are  not  such  a  great  prize  that  I  shall  dispute  you.  Ah  !  Major 


542  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

Thornton,  how  do  you  do  ?     I   have  not  seen   you   before.     Are   you  come 
to  have  a  shot  for  Lord  Saltire's  rifle  ? " 

Whether  she  had  any  particular  design  to  make  Randolph  fail  to  win  the 
prize  or  not,  I  can't  say,  but  her  words  and  her  smiles  rankled  sufficiently  in 
his  mind  to  make  him  so  careless  of  his  laurels  as  the  shot  of  Toadyshire,  that 
he  who  could  hit  anything — a  willow  wand  at  three  hundred  yards,  if  he  had 
liked — when  he  and  I  were  tied  for  the  first  prize,  scoring  fiifteen  points  each, 
missed,  and  let  me  make  a  centre  without  dispute. 

"  Why  don't  you  win  it  ?  You  can"  said  Sunshine,  impatiently,  as  he 
rejoined  her.  "  Aunt  Clementina  looks  so  pleased,  and  so  does  that  Mrs. 
Rocksilver." 

When  one  lady  applies  the  pronoun  that  to  another,  it  invariably  means  a 
great  amount  of  dislike,  jealousy,  and  general  contemptuous  irritation.  "  That 
Julia  Vernon  !  "  says  your  sisters  of  that  girl  without  tin,  whom  you  like  and  they 
dread,  wishing  to  hook  you  for  their  rich  friend,  Miss  Fitzingots.  "  That  Miss 
Flirtington  !  "  says  your  wife,  of  your  pretty  cousin,  whom  you  ventured  to 
take  to  the  Crystal  Palace  one  day. 

'•'•'•That  Mrs.  Rocksilver!'  she  is  jealous  already,"  thought  Randolph, 
skilled  in  all  feminine  weaknesses,  as  he  asked  her  very  tenderly,  "  Do  you 
wish  me  to  win  ? " 

"  Of  course  I  do,"  said  Sunshine  more  impatiently  still.  "You  were  meant 
to  do  something  better  than  fire  at  electric  targets  for  silver  cups,  but  since  you 
are  doing  it,  do  well  in  it.  No  man  should  ever  do  less  than  his  best;  if  every- 
one remembered  that  we  should  have  greater  men  than  we  have;  patriots 
would  not  sink  into  placemen,  eloquence  into  clap-trap,  genius  into  money- 
fetching  trash.  Why  the  first  myrtle-wreaths  are  the  brightest,  is  because  a 
man  puts  out  all  his  strength  when  he  enters  the  arena,  and  thinks  any  blows 
will  suffice  to  keep  the  belt  when  he  has  once  been  declared  champion.  Go 
and  win;  never  let  these  civilians  say  they  beat  a  man  who  fought  on  the  Sand- 
Bag  battery." 

Randolph  smiled;  he  liked  his  "  little  devil  "  best  in  her  hot,  impatient, 
contemptuous  anger.  He  whispered  something  that  nobody  heard  but  Sun- 
shine and  took  care  to  carry  off  the  governor's  cup  with  eighteen  points  at  a 
distance  of  five  hundred  yards,  throwing  to  despair  everyone  of  our  corps, 
who,  from  fat  old  Turbot  to  little  sprat  of  a  Fitzpop,  had  each  seen  in  their 
several  imaginations  that  portion  of  Hunt  and  Roskell's  plate  standing  on  their 
sideboards  to  be  handed  down  to  admiring  generations  in  memoriam  of  the 
gallant  Toadyshire  Rifles,  and  was  rewarded  for  his  exertions  with  so  radiant  a 
smile  from  his  Sunshine,  that  he  wondered — as  a  man  always  does  wonder  when 
he  changes  his  loves — what  beauty  he  could  possibly  ever  have  seen  in  the  bold, 
roving,  tinted  eyes  of  Augusta  Rocksilver,  as  they  had  flashed  on  him  in  the 


RANDOLPH    GORDON.  543 

grand  tier,  the  Ring,  and  artistically  darkened  and  very  embellishing  boudoir 
in  Curson  Street,  the  season  before,  when  that  lady  had  marked  him  out  as  the 
most  agreeable  man  about  town,  from  the  day  she  first  saw  him  driving  his  til- 
bury by  the  Serpentine. 

"  What's  the  matter  with  you,  Randolph  ?  "  said  I,  when  we  were  waiting 
for  Lacquers  and  some  others  of  the  county  men  to  go  and  play  loo  at  the 
Angel,  in  Boshcumbury,  where  we  had  dined  after  the  Audley  Court  affair. 

"  Matter  with  me  ?  Nothing  particular.  But  devil  take  her  !  What  did  she 
come  here  for?"  said  Randolph,  with  an  angry  stab  at  his  cigar,  that  wouldn't  burn 

"  Who  are  you  anathematizing  ?  " 

"  Who  ?  Augusta — Mrs.  Rocksilver,  of  course.  I  was  a  fool  last  season, 
you  know,  Cosmo.  I  thought  her  a  very  handsome  woman — and  so  she  is — 
but  I  told  her  so  a  good  deal  too  much,  and  I  was  idiot  enough  to  give  her  my 
picture,  and  write  to  her,  and  do  all  sorts  of  compromising  things  that  are 
always  in  black  and  white  against  one,  as  if  I'd  been  four-and-twenty  instead 
of  four-and-thirty;  and  now  here  she  turns  up  in  Toadyshire  just  when " 

"  You're  making  the  same  love  to  another  woman.  Very  inconvenient,  I 
admit." 

"  Not  the  same  love,  thank  you!  The  liking  for  the  one  is  very  different  to 
the  liking  for  the  other,"  muttered  Randolph,  with  his  weed  between  his  teeth. 

"  I  never  liked  the  woman — there's  nothing  in  her  to  like — she's  all  artificial; 
but  she  was  deucedly  handsome,  and  I  made  love  to  her.  Tant  pis!  And  now 
she'll  go  showing  those  letters  and  things  to  Sunshine.  I'm  certain  she  will; 
confound  it!  " 

With  which  colloquy  to  himself,  not  to  me,  Randolph  flung  his  refractory 
Cuba  into  the  grate,  as  if  it  had  been  that  luckless  Rocksilver  notecase  which 
contained  those  dangerous  letters  with  which  his  last  love  held  him  in  check 
with  his  new  one. 

"  And  can't  you  trust  to  her  forgiveness  ?  " 

He  smiled.  "  Well,  perhaps.  She's  very  plucky:  but  your  most  plucky 
are  often  the  gentlest  to  coax,  and  women  always  like  a  dash  of  the  mauvais 
sujet,  even  when  it  militates  against  themselves;  they  prefer  a  man's  mind 
to  be  a  sealed  envelope,  about  which  there  is  a  little  mystery  and  a  good  deal 
of  pride  in  getting  it  to  unclose,  to  a  blotless  breviary  that  lies  open  before 
them;  a  Rousseau's  Confessions  that  they  mustn't  look  into,  to  an  open  letter 
that  those  who  run  may  read.  How  handy  it  would  be  if  one  could  score  out 
some  of  the  days  of  one's  life.  If  a  man  would  set  up  in  business  to  sell 
Lethe  like  porter  by  the  pot,  he'd  very  soon  make  his  fortune — wouldn't  he  ? 
However,  if  one  does  foolish  things,  I  suppose  one  must  expect  to  pay  for 
them — eh  ?  There  come  the  men."  And  Randolph  took  up  a  fresh  cigar,  and 
struck  a  fusee,  humming  to  himself  Beranger's — 


544  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

"  Fi  des  coquettes  mani6r6es  ! 
Fi  des  b6gueufes  de  grand  ton  ! " 

appropriating  the  refrain,  I  presume,  to  his  quondam  admiration  and  present 
detestation,  Augusta  Rocksilver,  nee  Fixatrice;  while  I  congratulated  myself 
that  the  Rocksilvers  of  my  past  were  not  on  the  scene,  but  thought,  if  ever  they 
did  turn  up,  that  I  should  soon  persuade  Pearl,  with  her  languid  eyes,  and  her 
calmness,  and  her  very  deep,  though,  perhaps  not  very  demonstrative,  attach- 
ment to  me,  of  which  I  had  made  myself  sure  that  day  under  the  tete-a-tete 
favoring  orange-trees  of  the  Audley  Court  conservatories,  to  listen  to  reason 
and  forgive  me;  while  with  that  vivacious,  satirical,  and  very  vehement  Sun- 
shine, I  doubted  if  Randolph  would  not  find  it  up-hill  work  to  obtain  his 
absolution  if  ever  he  asked  her  for  it. 

Our  butt  is  about  a  mile  out  of  Boshcumbury,  the  practising  ground 
rejoicing  in  the  non-military  appellative  of  the  Sheep  Fields,  from  the 
fact  that,  when  Boshcumbury  possessed  an  abbey,  of  which  the  ruins  re- 
joice the  souls  of  the  archaeologists  to  this  day,  the  old  monks  pastured 
their  flocks,  where  now,  as  Randolph  remarks,  we  are  teaching  our  lambs  to  be 
lions,  or,  at  least,  our  asses  to  don  a  leonine  skin  and  semblance,  and  like  Bot- 
tom, "  roar  that  it  will  do  any  man's  heart  good  to  hear,  and  fright  the  ladies 
till  they  shriek."  The  butt  is  a  mile  out  of  the  town:  and  a  sorry  mile  that 
is  to  all  our  corps  when  the  practising  days  are  wet  ones,  and  their  cock-tails 
are  bedraggled,  their  Melton  soaked  through,  and  water  dripping  off  every 
point  of  their  beloved  harness.  Such  a  day  was  it  after  the  Audley  Court 
inspection:  and  if  Randolph  had  given  us  the  option  of  deferring  the  drill,  I 
venture  to  say,  martial  though  we  were,  we  shouldn't  have  scorned  the  per- 
mission as  pluckily  as  the  Guards  did  the  other  day,  when  they  were  up  to 
their  knees  in  water  at  Aldershot.  But  he  offered  no  such  thing — that  winter 
before  Sebastopol  had  made  him  horribly  contemptuous  of  all  effeminacies, 
and  cruelly  impervious  to  all  "  babies'  whinings,"  as  he  brutally  termed  our  most 
severe  but  mildly-silent  sufferings.  We  went  through  the  drill  that  pouring 
summer  evening.  Poor  Turbot,  who  had  got  out  of  a  comfortable  after-dinner 
doze,  snatched  the  handkerchief  from  his  brow  that  kept  the  flies  away  while 
he  slumbered,  gazed  wildly  at  the  clock,  and  struggled  frantically  into  harness, 
his  wife  pulling  at  that  miserable  belt  till  the  poor  little  woman's  face  was 
.scarlet,  and  the  good  town  clerk  decidedly  apoplectic,  in  his  haste  to  be  in  time. 
It  was  a  picture  of.  the  most  touching  misery  to  see  that  bon  bourgeois,  who 
had  never  stirred  out  without  his  goloshes,  his  umbrella,  and  his  waterproof, 
dripping  like  a  Newfoundland  after  a  bath — himself  puffing,  blowing,  saturated 
— a  portrait  of  distress  to  touch  the  most  flinty  heart;  and  many  an  oath  did 
he  swear  to  himself  for  having  exchanged  his  quill  for  an  Enfield — the  shelter 
of  his  snug  office  for  the  windy  pampas  of  the  Sheep  Fields.  Bassompierre 


RANDOLPH    GORDON.  545 

Delafield,  the  pet  physician,  who  had  bought  a  rifle  and  a  ten  pound  diploma 
almost  en  meme  temps,  and  divided  the  worship  of  the  fair  women  of  the  borough 
with  the  popular  preacher  at  St.  Faithandgrace,  getting  the  more  votes  of  the  two 
because  he  was  still  unmarried,  thought  wildly  of  bronchitis,  diphtheria,  phthisis, 
and  every  pulmonary  evil  under  the  sun,  as  the  rain  ran  off  his  little  shako  into 
his  neck  in  countless  and  chilling  streamlets,  and  wished  the  volunteer  movement 
at  the  devil,  and  his  own  fondly-cherished  person  safe  in  the  drawing-room  of 
one  of  his  lady  patients.  Horrible  as  the  bank  and  its  imprisonment  had  once 
seemed  to  poor  Simpson,  the  vision  of  that  hated  stool  and  desk  seemed  paradise, 
for  they  at  least  were  dry,  which  not  a  thread  of  that  beloved  uniform  of  his  could 
purport  to  be  this  dreary,  pouring,  remorseless,  practising  day;  poor  little 
Freddy  Audley,  shivering  and  wretched  as  his  idolized  curls  hung  dank  and 
dripping,  shrank  under  the  great  plash  of  each  rain-drop  as  if  it  were  the  thug 
of  a  French  cannon  ball;  even  Lacquers,  that  jolliest  of  men  (when  away  from 
his  wife,)  looked  as  blue  and  dull  as  if  he  were  having  one  of  my  lady's  diur- 
nal lectures;  and  through  it  all  our  heartless  captain  kept  us  hard  at  it  as  if  it 
were  a  sunshiny  noon,  swore  to  himself  what  a  fool  a  soldier  was  to  have  any- 
thing to  do  with  a  set  of  civilians,  and  looked  as  cool  and  unconcerned  with 
the  water  dripping  off  his  long  moustaches  as  if  he  were  an  otter,  or  a  boatman, 
or  a  seal,  or  a  bathing-woman,  or  any  other  amphibious  being  to  whom  the  ele- 
ment came  as  second  nature. 

"  Go  home  and  have  a  warm  bath,  Freddy,"  said  he,  with  the  most  unfeel- 
ing laugh  imaginable,  as  the  poor  little  dripping  heir  of  Audley  Court  wrapped 
the  plaid  round  his  knees  as  he  started  his  dog-cart  off  from  the  Angel  yard. 
"  Mind  you  have  some  white  wine  whey,  and  ask  Miss  Clementina  for  her 
chaufferette;  and  a  few  drops  of  nitre,  I've  heard,  are  the  very  best  thing  for 
catarrh;  but  your  aunt  will  see  to  all  that.  What  a  blessing  a  maiden  aunt  is 
to  young  volunteers,  who'd  like  to  play  at  soldiers  only  in  fine  weather  !  I  won- 
der what  you'd  have  done,  my  boy,  if  you'd  been  with  us  the  night  before  Alma. 
Cambridge  himself  had  only  a  tilted  cart,  and,  by  George  !  how  it  poured  all 
night;  splash,  splash,  into  the  puddle  where  we  lay,  sans  cloaks,  sans  tents,  sans, 
anything.  You'd  have  shone  there,  Freddy,  and  Miss  Clementina's  whey  would 
really  have  been  most  acceptable,  though  on  my  life,  I  don't  think  you'd  have 
been  alive  to  drink  it,  since  you  suffer  so  frightfully  from  a  little  rain." 

"  A  little  rain  !  Cats  and  dogs  !  You're  as  bad  as  Sunshine,"  murmured 
Freddy,  between  a  growl  and  a  lisp. 

The  last  name  silenced  Randolph,  or  at  least  sent  him  into  a  reverie,  so  that 
poor  Freddy  was  allowed  to  start  his  mare  off  in  peace  from  further  assaults; 
and  the  captain  of  the  East  Goosestep  threw  himself  across  his  gray,  shook  his 
bridle,  and  clattered  down  the  high  street,  the  young  demoiselles  at  the  pastry 
cook's  looking  longingly  at  him  through  the  dripping  plate-glass  of  their  shrine, 

VOL.  III.— 18 


546  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

as  they  solaced  shoals  of  moist  volunteers  with  steaming  mock  turtle  and  cherry 
brandy,  or  piping  hot  oyster  patties.  Turbot  went  home  to  an  extra  tumbler  of 
whiskey-and-water,  warm  slippers,  and  every  creature  comfort  that  his  little 
wife  could  heap  upon  her  patriotic  and  self-sacrificing  lord.  Bassompierre 
Delafield  changed  and  went  to  dine  with  a  pet  patient,  who  had  his  favorite  en- 
trements  for  him,  and  who  listened  to  his  recital  of  the  horrors  of  the  day  with 
as  thrilling  an  admiration  as  Europe  now  listens  to  the  sufferings  of  Poerio, 
Arrivabene,  or  Teleki.  Young  Simmons  and  little  Fitzpop  turned  into  the 
Angel,  to  warm  themselves  with  mulligatawney,  bemoaning  bitterly  that  their 
dear  jackets  were  so  utterly  soaked  through,  that  they  should  be  obliged  to  go 
in  mufti  to  the  Fitzvalseurs'  carpet-dance.  Lacquers  went  home  to  a  stately 
dinner  and  an  admirably  dressed  and  coiffee  Zantippe,  who  would  have  been  more 
cheering  and  refreshing  if  she  had  a  little  less  handsome  a  toilette  and  a  little 
more  pleasant  good  humor.  Freddy  drove  me  off  with  him  to  Audley  Court,  where 
he  had  asked  me  to  dine,  L  gladly  accepting,  hours  with  Pearl  being  the  sum- 
mum  bonum  of  earthly  felicity  with  me;  and  Randolph  galloped  on  his  own  way 
back  to  Grassmere,  thinking  of  the  Rocksilver,  of  Sunshine,  with  some  other 
entanglements  of  his  past  and  plans  for  his  future,  as  he  rode  his  gray  at  a  pace 
fit  for  Croxton  Park  or  the  Grand  Military. 

As  he  passed  along  by  the  side  of  that  small  stream  dignified  in  Toadyshire 
by  the  name  of  river,  which  bordered  the  Audley  estate,  he  heard  the  ring  of  a 
pony's  hoofs,  and  a  merry  laugh  that  he  knew  well  enough. 

"  Ah,  bonjour  !     Will  you  ride  a  race  after  the  rain  ?  " 

Quick  as  the  wind,  Sunshine  rode  past  him,  lifting  her  gay,  bright  face  to 
his,  all  the  brighter  for  gleaming  out  of  the  dark  afternoon  mist. 

"  My  little  Arab  shall  beat  your  Gray  Darrell.  Fifty  to  one  I  reach  the 
milestone  first  ! " 

"  Done  !  For  the  best  Jouvins  !  "  laughed  Randolph,  though  he  felt  a 
much  greater  desire  to  snatch  her  up  from  her  little  Arab,  and  carry  her  off  to 
Grassmere,  as  the  Gordons  of  old  had  summarily  wooed  and  won  the  ladye  loves 
whom  fate  and  foe  kept  from  them.  Away  they  went,  and  the  little  half-bred 
Arab  set  off  at  such  speed  when  his  rider  struck  his  silky  black  flanks  with  her 
riding-whip,  as  promised  to  beat  Randolph  by  a  length,  though  he  was  counted 
one  of  the  best  riders  that  had  ever  graced  the  Queen's  or  cleared  bullfinches 
with  the  Pytchley  and  the  Tedworth.  Probably  he  did  not  try  to  work  up  his 
gray  to  do  her  best;  probably,  he  preferred  losing  the  Jouvins,  and  giving  her 
the  pleasure  of  victory;  at  any  rate,  the  little  Arab  dashed  along  the  turfy  road 
at  a  pace  worthy  of  his  ancestry,  both  English  and  Syrian,  that  would  really 
have  drawn  him  down  admiration  if  he  could  have  been  entered  for  the  Good- 
wood or  the  Ascot  Cup,  and  Sunshine  won  the  distance  by  a  couple  of  yards, 
clapping  her  gauntlets  with  joyous  laughter. 


RANDOLPH    GORDON.  547 

"  I  won!     I  won!     I  told  you  I  should!     Who  can  defy  me  ?  " 

The  bright  blue  eyes  lifted  to  him  chased  the  Rocksilver's  black  ones 
straight  out  of  Randolph's  mind. 

"  Not  I,"  said  he  passionately,  as  he  reined  up  Gray  Darrell  close  by  the 
Arab's  side.  "  Sunshine,  some  people  will  tell  you  that  my  love  is  no  great 
prize,  but  such  as  it  is  it  is  yours,  as  long  as  my  life  will  last,  stronger  and 
deeper  than  I  ever  felt  it  for  any  woman  before.  Whatever  faults  I  may 
have  had  for  others  I  will  have  none  for  you,  for  God  knows  how  dear  you  are 
to  me!  " 

This  form  of  address  would  have  had  far  too  little  Grandisonian  reverence 
in  it  to  suit  Miss  Clementina,  who  would  doubtless  have  expected  Randolph  to 
kneel  on  the  ground,  without  any  respect  to  the  muddy  state  of  the  roads,  and 
tender  in  submissive  language  his  respectful  homage  and  undying  devotion. 
But  Sunshine  seemed  to  be  very  well  satisfied  with  it  in  its  modern,  brief,  and  un- 
reverential  form.  As  Randolph  bent  down  from  his  saddle,  and  his  moustache 
touched  those  mischievous  lips  which  spoke  such  cruel  satire  on  his  volunteer 
rifle  corps,  Miss  Clementina,  on  the  other  side  of  the  river,  going  to  visit  her 
district,  after  the  rain,  with  a  gigantic  umbrella,  goloshes  in  which  you  could 
have  put  Sunshine's  whole  body,  and  her  own  pet  page,  bearing  a  packet  of 
stiff  tracts,  looked  stricken  dumb  with  righteous  indignation,  trembling  till  every 
bone  in  the  umbrella  skin  rattled. 

"  In  a  public  road!  "  she  murmured,  almost  paralyzed  with  horror.  "What 
next  ?  How  utterly  lost  to  all  self-respect,  to  all  maidenly  feeling,  to  all 
proper  reserve!  He  shall  never  enter  my  house  again!  " 

Past  them,  too,  in  the  usually  deserted  highway  rolled,  just  at  the  juncture, 
a  carriage  with  the  Saltire  arms  on  the  panels  and  hammer-cloth,  and  Mrs. 
Rocksilver  looked  through  the  window  at  Gray  Darrell  and  the  little  Arab,  and 
set  her  fine  white  teeth  together. 

"Faites  votre  jeu,  monsieur;  but  it  will  be  odd  if  you  win!  " 


PART  THE  THIRD. 
IV. 

HOW    RANDOLPH    AND    I    SINNED    AND   CONFESSED    IT,    AND    HOW   WE   GOT 
PARDON    AND   PENANCE. 

MARKET  ROTTENBOROUGH,  twin  capital  of  Boshcumbury,   sent  the  East 
Goosestep  an  invitation  to  drill  with  the  West  Toadyshire.     Their  strength 


548  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

was  about  fifty;  ours  amounted  to  eighty;  fifty  and  eighty  volunteers — 
one  huodred  and  thirty  in  all!  Was  that  not  a  force  enough  to  sneer  at 
any  imperial  whatsoever,  and  bestow  upon  the  county  blessed  with  such  a 
phalanx  as  sweet  a  sense  of  security,  as  a  maiden  lady  experiences  when  she 
"bolts  the  door,"  before  retiring  to  rest,  with  a  miniature  bar  of  iron  that 
a  burglarious  file  would  cut  through  in  a  second  ?  Market  Rottenborough 
was  to  give  us  an  ovation.  We  were  to  drill  at  Bottlesmere,  a  village  two  miles 
off,  where  Sir  Cheque  Ingotts,  the  banker  of  Rottenborough,  had  bought  a 
seat,  and  set  up  as  a  country  gentleman.  We  were  to  dine  in  the  town-hall, 
and  the  Toadyshire  Railway  Company  had  offered  to  take  us  in  second-class 
carriages  for  third-class  fare  to  show  their  sense  of  our  patriotism — a  munifi- 
cence which  Randolph  did  not  feel  as  he  ought  to  have  done,  but,  on  the  con- 
trary, gave  a  most  ungrateful  sneer  to  it." 

Market  Rottenborough  went  quite  as  mad  about  us  as  ever  the  Yankees  about 
the  Prince  of  Wales.  They  dressed  up  the  town  with  evergreens  and  flowers, 
they  had  out  the  election  flags,  which  hung  together  in  unity  for  the  first  time 
since  their  manufacture,  and  the  charity  school  banners,  whose  inscriptions 
were  not  particularly  appropriate,  as  they  inculcated  giving  the  other  cheek  if 
one  was  buffeted,  and  similar  injuctions  of  an  anti-gunpowder  character,  and 
the  shops  were  shut,  and  the  bells  fired,  and  the  old  militia  band  performed 
that  familiar  fantasia  peculiar  to  itself,  with  the  bugle  at  a  gallop,  the  clarionet 
at  a  trot,  and  the  fife  at  a  slow  march,  till  we  could  not  possibly  have  been 
more  fetes  if  we  had  taken  Paris,  invested  Petersburg,  or  stormed  Pekin. 

As  we  marched  under  the  triumphal  arch  into  the  park,  and  wheeled  into 
line  to  give  general  salute,  we  saw  Miss  Clementina  with  Sunshine,  Pearl,  and 
Rosebud.  The  lady  of  Audley  Court  made  her  eyes  into  stone,  and  gave 
Randolph  a  glance  as  fixed  and  chilling  as  that  of  the  Medusa,  as  she  bestowed 
on  him  her  shortest  and  stiffest  bow.  We  had  no  time  for  a  tete-a-tete,  for 
after  we  had  been  reviewed  and  complimented,  we  had  to  march  back  to  Rot- 
tenborough, and  go  through  the  horrible  ordeal  of  a  public  dinner,  where  Ran- 
dolph and  I,  being  not  gifted  with  patience,  and  having  visions  of  Sunshine 
and  Pearl  at  a  ball,  whither  we  were  going  at  Bottlesmere  as  soon  as  we  were 
released,  chafed  unspeakably  during  the  laudatory  orations  which  passed 
between  the  Rottenboroughites  and  Boshcumburyonians. 

Randolph  and  I  were  profoundly  thankful  when  we  could  shake  ourselves 
free  of  it,  and  go  off  to  the  ball  at  Sir  Cheque's  where  Miss  Clementina  had 
immolated  herself  to  impose  some  check  by  her  presence  on  her  nieces,  and 
who  looked  black  as  thunder  as  Randolph,  recklessly  regardless  of  the  Rock- 
silver,  took  possession  of  Sunshine  in  a  cool,  right-of-way  manner,  authorized, 
of  course,  by  her  improper  conduct  under  the  elms  the  day  before.  The 
independent  conduct  of  her  nieces  irritated  Miss  Clementina.  Rosebud  alone 


RANDOLPH    GORDON.  54!) 

was  acting  properly,  and  seriously,  encouraging  the  Hon.  Augustus  Priedieu, 
third  son  of  Lord  Saltire;  but  Pearl,  whom  she  had  always  considered  the  only 
manageable  one  of  the  three,  cut  her  to  the  heart,  in  engaging  herself  to  such  a 
mauvais  sujet  as  Cosmo  Lyle;  and  Sunshine,  "  she  should  never  be  surprised  at 
anything  dreadful  that  happened  to  that  girl,"  she  assured  Mrs.  Tomtjt,  as, 
tired  of  chaperoning,  they  sat  talking  over  the  parish,  the  county,  the  company 
and  her  nieces,  in  a  deserted  whist-room. 

"She  is  wild,  headstrong,  wayward;  and  this  handsome  reprobate,  Colonel 

Gordon Hark!  who  is  that,  talking  in  the  ante-chamber?"  said  Miss 

Clementina,  interrupting  herself. 

"Randolph,  do  you  remember  that  miniature  of  yours;  the  one  Mayall 
took  ?"  said  somebody  invisible  in  the  inner  apartment. 

"  Mine  ! — a  miniature  ?  Really  I  have  had  so  many  taken,  that  I  can't 
remember.  None  of  them  were  like  me,"  said  a  man's  voice,  that  Miss  Clem- 
entina knew  but  too  well. 

"  I  don't  agree  with  you,  mon  cher;  mine  is  an  admirable  likeness  of  you; 
so  good,  indeed,  that  I  think  Miss  Audley  would  like  to  have  it,  if  you  really 
are  engaged  to  her.  You've  been  engaged  to  so  many,  it's  almost  a  cry  of 
'  Wolf  ! '  I  will  send  it  her,  if  you  like  ?" 

There  was  a  suppressed  "The  devil  !"  and  a  more  audible  "  Thank  you; 
I  don't  doubt  she  would  be  much  obliged  to  you,  but  I  have  a  picture  by  me  I 
have  already  promised  her." 

"  Vraiment  !  which  old  love  did  it  belong  to  last,  Ranolph — Lady  Aurora 
or  Georgie,  or  Madame  de  Tintiniac,  or  La  Roville,  or  whom  ? " 

"  To  none  of  them.  I  shall  not  insult  my  future  wife  by  offering  her  others' 
leavings." 

This  was  very  haughty  and  laconic:  it  was  answered  by  another  laugh. 

"  Then  don't  offer  her  your  heart,  mon  ami  !  However,  you  are  right, 
Benedict,  to  play  propriety,  and  I  have  no  wish  to  be  behind  you,  so  I  will 
certainly  send  Miss  Audley  that  miniature,  and  all  your  letters  too.  Your 
future  wife  is  the  most  proper  keeper  of  them;  don't  you  think  so?  " 

"  For  God's  sake,  Augusta — 

"  Augusta  !  For  shame,  Colonel  Gordon,  you  insult  your  '  future  wife  ' 
and — me  too." 

"  Great  Heavens  !  that  for  a  few  months  of  folly —  -"  began  her  interlocutor, 
passionately.  Then  he  went  on,  keeping  his  anger  down:  "You  can  do  as  you 
please;  Miss  Audley  loves  me  too  well  to  revenge  anything  of  my  past  upon 
me.  N  The  only  result  of  your  sending  her  my  letters  will  be  to  show  that  Mrs. 
Rocksilver  cares  enough  for  Randolph  Gordon  to  be  jealous  of  his  forgetting 
her  in  a  truer,  fonder,  stronger  love  for  another." 

Miss  Clementina  rose,  grasped   Mrs.  Tomtit's  arm,  and  dragged  her  from 


550  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

the  room;  then  she  looked  at  her  with  a  face  pale  with  anger,  and  feelings  out- 
raged, till  every  link  in  her  bracelets,  and  every  tip  of  her  marabouts,  trembled 
and  quivered,  while  her  voice  was  sepulchral  enough  to  have  drawn  crowded 
houses  to  Sadler's  Wells  or  the  Grecian. 

"•I  am  always  lighting  on  something  horrible — and  to  think  my  niece  might 
have  married  that  wretch!  Oh,  Annette!  can  we  ever  be  too  prudent  and  too 
circumspect  with  his  dreadful  sex  ?  " 

Miss  Clementina  quite  shook  with  her  awful  secret  as  she  stepped  into  the 
carriage.  She  shivered  as  her  dress  touched  Randolph,  and  she  could  have 
shrieked  when  she  saw  him  hand  Sunshine  in,  and  saw  his  moustache  touch  her 
hair  and  cheeck,  under  pretext  of  giving  her  her  bouquet,  as  he  bade  her  good 
night,  and  held  her  hand  in  his. 

"  Sunshine,  do  you  dream  of  ever  marrying  that  Colonel  Gordon  ? "  asked 
Miss  Clementina,  as  her  fat  bays  puffed  along  the  dark  road,  in  a  tone  so  fright- 
fully funereal  that  Sunshine  started,  then  colored,  smiled,  and  intimated  that 
she  had  dreamt  of  it,  and  had,  moreover,  been  recently  assured  that  her  dream 
should  come  true.  "  Then  never  think  of  such  a  thing  again;  it  would  be  the 
greatest  calamity  that  could  befall  you;  he  is  the  worst,  the  vilest  of  his  sex  !  " 
resumed  her  aunt,  with  such  solemn  and  startling  emphasis,  that  Sunshine 
dropped  her  fan  and  her  bouquet  in  amazement.  To  slander  her  beau  ideal 
thus,  she  thought  Miss  Clementina  must  be  fit  habitant  for  Hanwell.  No 
language  was  ever  heard  so  thrilling  and  so  severe  as  that  in  which  Miss 
Clementina  told  the  story  of  that  fatal  conversation  overheard  between  Ran- 
dolph and  Mrs.  Rocksilver;  she  didn't  pause  till  a  violent  jolt  in  a  rut  stopped 
her  peroration,  and  compelled  her,  weak  in  bronchia  though  strong  in  vehe- 
mence, to  halt  for  breath. 

"You  won't  see  him  again,  will  you,  Sunshine?"  said  Rosebud,  strong  in 
the  devotion  and  spotlessness  of  the  Hon.  and  Rev.  Augustus. 

"  After  such  an  insult,  you  will  call  up  all  your  pride  to  punish  him  as  he 
merits — the  same  love  he  gives  to  you  offered  to  Mrs.  Rocksilver  ! — abomi- 
nable !  "  chimed  in  Pearl,  that  devout  upholder  of  woman's  dignity. 

"  There  is  but  one  course  left  for  you,  and  that  is,  for  me  to  write  and  end 
all  communication  in  your  name,"  resumed  Miss  Clementina's  frigid  tones. 

Sunshine  was  very  pale.  To  have  her  fears  of  the  Rocksilver  confirmed 
was  not  welcome.  "He  loves  me  now,"  she  said,  hurriedly;  "  it  is  nothing 
whom  he  has  liked  before." 

"  What !  you  call  such  an  outrage  '  nothing  !  '  "  shrieked  Miss  Clementina 
— "  You  think  it  '  nothing '  for  another  woman  to  have  his  picture  and  his  love- 
letters  ! "  cried  Rosebud. 

Sunshine's  eyes  grew  dark;  she  spoke  bitterly  and  passionately,  as  she  felt, 
and  Miss  Clementina  gazed  at  her  aghast.  She  collapsed  under  the  horrible 


RANDOLPH    GORDON.  551 

suggestion  that  her  life  could,  under  any  provocation  whatsoever,  have  by  any 
possibility  borne  any  comparison  with  Randolph  Gordon's  !  She  regarded 
Sunshine  with  stern  despairing  pity,  reserving  her  grand  coup  for  the  last. 

"Very  well,  you  do  as  you  please,  of  course;  but  I  forbid  that  man  my 
house  ! " 

I  was  breakfasting  the  next  morning,  when  Randolph  came  in  sans  ceremonie 
and  threw  himself  down  on  a  sofa. 

"  Cosmo,  I  want  you  to  do  something  for  me." 

"  A  votre  service.     What  is  it  ?  " 

"  Why,"  said  Randolph,  lashing  his  boots  impatiently,  "  I  sent  a  groom  over 
this  morning  to  Audley  Court  with  a  letter  to  Miss  Clementina,  telling  her  I 
loved  her  neice,  and  wished  to  make  her  my  wife.  Nobody  else  in  the  county 
would  take  it  as  an  offence,  I  should  fancy — rather  an  contraire,  wouldn't  you 
say  ?  I  must  confess,  however,  there's  no  knowing  what  one  may  come  to  ? 
Well,  what  does  my  man  bring  me  back  in  return  but  a  cold  and  frigid  little 
document,  written  in  the  most  buckramish  hand,  expressing  her  conviction  that 
Sunshine  will  go  to  the  devil  her  own  way,  but  repudiating  the  connection,  and 
forbidding  me  the  house.  Did  you  ever  know  anything  more  cursedly  annoy- 
ing? Deuce  take  the  women — all  but  one.  What  on  earth  shall  I  do? " 

"  Have  you  heard  from  Sunshine  ?  " 

"  No.  I  promised  her  last  night  to  go  and  ride  out  with  her  at  twelve,  but  I 
can't  go  now.  I  won't  force  myself  into  anybody's  house,  not  even  for  her 
sake;  and  yet  not  to  see  her  !  Heaven  knows  what  lies  the  Rocksilver  mayn't 
have  told  her  about  me  and  those  confounded  letters  of  mine  too.  Stay,  I'll 
write  a  line  to  Sunshine,  and  you'll  take  it  for  me.  Give  it  to  her  maid,  that 
nice  little  Frenchwoman,  you  know.  Will  you  ? " 

And  drawing  the  paper  and  inkstand  to  him,  he  dashed  off  at  express  speed 
his  one  line,  alias  his  three  or  four  sheets. 

"  Now  go  and  find  Marie,  there's  a  good  fellow,"  said  he,  when  he  had 
finished.  "  Gallop  all  the  way  there  if  you've  any  pity  in  your  composition." 

With  which  he  fairly  pushed  me  out  of  my  own  room,  and  sent  me  gallop- 
ing down  the  road  that  led  to  Audley  Court,  and  I  thought  myself  in  wonderful 
good  luck  when,  as  I  rode  through  the  lodge  gates,  I  lighted  on  Marie,  flirting 
with  the  head  gardener. 

"  Non,  je  ne  prendrai  pas  la  lettre,"  said  she  with  a  shake  of  her  glossy- 
tressed  head.  "  Madame  sa  tante  ne  le  veut  pas." 

"  Mais  Monsieur  le  Colonel  le  veut;  vous  ferez  tout  pour  lui,  Marie,"  said 
I,  thrusting  half  a  sovereign  into  her  little  plump  fingers. 

"  Ah  !  le  Colonel  !  "  laughed  Marie;  "mais  otii.  II  est  bien  beau  ce  mon- 
sieur, mais  il  est  bien  mechant  aussi,  je  pense:  et — monsieur,  je  n'ose  pas  !  " 

"  Si,  si,  Marie,  vous  le  donnerez  a  mademoiselle,  j'en  suis  bien  sur;  vous 


552  OUIDA'S     WORKS. 

ferez  tout  pour  servir  &  1'amour,  n'estce  pas  ? "  said  I,  as  I  put  the  letter  in  her 
hand,  and  reinforced  my  request  with  another  little  bit  of  gold,  and  such  a 
caress  as  soubrettes,  on  and  off  the  stage,  have  expected  from  time  immemorial. 

"Fi  done  !  monsieur  !  "  cried  Marie,  taking  the  letter  with  a  laugh,  when— 
oh  horror  of  horrors  ! — in  a  gardening  costume,  with  gauntlets  too  large  for  the 
stoutest  coporal  in  Randolph's  Coldstreams,  and  dress  looped  up  to  show  most 
strong-minded  balmorals,  a  broad  hat  on  her  brow,  some  cuttings  in  her  hand, 
and  on  her  face  the  greatest  wrath  that  ever  mortal  lineaments  portrayed,  that 
evil  genius  of  East  Toadyshire — I  saw  Miss  Clementina  ! 

How  I  repassed  those  lodge  gates  I  can't  tell  you.  I  turned  my  mare's 
head,  with  some  faint  hope  that  Miss  Clementina  mightn't  recognize  me,  and  I 
tore  back  along  the  road,  heaping  curses,  loud  and  deep,  on  Randolph's  love, 
which  ten  to  one  had  cost  me  mine. 

"Well,  did  Marie  take  my  letter?"  asked  Randolph,  eagerly,  as  he  stood 
smoking  on  my  hearth-rug,  when  I  reached  home,  after  riding  as  if  all  the  furies 
had  been  after  me. 

"Yes,"  said  I,  savagely;  "and  I  wish  you  had  been  at  the  devil  before  you'd 
given  it  me." 

"  Bien  oblige  !     What's  the  row  ? " 

I  told  him,  and  he  looked  deeply  sympathizing  when  I  had. 
1  When  Randolph  and  I  had  done  luncheon,  a  groom  from  Audley  Court 
brought  two  notes.     Randolph  tore  his  open;  I  held  mine,  touching  it,  touching 
it  as  fearfully  as  if  it  were  a  Brinvilliers's  poisoned  billet. 

"  Well,  what  does  Miss  Pearl  say  to  you,  old  fellow  ? "  asked  Randolph,  as 
he  crushed  his  up  and  put  it  into  his  breast-pocket,  looking  as  radiant  as  a  man 
might  whose  horse  had  won  "the  blue  riband  of  the  turf." 

"  Say  ? "  I  repeated  savagely,  "  why,  that  after  what  her  aunt  has  told  her 
she  witnessed  this  morning,  everything  must  be  at  an  end  between  us." 

"  The  devil  she  does  !  "  interrupted  Randolph.  "  She  hasn't  lived  with  Miss 
Clementina  for  nothing,  then.  Does  she  expect  to  find  a  man  like  Trollope's 
impossible  Arabian,  who  touches  a  woman's  lips  for  the  first  time,  we  are  told 
to  believe,  at  forty  !  On  my  life,  Cosmo,  how  grieved  I  am  ! " 

"  She's  heard  some  garbled  tale  of  it,"  said  I,  hoping  against  hope,  with  valor 
worthy  a  volunteer.  "I'll  see  her  before  night;  I'll  make  her  hear  me  at  the 
least.  Women  often  say  more  than  they  mean.  Is  Sunshine  kinder  to  you, 
pray  ? " 

"  God  bless  her  little  heart,  yes  !  "  said  Randolph,  emphatically.  "  I  told 
you  my  'little  devil '  was  true  metal,  Lyle." 

That  evening  Randolph  leaned  over  the  white  gate  that  parted  one  of  the 
paddocks  of  Audley  Court  from  a  bridle-path,  talking  to  Sunshine,  confessing 
his  sins,  and  receiving  his  absolution. 


RANDOLPH    GORDON.  553 

"  You  see,  my  pet,"  he  was  saying,  half  laughing,  after  graver  converse, 
"we  men  are  very  often  like  that  luckless  bee  Mr.  Gosse  tells  us  of,  who,  catch- 
ing sight  of  a  crascicornis,  mistook  it  for  a  flower,  and  darting  delightedly  on 
to  its  tentacles,  was  hooked,  impaled,  and  swallowed.  We  see  what  we  fancy 
very  beautiful  flowers,  we  fly  down  to  taste  the  honey  of  eye  love,  and  our 
seemingly  innocent  rose  thrusts  out  its  thorns,  and  impales  us  there  long  after 
it  has  ceased  to  have  any  fragrance  for  us,  and  we  have  found  out  our  foolish 
mistake.  Such  was  my  love  for  Mrs.  Rocksilver,  and  others  like  her,  but  it 
was  not  love  of  which  you  need  be  jealous,  nor  love  that  could  ever  feel  after 
that  I  bear  for  you.  You  will  not  visit  my  sins  upon  me,  Sunshine  ?  " 

Sunshine,  that  keen  satirist,  whose  wicked  tongue  all  his  corps  feared,  lifted 
her  face  to  his  with  a  smile,  half  mechancete,  half  of  tenderness,  a  little  bit 
saddened  that  he  should  have  loved  so  many  before  her,  but  wholly  trustful 
that  he  would  love  her  alone  in  the  future. 

"No;  you  told  me  yourself  that  two  days  would  be  the  extent  of  your 
fidelity  to  anyone,  still  I  am  not  afraid  to  trust  you,  mechant  though  you  are." 

Randolph  bent  over  the  gate,  and  thanked  her  so  fervently,  that  it  was  a 
very  fortunate  thing  Miss  Clementina  was  then  pouring  her  woes  into  Mrs. 
Tomtit's  ear  before  dinner,  and  was  not  there  to  have  her  nerves  startled  with 
a  third  severe  galvanic  shock.  At  that  same  hour  I  was  vainly  entreating  Pearl 
to  hear  reason,  which  that  young  lady  as  absolutely  declined  to  hear,  being  in 
a  state  of  most  dignified  wrath,  and  that  frame  of  mind  in  which  her  sex  talk 
nineteen  to  the  dozen,  and  give  Lynch  law  verdicts  with  the  greatest  ruthless- 
ness  and  severity.  I  had  managed  to  catch  her  walking  on  the  terrace,  and 
pleaded  my  cause  with  an  eloquence  which  I  should  have  thought  calculated  to 
touch  the  most  flinty  heart.  But  Pearl  was  more  than  dint,  and  wouldn't  even 
listen  to  a  plea.  Disengaging  her  hand  without  looking  at  me,  she  swept  off 
into  the  house  like  a  young  empress. 

In  the  high  road  Randolph  and  I  met.  He  was  riding,  smoking,  with  a 
most  contented  smile  on  his  lips. 

"  I  owe  you  a  fiver,"  said  I,  with  pardonable  bitterness,  considering  that  it 
was  through  being  his  postman  that  I  had  lost  my  fiancee.  "You  were  right; 
your  '  little-devil '  has  pardoned  all  your  past,  and  her  sister  won't  forgive  me  a 
bit  of  harmless  nonsense  in  a  friend's  cause.  Like  a  fool,  helping  you  to  trap 
your  sunbeam  I've  shut  myself  out  of  Audley  Court,  and  every  ray  of  Pearl's 
favor;  and  how  the  deuce  I  shall  get  back  into  either  is  far  more  than  I  can 
guess! " 


554  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

V. 

HOW    SPIRITUALISTIC    AGENCY    WAS    BROUGHT    IN    FOR    MATERIAL    PURPOSES. 

SUNSHINE  was  so  determined  to  have  her  own  way,  and  so  very  satirical 
upon  those  who  opposed  her,  that  people  were  speedily  tired  of  doing  so,  and 
Randolph  got  the  entree  of  Audley  Court  on  a  sort  of  suffrance  and  condition 
that  he  would  not  long  pollute  its  walls  with  his  presence,  but  rid  it  both  of 
himself  and  of  his  "  little  devil."  Freddy,  who  had  his  own  way  in  everything, 
the  only  soul  on  earth  that  Miss  Clementina  worshipped  and  listened  to,  gave 
her  a  blowing  up  for  rejecting  his  captain's  offer.  Sunshine  avowed  her  un- 
swerving loyalty  to  her  ame  damnee,  and  Miss  Clementina  had  to  give  in,  for 
the  very  first  time  in  her  maiden  existence!  She  permitted  Randolph  to  come 
to  her  house,  but  treated  him  with  frigid  hauteur,  which  was  intended  to  show 
him  she  had  not  forgiven  his  faux  pas.  Not  so  fortunate  was  I;  no  re-entry 
could  I  make  into  Audley  Court;  its  doors  were  fast  closed  against  me.  Ran- 
dolph's intervention,  Sunshine's  artillery,  Freddy's  mediation,  were  all  powerless 
in  my  cause.  Pearl  was  inflexible,  and  Miss  Clementina  backed  her,  glorying 
in  the  fact  that  one,  at  least  of  her  poor  brother's  children  had  some  sense  of 
womanly  dignity,  and  could  resent  an  insult  and  revenge  men's  shameless 
levity. 

Pearl  was  lost.  Nohow  could  I  regain  her;  not  even  gain  her  ear  again; 
and  bitterly  did  I  anathematize  that  evil  day  when  I  had  been  mad  enough  to 
play  the  part  of  Randolph's  postman. 

The  doors  of  Audley  Court  were  closed  against  me,  and  there  seemed  no 
chance  of  my  ever  getting  inside  them  again,  not  even  to  plead  for  mercy  with 
my  cruel  and  relentless  fiancee,  till  one  day,  after  drill,  little  Freddy  came  to 
me — the  good-natured  little  fop  was  heart  and  soul  my  friend. 

"  Lyle,  I've  thought  of  something." 

"  You  thought,  Freddy  !  what  a  phenomenon  !  Well,  what  did  you  think 
about  ? " 

"  A  way  to  get  you  inside  the  Court,  to  have  a  good  lark,  and  to  bring  Miss 
Pearl  to  reason,"  answered  Freddy.  "  You  know  the  old  lady's  rampant  about 
spiritualism  and  all  that  humbug;  she's  heard  of  the  seances  in  town,  and  she's 
crazy  to  have  one  of  the  mediums  down  here.  She  got  me  to  write  to  one  of 
'em,  to  know  their  terms.  I  didn't  post  the  letter— I  have  it  in  my  pocket  now 
— and  I  thought  if  you'd  take  the  role  (you're  a  good  ventriloquist  and  a  cap- 
ital actor,  and  you  learnt  some  legerdemain  of  Houdin)  we  would  soon  get  up 
the  rest  of  the  clap-trap,  and  you  might  say  something,  as  if  from  the  spirits, 
you  know,  that  might  bring  Pearl  to  reason,  eh  ?  It  would  be  such  a  lark,  you 


RANDOLPH    GORDON.  555 

know.  Do;  we  won't  tell  Gordon  or  Sunshine,  because,  though  they'd  do  any- 
thing in  the  world  to  help  you,  they'd  be  certain  to  laugh,  they  couldn't  help 
it.  We'll  only  tell  Marie.  Come  along,  Lyle;  let's  talk  it  over.  You'll  never 
see  Pearl  unless  you  take  her  by  storm,  and  it  would  be  such  fun  to  do  Aunt 
Tina. 

Freddy's  suggestion,  seemingly  wild  and  visionary  at  first  glance,  grew 
more  practisable  at  consideration.  After  a  good  deal  of  talking  over  and 
reiterated  persuasion  from  him,  who  was  egotistically  eager  for  it,  as  "such 
a  lark,"  it  assumed  a  guise  of  possibility,  and  I  consented  to  turn  medium. 

It  was  about  a  fortnight  after  I  had  lost  alike  my  fiancee  and  my  bet, 
when  Miss  Clementina,  on  the  tiptoe  of  expectation,  and  with  her  nerves  strung 
to  the  highest  pitch  of  reverential  excitement,  invited  her  beloved  friend, 
Mrs.  Tomtit,  to  be  present  at  a  seance.  Mrs.  Tomtit,  on  the  strength  of  many 
wonders  of  lively- minded  tables  and  gossiping  ghosts  that  had  been  revealed 
to  her  on  a  recent  visit  to  town,  was  a  firm  believer  in  the  new  arch-humbug, 
rejected  any  rational  explanation  of  her  beloved  miracles  as  disgustedly  as  a 
divine  would  of  his,  and  was,  therefore,  considered  eligible  by  Miss  Clementina 
to  be  present  at  a  seance  for  which  she  had  engaged  a  celebrated  London 
medium,  who,  like  all  other  mediums,  would  only  transact  his  celestial  affairs 
if  he  was  paid  for  it,  and  appeared  to  carry  his  spirits  about  with  him,  as  the 
showman  carries  his  Punch  and  Judy,  beadle  and  devil,  in  a  box,  till  called  for 
and  paid  for  their  performances.  The  spirits  won't  perform  for  nothing,  any 
more  than  Punch  will  give  his  "  Too  te  too  te  too-o-o-e!  "  to  the  unremunera- 
tive  small  boys  on  the  pave. 

I  dressed  myself  that  night  with  minute  care,  and,  I  may  say,  that  no  more 
venerable-looking  individual  than  I  ever  turned  away  from  a  cheval-glass.  I 
had  a  snowy  beard,  I  had  spectacles  which  shaded  my  eyes  from  all  inquisitive 
gaze.  I  was  seventy  at  the  least;  a  most  respectable  person  for  the  spirits  to 
confide  in.  I  was  as  thoroughly  disguised  as  if  detective  Al  had  been  after 
me;  and  satisfied  myself  as  to  its  completeness  when,  ringing  at  our  own  door, 
and  asking  for  myself,  old  Waters  replied,  without  an  idea  of  my  identity, 
"Mr.  Lyle  is  not  at  home,  sir." 

Freddy  and  Marie  were  my  accomplices.  We  had  selected  a  night  when 
Randolph  and  Sunshine  were  going  to  dine  with  a  cousin  of  his,  for  I 
wouldn't  have  had  their  keen  eyes  on  me  for  any  money.  Miss  Clementina  was 
disposed  to  be  more  amiable  to  a  medium  than  to  any  other  thing  on  earth. 
Everything  smiled  propitious  as  I  entered,  and  Freddy,  meeting  me  in  the  hall, 
whispered,  "  All  right — coast's  clear — Marie's  ready,  and  the  iron's  fixed  to  the 
drawing-room  table — the  oval  one,  remember." 

They  ushered  me  into  the  drawing-room;  there  Miss  Clementina  sat  in 
state,  the  most  imposing  person  that  can  be  imagined,  calculated  to  inspire  with 


556  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

solemnity  and  respect  the  spirit  of  Tom  Wharton,  or  Mahun,  or  the  "  roaring 
boys"  of  the  Restoration,  or  the  wildest  scamp  going;  there  was  little  Mrs. 
Tomtit,  tremendously  excited,  a  little  bit  frightened,  and  ready  to  go  into  hys- 
terics at  any  moment;  there,  too,  was  my  granite-hearted  fiancee,  looking  so 
handsome  as  she  leant  back  in  her  chair,  that  I  was  on  the  point  of  forgetting 
my  role  and  throwing  myself  at  her  daintily  chausses  feet  instanter;  and  there 
was  not  Randolph  and  Sunshine,  for  which  absenteeism  I  thanked  Heaven  de- 
voutly, for  no  slight  ordeal  was  it,  I  can  tell  you,  with  Miss  Clementina's  pitiless, 
and  Pearl's  haughty,  and  Rosebud's  laughing,  and  the  little  Tomtit's  inquisitive 
eyes  upon  me,  when  I  knew  that  I  had  stolen  into  Audley  Court  in  borrowed 
plumes,  that  I  was  making  game  of  its  mistress,  and  that  one  false  step  might  be 
detection,  and  detection  more  irrevocable  exile  than  before.  But  I  summoned 
up  my  courage  as  became  a  Goosestep  Volunteer,  and  opened  the  seance  in  due 
form.  I  was  solemn,  I  was  grandly  dignified,  I  was  deeply  mysterious,  as  became 
a  correspondent  with  an  unseen  world;  I  was  a  man  after  Miss  Clementina's  own 
heart;  I  believe  I  realized  that  Jack-o'-lantern  ideal  which  she  had  ever 
been  pursuing  and  never  caught.  I  was  certainly  more  imposing,  with  my  snowy 
beard  and  my  six  feet  of  height,  than  some  of  those  very  fat  and  not  remarkably 
impressive  elderly  females,  who  sometimes  summon  the  dear  departed  from  the 
darkness  of  the  tomb  into  the  gas-lights  of  a  London  drawing-room. 

First  of  all  I  requested  to  have  the  room  darkened;  spirits,  you  know,  don't 
admire  light,  it  jars  on  their  feelings,  or  exposes  the  ravages  of  time  too  much. 
One  candle  was  left  on  a  console  at  the  far  end  of  the  room,  which  shed  such  a 
dim  religious  light,  that,  like  very  many  religious  lights,  it  was  as  good  as  none 
at  all.  I  heard  Mrs.  Tomtit  shudder.  "  Isn't  it  awful  ?  "  whispered  the  little 
woman;  to  which  Miss  Clementina  returned  a  short,  stern,  snappish  "  Pshaw  !  " 
under  which  Mrs.  Tomtit  collapsed,  silenced  by  the  superior  energy  of  a  mind 
greater  than  her  own.  There  was  a  dull,  gray,  mysterious  twilight,  that  made 
everything  dark  look  black  as  night,  and  everything  large,  gigantic:  a  twilight 
of  itself,  quite  a  nightmare  to  any  nervous  susceptibilities,  under  which  Rose- 
bud murmured,  «  How  horrid  !  "  and  the  poor  little  Tomtit  shivered  till  the 
bugles  of  her  cap  and  the  links  of  her  bracelets  rang  a  little  chattering  duet  of 
terror,  which  so  incensed  Miss  Clementina  that  she  asked  her  sharply  "  if  she 
thought  the  spirits  would  bite  her  ?  "  which  was  a  lowering,  not  to  say  ridicu- 
lous, view  of  the  spirits'  pursuits,  quite  in  consonance  with  the  nineteenth  century 
view  of  them.  It  was  a  dim,  mysterious  twilight,  and  in  it— having  selected 
Freddy  to  read  off  the  alphabet— I  rapped  on  the  drawing-room  table,  and 
asked  the  rosewood  in  courteous  terms  if  the  spirits  were  there— in  its  pillar 
and  claw,  in  fact,  which  must  be  a  very  inconvenient  domicle  for  some  of  them 
—for  stout  old  Luther,  par  exemple— unless,  indeed,  the  Silent  Land  had  shrunk 
them  to  the  size  of  homunculi.  Then  I  struck  the  floor  with  my  left  foot,  too 


RANDOLPH    GORDON.  557 

slightly  for  anybody  to  see  it:  and  my  boot  having  a  loose  brass  heel,  which 
clicked  easily,  did  the  spirits'  business  a  ravir,  and  announced — through  my  taps 
and  Freddy's  alphabet — that  their  excellencies  were  coming,  with  an  amiable 
celerity  they  didn't  always  display,  perhaps,  in  answering  their  duns'  calls,  or 
their  wives'  appeals,  in  a  former  state  of  existence;  and  at  which  supernatural 
evidence  Mrs.  Tomtit  gave  a  little  suppressed  scream,  and  Miss  Clementina  was 
too  much  imposed  to  correct  her.  I  asked  the  spirits  if  they  had  any  objection 
to  the  present  company,  and  my  boot  gave  me  three  taps,  to  answer  me  they 
had  not,  which  was  a  great  relief  to  me,  as  spirits,  you  know,  are  as  averse  to 
showing  before  an  unbeliever  as  a  clergyman  is  shy  of  opening  argument 
with  a  clever  secularist. 

"  The  spirits  are  present  with  us,"  said  I,  in  the  most  sepulchral  tones  to 
which  I  could  force  my  voice. 

"  Oh  !  it's  dreadful,  Clementina  ? "  sobbed  Mrs.  Tomtit.  "  I  can  see  them, 
I  can  hear  them,  I  can  feel  them.  Oh  !  take  me  away  somebody  !  I  can't  bear 
it,  it's  so  awful  !  " 

"  Be  silent,"  said  Miss  Clementina's  deepest  tones,  sunk  to  an  awe-stricken 
whisper;  "  I  can  realize  a  presence  not  of  earth,  but  it  is  ill  becoming 
us  to  show  timorous  dread  of  any  of  the  mysteries  of  life  and  death.  Oh  ! 
good  gracious  !  what's  this  ?  "  screamed  that  dignified  lady,  with  a  shrill  scream 
like  a  small  rocket,  changing  from  solemnity  to  terror. 

"You  are  honored,  madam;  the  spirits  communicate  personally  with  you," 
said  I,  in  a  reproving  tone,  as  I  drew  back  into  my  pocket,  with  that  rapidity  I 
had  paid  Robert  Houdin  many  a  guinea  to  learn,  a  pair  of  long-handled  pin- 
cers, with  which  I  had  nipped  up  a  small  portion  of  Miss  Clementina's  person. 

"  How  mysterious  !  how  awfully  mysterious  !  "  soliloquised  the  mistress  of 
Audley  Court.  "  What  singular  means  they  take  of  testifying  their  presence. 
My  arm  is  painful  now;  it  is  really  awful  !  " 

"  Awful — it  is  horrible  !  "  sobbed  the  little  vicaress.  "  Ah  !  oh  !  Clemen- 
tina, they  are  pinching  my  ankles  ! " 

"  Silence  !  "  said  I.  "  Do  you  not  recognize  the  presence  of  the  Unreal 
and  Impalpable  ?  " 

"Yes  !"  said  Miss  Clementina,  Mrs.  Tomtit,  and  Rosebud,  in  awe-stricken 
concert. 

"  Do  you  not  feel  their  cold  touch  upon  your  brow,  their  ghostly  breath 
upon  your  lips,  their  holy  phantoms  riding  on  the  wings  of  night  ?  " 

"  Yes  !  "  they  all  sobbed  in  trio.  Their  voices  were  hardly  to  be  heard, 
their  nerves  were  strung  up  to  the  highest  pitch.  They  felt,  saw,  heard  any- 
thing and  everything  that  could  be  suggested  to  thei'r  heated  imaginations,  and 
their  fancy,  warmed  to  fusion,  would  have  taken  any  flights  that  mine  had  pro- 
posed to  them.  My  miracles,  signs,  and  wonders,  like  many  others,  owed  their 


558  OUIDA'S     WORKS. 

reality  solely  to  the  gullibility  of  my  believers.  I  was  in  high  spirits;  I  was 
succeeding  a  ravir;  every  one  of  my  auditors  was  far  too  profoundly  impressed 
with  the  terrors  of  the  supernatural  to  have  any  material  reason  left  with  which 
to  penetrate  my  eleusinia  and  see  through  my  disguise.  I  was  just  proceeding 
a  step  further  in  the  seance,  and  my  spectators,  with  quivering  nerves,  clinging 
together  in  vague  dread  of  palpable  pinches  and  impalpable  spirits,  were  quite 
ready  to  swallow  any  wonders  I  might  summon  from  the  nether  world,  when 
the  drawing-room  door  opened,  letting  in  a  flood  of  outer  light  into  our  dark- 
ened spiritual  temple,  and  I  prayed  wildly  to  the  Auxerre  carpet  to  open  its 
velvet  boson  and  drop  me  down  under  the  sheltering  shade  of  one  of  its  bright- 
hued  bouquets,  when — there  entered  Randolph  and  Sunshine. 

"  We  are  come  back,  Aunt  Tina,"  laughed  Sunshine.  "  The  poor  dear 
horses  slipped  down  Catsmore  Hill,  and  Sultan  hurt  his  knees  so  much  we 
hadn't  the  heart  to  take  him  on  a  whole  five  miles  of  heavy  roads;  the  rains 

have  made  it  so But  what  are  you  doing  here  ?      The   lights   are   out, 

and " 

"  Hush  !  "  said  Miss  Clementina,  impressively;  "  your  interruption  is  most 
untimely;  we  are  in  the  middle  of  a  seance.  This  gentleman — Mr.  Muffles — 
is  come  down  from  London  at  my  solicitation.  You  will  oblige  me  by  with- 
drawing." 

"  Allow  me  to  stay,  Miss  Audley,"  said  that  confounded  Randolph,  with 
extreme  solicitude,  though  /detected  the  laughter  which  made  his  voice  shake, 
though  he  tried  to  control  it.  "  I  have  always  had  the  greatest  desire  to  be 
present  at  a  seance,  and  so,  I  know,  has  Sunshine.  We  will  be  very  good — 
indeed  we  will." 

"  I  have  no  objection,  of  course,  if  Mr.  Muffles  has  none,"  said  Miss 
Clementina,  stiffly,  turning  to  me. 

"  The  spirits  must  be  consulted,  madam,"  said  I,  wishing  myself  along  with 
the  spirits  under  the  table,  and  cursing  Freddy  fiercely  for  his  tomfoolery  in 
leading  me  into  such  a  madman's  lark,  and  hoping  to  Heaven  Randolph  would 
not  recognize  my  voice.  "  The  spirits  answer  in  the  negative:  this  lady  and 
gentleman  must  not  be  present,  they  are  disturbing  influences,"  said  I,  giving 
my  taps,  and  spelling  off  my  alphabet  selon  les  regies. 

"  Your  spirits  are  not  over-courteous,  Mr.  Muffles,"  said  that  abominable 
fellow,  looking  at  me  very  keenly— so  keenly  that  I  thought  if  he  did  not  see 
through  spectacles,  white  wig,  trickery,  and  all,  it  would  be  uncommonly  odd, 
and  most  miraculously  propitious.  "  It  looks  rather  suspicious  in  them  to  be 
so  careful  of  observation  from  any  but  orthodox  believers;  they  should  embrace 
the  occasion  of  shaming  the  skeptical.  Try  them  again  or  I  shall  think  they 
have  some  private  pique  against  me." 

And  he  looked  at  me  so  sharply,  putting  up  his  confounded  eye-glass,  that 


RANDOLPH    GORDON.  559 

I  saw  if  I  did  not  let  him  stay  he  would  make  such  miserable  fun  of  the  whole 
thing  as  would  show  me  and  my  spirits  up  to  everybody.  I  could  see  he 
thought  I  was  an  imposter,  and  was  very  ready  to  have  Lynch  law  upon  me, 
and  stuck  inextricably  between  the  horns  of  a  dilemma,  in  half-crazed  despair 
I  put  the  question  to  the  spirits,  and  wrapped  out  an  unwilling  permission. 

"  Since  you  are  permitted  to  stay,  Colonel  Gordon,  I  must  request  you  not 
to  interrupt  the  seance  with  unbecoming  levity,"  said  my  staunch  apostle,  Miss 
Clementina. 

Randolph  bowed,  sat  himself  down  by  Sunshine  on  a  couch,  fixed  his  glass 
in  his  eyes,  and  fastened  so  stern  a  gaze  upon  me,  that  I  felt  my  false  heels, 
my  pincers,  my  spirits,  my  legerdemain,  my  ventriloquism,  were  all  being  seen 
through,  and  penetrated,  and  rent  into  smithereens,  and  I  trembled,  shook,  and 
shivered  as  no  volunteer  should  ever  have  done,  considering  the  amount  of 
brag  we  make  of  what  our  Spartan  courage  would  be — if  it  were  tried.  But 
I  looked  at  Pearl  in  the  demi-lumiere.  I  thought  of  the  old  proverb  of  faint 
hearts.  I  remembered  that  brass  may  win  where  truth  may  fail.  I  made  a 
dash  at  it,  and,  plunging  in  medias  res  up  to  my  ears  in  spiritualistic  temerity, 
told  them  the  spirits  would  answer  a  question  put  by  any  or  each  of  them. 

"A  daring  fellow,  that!  but  I  am  certain  he's  a  humbug.  However 
people  in  this  wide-awake  century  can  credit  this  tomfoolery,  is  the  deepest 
problem  to  me,"  was  the  whisper  I  caught,  to  console  me,  of  Randolph  to  Sun- 
shine. 

I  put  a  bold  face  upon  it,  and  turned  round  to  him. 

"  You  are  a  mocker,  I  perceive,  sir.  Have  you  any  question  you  would  wish 
answered  ? " 

"  Certainly,"  said  Randolph.  "  Ask  them,  will  you,  if  my  father  is  right  in 
his  religious  opinions,  and  how  he  feels  in  the  other  world  ?  " 

"The  devil  !"  thought  J;  "was  your  father  an  orthodox  gentleman,  or  a 
good-for-nothing  vaurien,  like  yourself,  I  wonder  ? "  I  knew  he  did  something 
about  the  church-rates,  but  whether  it  was  to  hold  them  up  or  pull  them  down 
I  couldn't  for  the  life  of  me  remember;  so  I  compromised  the  matter,  and 
tapped,  and  spelt  a  mild  reply,  which  trimmed  between  extremes,  like  a  parson 
of  the  "  Broad  Church,"  whose  leanings  are  Low  but  patrons  High,  and  answered 
him,  "  Pretty  well." 

"Thank  you,"  said  Randolph;  "there  is  a  purgatory,  then,  I  suppose,  con- 
trary to  the  Church  of  England,  who  doesn't  allow  any  medium  between 
angelic  harps  and  perpetual  happiness,  and  roaring  fires  and  everlasting  frying 
thereon." 

I  turned  a  deaf  ear  to  his  heretic  mockery,  and  an  attentive  one  to  Mrs. 
Tomtit's  quivering  treble,  who,  with  much  fear  and  trembling,  asked  if  the  spirits 
could  lend  her  any  aid  to  the  discovery  of  a  very  sweet  brooch,  with  her  little 


560  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

boy's  hair  in  it,  set  with  emeralds,  recently  lost;  and  when  we  spelt  her  out  the 
spiritual  assistance  conveyed  in  the  laconic  sentence,  "  Look  in  your  maid's 
boxes,"  her  sense  of  the  marvellous  power  employed,  and  the  sublimity  of 
spiritualism,  was  so  overpowering  that  she  could  not  resist  the  expression 
of  it. 

"  Good  gracious  !  Clementina,  isn't  it  most  extraordinary  ?  I  always  knew 
that  girl  was  a  thief.  I  was  perfectly  certain  of  her.  I  will  give  her  warning 
to-morrow.  Who  could  be  incredulous  after  such  proofs  as  these  ? " 

Altogether,  I  was  going  off  in  flying  colors.  Randolph  didn't  know  where 
to  pick  a  hole  in  me;  Miss  Clementina  was  deeply  gratified  with  a  reply  con- 
cerning the  immoral  tendencies  of  the  age;  which  entirely  coincided  with  her 
own  private  sentiments.  Pearl  looked  pale  and  excited,  Rosebud  puzzled;  Mrs. 
Tomtit  divided  between  awe  of  the  spirits  and  rejoicing  over  her  beloved  brooch; 
I  was  getting  easy  in  saddle,  and  going  on  au  grand  galop,  when  Randolph's 
little  devil,  with  true  demonical  mischief,  asked,  through  my  agency,  where  her 
younger  brother  was  drowned  ?  Now,  I  had  never  heard  of  her  having  any 
other  brother  than  Freddy;  I  didn't  know  his  name;  I  hadn't  an  idea  when 
he'd  died;  whether  he  was  locked  up  along  with  Franklin,  or  lying  under  the 
tropic  suns  of  the  Pacific,  I  couldn't  for  the  life  of  me  divine.  With  a  cold 
perspiration  all  over  me,  in  dread  of  making  a  mistake  in  designating  the  un- 
lucky youth's  watery  grave,  I  answered  her  with  a  despairing  recklessness  of 
geography,  "Off  Caxamarquilla." 

"  I  am  much  obliged,"  answered  Sunshine,  calmly:  "  but,  imprimis,  Caxamar- 
quilla is  an  inland  town  in  Peru;  secondly,  I  never  had  a  brother  drowned; 
thirdly,  I  never  had  a  younger  brother  at  all.  Your  spirits  must  have  gone 
wrong  somehow  or  other,  Mr.  Muffles." 

Oh,  that  Auxerre  carpet  and  that  one  especial  bouquet  of  roses  and  lilies 
just  under  my  feet,  how  I  would  have  prayed  to  it  if  it  only  had  had  ears  to 
hear,  to  open,  and  swallow  me  up,  and  hide  me  for  evermore  from  human  eyes; 
but,  sauve  qui  peut,  I  had  to  acknowledge  a  blunder,  but  referred  it  a  la  pro- 
fessional medium,  to  the  "disturbing  influence,"  indicating  Randolph,  I  put  a 
good  face  on  the  blunder,  and  drew  attention  from  it  with  a  cool  dexterity 
quite  worthy  a  real  medium,  I  assure  you,  by  stretching  out  my  hand  to  the 
oval  table,  which  came  after  me  as  docilely  as  a  well-trained  dog,  ambling 
amiably  over  the  bright  flowers  in  the  carpet  like  a  good -hearted  but  somewhat 
clumsy  donkey,  lifting  its  leg  when  I  raised  my  hand  and  tilting  forward  on  its 
nose  when  I  depressed  it  in  a  lively  and  amusing  manner,  which  quite  covered 
over  the  slip  of  Caxamarquilla.  The  table  was  quite  a  lion;  it  danced  so 
prettily  it  really  might  have  learned  of  Madame  Michaud-Davis;  everybody 
admired  it;  even  Sunshine  held  her  breath  and  looked  puzzled;  but  that 
wretch  of  a  Randolph,  how  fearfully  I  hated  him,  once  my  Pylades,  kept  his 


RANDOLPH    GORDON.  561 

abominable  glass  down  upon  me  and  it,  and,  stroking  his  moustache,  called 
out,  just  as  my  table  was  turning  round  to  come  back  to  its  place, 

"Miss  Audley,  that  man  is  an  impostor;  all  that's  done  with  a  magnet;  if 
you'll  allow  me  to  search,  I'll  wager  any  money  I  find  a  loadstone  in  his  hand 
and  a  piece  of  iron  fixed  under  your  table." 

But  my  staunch  ally  and  apostle,  Miss  Clementina,  cut  in  and  saved  me 
with  that  determined  obstinacy  which,  in  many  other  disciples  of  other  churches, 
passes  current  as  "  faith." 

"  Profanity  !  "  she  muttered,  disgusted,  turning  her  back  on  her  bete  noire, 
as  I  led  my  table  back  in  triumph,  taking  very  good  care  that  that  confounded 
fellow  shouldn't  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  material  means  he  had  guessed  at  so 
shrewdly.  But  I  determined  to  baffle  him  if  I  could,  and  with  a  severe  solemn- 
ity worthy  of  Miss  Clementina,  I  told  him  that  the  spirits  would  condescend  to 
rebuke  his  mockery,  and  convince  him  against  his  profane  prejudices:  and  with 
a  bolder  stroke  than  I  think  any  medium  ever  ventured  on  before,  I  told  him 
the  secret  thoughts  of  each  should  be  revealed,  and  I  tapped  away  in  grand  style, 
and  charging  at  Randolph  first,  told  him  that  he  was  wishing  time  to  fly  for  the 
twenty-eighth  of  next  month  to  come.  Sunshine  started  and  colored,  and 
Randolph  stared,  though  he  whispered  skeptically  to  her. 

"  That  is  nothing,  he  could  learn  the  day  easy  enough  from  the  servants; 
though  certainly  I  must  say  the  fellow's  hit  on  the  truth." 

"You  madam,"  said  I  to  Mrs.  Tomtit,  "  are  hoping  your  husband  will  get 
the  deanery,  and  that  your  entremets,  when  the  bishop  dines  with  you  on 
Tuesday,  will  beat  Mrs.  Babbicombe's  hollow." 

Mrs.  Tomtit  opened  her  lips  and  eyes,  and  sank  back  in  her  chair  aghast; 
the  deanery  and  the  entremets  were  the  objects  of  her  extremest  solicitude;  she 
couldn't  gainsay  it. 

"  And  you,  young  lady,"  said  I,  turning  to  Pearl,  after  a  little  more  tapping 
and  spelling,  "are  wishing  that  sharp  words,  spoken  in  a  moment  of  irritation 
at  fancied  insult  could  be  recalled,  and  the  person  whom  you  love  be  induced 
to  forget  them." 

"  He  is  right  there,  Pearl,  I  am  sure,"  whispered  Sunshine. 

I  caught  Pearl's  low-answering  "  Yes."  And  so  did  Randolph,  for  even  he, 
the  unbeliever,  stroked  his  moustaches,  puzzled  and  astonished,  and  tempted 
to  think  there  must  be  something  in  it  after  all.  As  for  me,  I  was  in  such  a 
state  of  delirious  ecstasy,  that  I  tapped  away  at  a  mad  canter,  and,  determined 
to  pay  Miss  Clementina  off  for  all  she'd  made  me  suffer,  turned  sharp  on  to 
her  with  a  spiritual  communication. 

"  And  you,  madam,  are  thinking  that  if  your  friend  happened  kindly  to  die, 
what  a  much  better  clergyman's  wife  you'd  make  in  her  stead  for  your  old 
love,  the  Reverend  Thomas  Tomtit." 


562  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

Mrs.  Tomtit  sprang  from  her  chair  with  a  shrill  shriek,  then  fell  back  into 
it  in  hysterics,  beating  the  carpet  frantically  with  her  little  satin  slippers. 

"  Perfidious  wretch  !  My  friend  ! — my  bosom  friend  !  Oh,  Clementina, 
how  I  have  trusted  you  !  how  I  have  loved  you  !  and  for  what  ?  " 

Miss  Clementina  sat  bolt  upright,  her  eyeballs  distended,  her  lips  blanched, 
in  an  attitude  of  frozen  horror.  She,  the  immaculate  spinster,  the  spotless,  the 
spiritual,  the  virtuous,  to  whom  love  seemed  a  folly,  thoughts  of  marriage 
profanity,  to  be  told  that  she  coveted  her  neighbor's  husband,  and  committed 
murder  in  her  thoughts  ! 

I  was  at  the  culmination  of  my  glory.  I  stretched  my  hand  towards  the 
end  of  the  room:  •  "See,  the  spirits  themselves  attest  to  my  veracity  !  "  and 
there,  in  the  gloaming,  stretched  a  white,  shadowy,  ghostly  arm,  tracing  in 
phosphorus  on  the  wall  the  words,  "  Scoffers  beware  and  tremble  !  " 

The  Tomtit's  shrieks  redoubled;  Pearl  and  Rosebud  screamed;  Miss  Clem- 
entina sat  staring  at  it,  speechless  as  a  marble  statue;  even  Sunshine  clung 
close  to  Randolph,  but  he — oh  devil  take  him  ! — sprang  up.  "  By  Jove  !  there's 
the  spirit  made  manifest  in  the  flesh,  and  no  mistake  !  Let  me  go,  my  dar- 
ling !  "  And  striding  over  the  room,  my  evil  genius  caught  the  ghostly  arm 
with  exceedingly  material  strength,  and  giving  it  no  very  gentle  tug,  Marie, 
standing  perdue  behind  the  curtains,  fell  forward,  through  the  satin  damask, 
into  his  arms. 

"  Oh,  M.  le  Colonel,  de  grace  !  vous  me  faites  du  mal  !  Vous  etes  si  forts, 
vous  autres  Anglais  ! " 

"  Here's  an  abominable  imposture  ! "  said  Randolph,  angrily;  "  Miss  Aud- 
ley,  you  must  allow  me  to  go  to  the  bottom  of  this.  Your  own  servants  are  in 
the  plot;  we  will  soon  sift  it.  As  for  this  fellow,  a  month  at  the  tread-mill  will 
do  him  a  vast  deal  of  good;  he  can  practise  his  shams  at  leisure  there."  With 
which  he  seized  hold  of  me,  caught  my  snowy  beard,  which  came  off  in  his 
clutch,  and  let  go  his  hold,  falling  back  with  my  hirsute  appendages  dangling 
from  his  hand,  fairly  startled  and  bewildered  for  once  in  his  life  of  scepticism 
and"  sang-froid:  "  Hallo  !— Good  Heavens  !— By  George  !  " 

"  What  is  it  ? "  cried  Sunshine,  clinging  to  her  lover. 

"  What's  the  matter  ?  "  screamed  Rosebud,  ringing  the  bell  frantically. 

"Thieves!  fire!  murder!  help,  help,  somebody! "  shrieked  the  incoherent 
and  excitable  Tomtit,  beating  that  wild  tatto  upon  the  carpet  which  passes 
under  the  suave  cognomen  of  hysteria. 

"Mon  Dieu!  mon  Dieu!  comme  j'ai  ete  bete!  "  sobbed  Marie. 

"  The  devil!  shan't  we  catch  it,  all  of  us!  "  moaned  Freddy. 

"  By  Jove!  old  boy,  I'm  doomed  to  bring  you  to  grief,"  sighed   Randolph. 

"  Cosmo,  is  it  you  ? "  murmured  Pearl,  white  as  a  veritable  spirit  herself. 

Pearl  looked  up,  a  crimson  flush  on  her  face,  excited,  terrified,  amazed. 


RANDOLPH    GORDON.  5G3 

Wild  was  the  dismay;  loud  the  chattering  of  tongues;  fiercely  rang  Rose- 
bud's peals  at  both  the  bells:  awfully  shrill  rose  the  sharp  shrieks  of  the 
prostrate  Tomtit;  great  was  the  rush  of  many  feet,  as  every  domestic  in  the 
servants'  hall  poured  in,  confident  that  the  "  sperits  "  had  been  guilty  of  a 
double,  triple,  perhaps  quadruple  murder;  and  amidst  the  hubbub,  the  uproar, 
the  fright  the  screams,  Miss  Clementina  sat  bolt  upright,  as  a  marble  goddess 
might  sit  unmoved  amidst  an  Irish  riot,  with  iron  rigidity  and  stony  eyeballs 
and  paralyzed  nerves,  and  when  she  struggled  for  speech  we  caught  the  hoarse 
and  solemn  murmur, 

"  /,  to  be — be  told  I  love  another  woman's  husband! — to  live  to  be  insulted 
thus!  " 


Need  I  say  that  Marie  was  turned  away  the  very  next  morning;  Freddy 
nearly  killed  with  the  terrors  of  the  Damocles'  sword  of  disinheritance  that 
was  hung,  in  terrorum,  above  his  head;  that  Miss  Clementina  and  Mrs. 
Tomtit  never  spoke  again  for  ten  whole  days;  that  I  was  forbidden  the  house 
in  real  and  unrelaxing  exile;  and  never,  while  she  lives,  will  its  mistress  pardon 
me  the  insults  of  that  seance.  Dire  as  the  wrath  is,  however,  I  have  strength 
to  bear  it,  for  when  I  was  turned  from  the  house  in  majestic  fury  that  night, 
somebody  else  followed  me  out  under  the  stars,  and  I  asked  her  not  in  vain  this 
time,  "  Pearl,  will  you  forgive  me  now  ? "  As  for  Randolph  and  Sunshine,  the 
misery  Miss  Clementina  prophesied  for  them  is  very  bearable  at  present,  I  be- 
lieve, though  two  days  after  that  longed-for  "  twenty-eighth,"  Randolph,  sitting  in 
a  window  looking  out  on  to  Windermere,  put  down  his  Times,  and  took  the  mouth 
of  his  hookah  out  of  his  lips,  when  he  saw  Sunshine  standing  by  him,  buttoning 
her  gloves  with  her  hat  on,  and  otherwise  got  up  in  general  walking  costume. 

"  Where  are  you  going,  my  pet  ? "  he  asked;  "  its  only  just  eleven.  I  haven't 
done  smoking,  nor  even  looked  at  the  Times.  It's  so  very  early  to  turn  out, 
don't  you  think?" 

"Yes;  but  I  am  going  by  myself,"  answered  his  nouvelle  mariee. 

"  By  yourself  !  I  daresay  I'll  let  you,"  laughed  Randolph,  amazed.  There 
were  no  shops  on  the  lake,  and  for  this  period  of  sublimated  existence  he  had 
chosen,  expres,  a  county  in  which  he  hadn't  a  single  acquaintance  to  bother  him 
and  spoil  his  elysium. 

Sunshine  held  out  her  hand  to  him,  with  an  expression  of  deep-seated  melan- 
choly on  that  radiant  face  which  had  gained  her  sobriquet,  and  a  sigh  loud 
enough  to  be  heard  over  Windermere. 

11 1  am  come  to  bid  you  good-by  !  " 

"  To   bid — me — good-by  !  "    re-echoed    Randolph,    startled   into    genuine 


564  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

anxiety  and  the  greatest  amazement.  "  My  darling  Sunshine,  what  is  the 
matter  ?  What  do  you  mean — what  has  happened  ? " 

Sunshine  shook  her  head  with  another  profound  sigh,  and  held  out  her  hand 
a  second  time. 

"  Don't  you  remember  telling  me  that  if  ever  you  married,  two  days  would 
be  the  extreme  of  your  fidelity  to  any  woman  ?  I  don't  wish  to  try  your  pa- 
tience, nor  yet  to  wait  to  be  turned  out,  so  I  am  come  to  take  leave  of  you ; 
but  we  can  part  in  peace,  you  know,  and  I  won't  speak  very  badly  of  you. 
Good-by,  monsieur." 

Randolph  shouted  with  laughter,  then  caught  her  up  in  his  arms  and  kissed 
her  fifty  times.  What  further  answer  he  gave  is  not  upon  record,  but  I  sup- 
pose it  was  a  vow  to  be  faithful  to  her  for  a  few  days  more  at  the  least,  for  he 
and  his  "  little  devil  "  are  not  likely  to  part  as  yet. 


SLANDER    AND     SILLERY.  565 


SLANDER   AND   SILLERY 


I. 

THE  LION   OF  THE   CHAUSS^E   D*ANTIN. 

Ma  m&re  est  a  Paris, 
Mon  p£re  est  &  Versailles. 
Et  moi  je  suis  ici, 
Pour  chanter  sur  la  paille, 
L'amour  !  1'amour  ! 
La  nuit  comme  le  jour. 

HUMMING  this  popular  if  not  over-recherche  ditty,  a  man  sat  sketching  in 
pastels,  one  morning,  in  his  rooms  at  Numero  10,  Rue  des  Mauvais  Sujets, 
Chaussee  d'Antin,  Paris. 

The  band  of  the  national  guard,  the  marchands  crying  "  Coco  !  "  the  char- 
latans puffing  everything  from  elixirs  to  lead-pencils,  the  Empress  and  Mme. 
d'Alve  passing  in  their  carriage,  the  tramp  of  some  Zouaves  just  returned  from 
Algeria — nothing  in  the  street  below  disturbed  him;  he  went  sketching  on  as  if 
his  life  depended  on  the  completion  of  the  picture.  He  was  a  man  about  thirty- 
three,  middle  height,  and  eminently  graceful.  He  was  half  Bohemian,  half 
English,  and  the  animation  of  the  one  nation  and  the  hauteur  of  the  other  were 
by  turns  expressed  on  his  chiselled  features  as  his  thoughts  moved  with  his  pen- 
cil. The  stamp  of  his  good  blood  was  on  him;  his  face  would  have  attracted 
and  interested  in  ever  so  large  a  crowd.  He  was  very  pale,  and  there  was  a 
tired  look  on  his  wide,  powerful  forehead  and  in  his  long  dark  eyes,  and  a 
weary  line  or  two  about  his  handsome  mouth,  as  if  he  had  exhausted  his  youth 
very  quickly;  and,  indeed,  to  see  life  as  he  had  seen  it  is  somewhat  a  fatiguing 
process,  and  apt  to  make  one  blase  before  one's  time. 

The  rooms  in  which  he  sat  were  intensely  comfortable,  and  very  provoca- 
tive to  a  quite  pipe  and  idleness.  To  be  sure,  if  one  judged  his  tastes  by  them, 
they  were  not  probably,  to  use  the  popular  jargon,  "  healthy,"  for  they  had 


566  O  UIDA '  S     WOItKS. 

nothing  very  domestic  or  John  Halfaxish  about  them,  and  were  certainly  not 
calculated  to  gratify  the  eyes  of  maiden  aunts  and  spinster  sisters. 

There  were  fencing-foils,  pistols,  tobacco-boxes  of  every  style  and  order, 
from  ballet-girls  to  terriers'  heads.  There  were  three  or  four  cockatoos  and 
parrots  on  stands  chattering  bits  of  Quartier  Latin  songs,  or  imitating  the  cries 
in  the  street  below.  There  were  cards,  dice-boxes,  albums  a  rire,  meerschaums, 
lorgnons,  pink  notes,  no  end  of  De  Kock's  and  Lebrun's  books,  and  all  the  et 
cseteras  of  chambres  de  gargon  strewed  about:  and  there  were  things, — too — 
pictures,  statuettes,  fauteuils,  and  a  breakfast-service  of  Sevres  and  silver — 
that  Du  Barry  need  not  have  scrupled  to  put  in  her  "petite  bonbonniere  as 
Luciennes. 

So  busy  was  he  sketching  and  singing 

"Messieurs  les  Studians 
Montez  £  la  Chaumtere!" 

that  he  never  heard  a  knock  at  his  door,  and  he  looked  up  with  an  im- 
patient frown  on  his  white,  broad  forehead  as  a  man  entered  sans  ciremonie. 

"  Mon  Dieu!  Ernest,"  cried  his  friend,  "what  the  devil  are  you  doing 
here  with  your  pipe  and  your  pastels,  when  I've  been  waiting  at  Tortoni's  a 
good  half-hour,  and  at  last,  out  of  patience,  drove  here  to  see  what  on  earth 
had  become  of  you  ?  "  » 

"  My  dear  fellow,  I  beg  you  a  thousand  pardons,"  said  Vaughan  lazily.  "  I 
was  sketching  this,  and  you  and  your  horses  went  clean  out  of  my  head,  I 
honestly  confess." 

"  And  your  breakfast  too,  it  seems,"  said  De  Concressault,  glancing  at  the 
table.  "  Is  it  Madame  de  Melusine  or  the  little  Bluette  whose  portrait  absorbs 
you  so  much  ?  No,  by  Jove!  it's  a  prettier  woman  than  either  of 'em.  If  she's 
like  that,  take  me  to  see  her  this  instant.  What  glorious  gold  hair!  I  adore 
your  countrywomen  when  they've  hair  that  color.  Where  did  you  get  that  face  ? 
Is  she  a  duchess,  or  a  donseuse,  a  little  actress  you're  going  to  patronize,  or  a 
millionnaire  you're  going  to  marry  ?  " 

"  I  can't  tell  you,"  laughed  Vaughan.  "  I've  not  an  idea  who  she  may  be. 
I  saw  her  last  evening  coming  out  of  the  Frangais,  and  picked  up  her  bouquet 
for  her  as  she  was  getting  into  her  carriage.  The  face  was  young,  the  smile 
very  pretty  and  bright,  and,  as  they  daguerreotyped  themselves  in  my  mind,  I 
thought  I  might  as  w^ell  transfer  them  to  paper  before  newer  beauties  chased 
them  out  of  it." 

"Diable!  and  you  don't  know  who  she  is  ?  However,  we'll  soon  find  out. 
That  gold  hair  mustn't  be  lost.  But  get  your  breakfast,  pray,  Ernest,  and  let  us 
be  off  to  poor  Armand's  sale." 

"  That's  the  way  we  mourn  our  dead  friends,"  said  Vaughan,  with  a  sneer, 


SLANDER    AND     SILLERY.  567 

pouring  out  his  coffee.  "  Armand  is  jesting,  laughing,  and  smoking  with  us 
one  day,  the  next  he's  pitched  out  of  his  carriage  going  down  to  Asnieres,  and 
all  we  think  of  is — that  his  horses  are  for  sale.  If  I  were  found  in  the  Morgue 
to-morrow,  your  first  emotion,  Emile,  would  be,  '  Vaughan's  De  1'Orme  will  be 
sold.  I  must  go  and  bid  for  it  directly.'  " 

De  Concressault  laughed  as  he  looked  up  at  a  miniature  of  Marion  de 
1'Orme,  once  taken  for  the  Marquis  of  Gordon.  "I  fancy,  mongarcon,  there'll 
be  too  many  sharks  after  all  your  possessions  for  me  to  stand  any  chance." 

"True  enough,"  said  Vaughan;  "and  I  question  if  they'll  wait  till  my 
death  before  they  come  down  on  'em.  But  I  don't  look  forward.  I  take  life 
as  it  comes.  Vogue  la  galere  !  At  least,  I've  lived,  not  vegetated."  And 
humming  his  refrain, 

"L'amour!  Famour! 
La  nuit  comme  le  jour!  " 

he  lounged  down  the  stairs  and  drove  to  a  sale  in  the  Faubourg  St.  Germain, 
where  one  of  his  Paris  chums,  a  virtuoso  and  -connoisseur,  had  left  endless 
meubles  to  be  sold  by  his  duns  and  knocked  down  to  his  friends. 

Vaughan  was  quite  right;  he  had  lived,  and  at  a  pretty  good  pace,  too. 
When  he  came  of  age  a  tolerably  good  fortune  awaited  him,  but  it  had  not 
been  long  in  his  hands  before  he  contrived  to  let  it  slip  through  them.  He'd 
been  brought  up  at  Sainte  Barbe,  after  being  expelled  from  Rugby,  knew  all 
the  best  of  the  "  jeunesse  doree,"  and  could  not  endure  any  place  after  Paris, 
where  his  life  was  as  sparkling  and  brilliant  as  the  foam  off  a  glass  of  cham- 
pagne. Wild  and  careless,  high  spirited,  and  lavish  in  his  Opera  suppers,  his 
cabaret  dinners,  his  Trois  Freres  banquets,  his  lansquenet  parties,  his  bouquets 
for  baronnes,  and  his  bracelets  for  ballerinas,  Ernest  gained  his  reputation  as  a 
Lion,  and — ruined  himself,  too,  poor  old  fellow  ! 

His  place  down  in  Surrey  had  mortgages  thick  on  every  inch  of  its  lands, 
and  the  money  that  kept  him  going  was  borrowed  from  those  modern  Satans, 
money  lenders,  at  the  usually  ruinous  interest.  "  But  still,"  Ernest  was  wont 
to  say,  with  great  philosophy,  "  I've  had  ten  years'  swing  of  pleasure.  Does 
every  man  get  as  much  as  that  ?  And  should  I  have  been  any  happier,  if  I'd 
been  a  good  boy,  and  a  country  squire,  sat  on  the  bench,  amused  my  mind 
with  turnips,  and  married  some  bishop's  daughter,  who'd  have  marched  me  to 
church,  forbidden  cigars,  and  buried  me  in  family  boots  ? " 

Certainly  that  would  w/have  been  his  line,  and  so,  in  natural  horror  at  it,  he 
dashed  into  a  diametrically  opposite  one,  and  after  the  favor  he  had  shown  him 
from  every  handsome  woman  that  drove  through  Longchamp,  wore  diamonds 
at  the  Tuileries,  and  supped  with  dominos  noirs  at  bals  d'Opera,  and  the  favor 
he  showed  to  cards,  the  courses,  and  the  coulisses,  few  bishops  would  have  im- 
perilled their  daughters'  souls  by  setting  them  to  hunt  down  this  wicked  Lion, 


r)68  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

especially  as  the  poor  Lion  now  wasn't  worth  the  trapping.  If  he  had  been, 
there  would  have  been  hue  and  cry  enough  after  him  I  don't  doubt;  but  the 
Gordon  Cummings  of  the  beau  sexe  rarely  hunt  unless  its's  worth  their  while, 
and  they  can  bring  home  splendid  spoils  to  make  their  bosom  friends  mad 
with  envy;  and  Ernest,  despite  his  handsome  face,  his  fashionable  reputation, 
and  the  aroma  of  conquest  that  hung  about  him  (they  used  to  say  he  never 
wooed  ever  so  negligently  but  he  won),  was  assuredly  neither  an  "  eligible 
speculation "  nor  a  "  marrying  man,"  and  was  an  object  rather  of  terror  to 
English  mammas  steering  budding  young  ladies  through  the  dangerous  vortex 
of  French  society  with  a  fierce  chevaux  de  frise  of  British  prejudices  and  a 
keen  British  eye  to  business.  If  Ernest  was  of  no  other  use,  however,  he  was 
invaluable  to  his  uncles,  aunts,  and  male  cousins,  as  a  sort  of  scapegoat  and 
Ipouvantail,  to  be  held  up  on  high  to  show  the  unwary  what  they  would  come 
to  if  they  followed  his  steps.  It  was  so  pleasant  to  them  to  exult  over  his 
backslidings,  and,  cutting  him  mercilessly  up  into  little  bits,  hold  condemnatory 
sermons  over  every  one  of  the  pieces.  "  Dans  1'adversite  de  nos  meilleurs 
amis,  nous  trouvons  toujours  quelque  chose  qui  ne  nous  deplait  pas ; "  and 
Vaughan's  friends,  like  the  rest  of  us  Pharisees,  dearly  loved  to  glance  at  the 
publican  (especially  if  he  was  handsomer,  cleverer,  or  any  way  better  than 
themselves),  and  thank  God  loudly  that  they  were  not  such  men  as  he.  Ernest 
was  a  hardened  sinner,  however;  he  laughed,  put  the  Channel  between  him  and 
them,  and  went  on  his  ways  without  thinking  or  caring  for  their  animadversions. 

"  By  Jove  !  Emile,"  said  he  as  they  sat  dining  together  at  Leiter's,  "  I 
should  like  to  find  out  my  golden-haired  sylphide.  She  was  English,  by  her 
fair  skin,  and  though  I'm  not  very  fond  of  my  compatriotes,  especially  when 
they're  abroad  (I  think  touring  John  Bull  detestable  wrapped  up  in  his  treble 
plaid  of  reserve),  still  I  should  like  to  find  her  out  just  for  simple  curiosity.  I 
assure  you  she'd  the  prettiest  foot  and  ankle  I  ever  saw,  not  excepting  even 
Bluette's." 

"  Ma  foi  !  that's  a  good  deal  from  you.  She  must  be  found,  then.  Voyons  ! 
shall  we  advertise  in  the  Monileur,  employ  the  secret  police,  or  call  at  all  the 
hotels  in  person  to  say  that  you're  quite  ready  to  act  out  Soulie's  '  Lion 
Amoureux,'  if  you  can  only  discover  the  petite  bourgeoise  to  play  it  with  you  ? " 

Vaughan  laughed  as  he  drank  his  demi-tasse. 

"Lion  amoureux!  that's  an  anomaly;  we're  only  in  love  just  enough  pour 
nous  amuser;  and  of  us  Albin  says,  very  rightly, 

Si  vous  connaissiez  quelques  meilleurs, 
Vous  porteriez  bientdt  cette  §,me  ailleurs." 

"Very  well,  then:  if  you  don't  know  of  anything  better,  let's  hunt  up  this 


SLANDER     AND     SILLERY.  569 

incognita.  If  she  went  to  the  Francais,  she's  most  likely  at  the  Odeon  to-night," 
said  De  Concressault.     "  Shall  we  try  ? " 

"Aliens!  "  said  Vaughan,  rising  indolently,  as  he  did  most  things.  "But 
it's  rather  silly,  I  think;  there  are  bright  smiles  and  pretty  feet  enough  in  Paris 
without  one's  setting  off  on  a  wild-goose  chase  after  them." 

They  were  playing  the  last  act  of  "  La  Calomnie,"  as  Vaughan  and  De 
Concressault  took  their  places,  put  up  their  lorgnons,  and  looked  around  the 
house.  He  swore  a  few  mental  "  Diables!  "  and  "  Sacres!  "  as  his  gaze  fell  on 
faces  old  or  ugly,  or  too  brunes  or  too  blondes,  or  anything  but  what  he 
wanted.  At  last,  without  moving  his  glass,  he  touched  De  Concressault's  arm. 

"  There  she  is,  Emile,  in  the  fourth  from  the  centre,  in  a  white  opera  cloak, 
with  pink  flowers  in  her  hair." 

"  I  see  her,  mon  ami,"  said  Emile.  "  I  found  her  out  two  seconds  ago 
(see  how  well  you  sketch!)  but  I  wouldn't  spoil  your  pleasure  in  discovering 
her.  Mon  Dieu!  Ernest,  she's  looking  at  you,  and  smiles  as  if  she  recog- 
nized you.  Was  there  ever  so  lucky  a  Lauzan  ?  " 

Vaughan  could  have  laughed  outright  to  see  by  the  brightness  of  the  girl's 
expression  that  she  knew  the  savior  of  her  bouquet  again,  for  though  he  was 
accustomed  to  easy  conquests,  such  naive  interest  in  him  at  such  short  notice 
was  something  new  to  him. 

He  didn't  take  his  lorgnon  off  her  again,  and  she  was  certainly  worth  the 
honor,  with  her  soft,  lustrous  gold  hair,  the  eyes  that  defy  definition — black 
in  some  lights,  violet  in  others — a  wide-arched  forehead,  promising  plenty  of 
brains,  and  a  rayonnate,  animated,  joyous  expression,  quite  refreshing  to  any- 
body as  bored  and  blase  as  Vaughan  and  De  Concressault.  As  soon  as  the 
last  piece  was  over  Vaughan  slipped  out  of  his  loge,  and  took  up  his  station  at 
the  entrance. 

He  didn't  wait  in  vain:  the  golden  hair  soon  came,  on  the  arm  of  a  gentle- 
man— middle  aged,  as  Vaughan  noticed  with  a  sensation  of  satisfaction.  She 
glanced  up  at  him  as  she  passed:  he  looked  very  handsome  in  the  gas  glare. 
Vaughan  perhaps  was  too  sensible  a  fellow  to  think  of  his  pose,  but  even  we 
have  our  weaknesses  under  certain  circumstances,  as  well  as  the  crinolines. 
Luckily  for  him,  he  chanced  to  have  in  his  pocket  a  gold  serpent  bracelet  he 
had  bought  that  morning  for  some  fair  dame  or  demoiselle.  He  stopped  her, 
and  held  it  out  to  her. 

"  I  beg  your  pardon,  mademoiselle,"  he  said  in  French,  "  but  I  think  you 
dropped  this?" 

She  looked  up  at  him  with  the  sunniest  of  smiles  as  she  answered,  in  a  pure 
accent,  "  No  monsieur,  thank  you,  it  does  not  belong  to  me." 

The  middle-aged  man  glanced  sideways  at  him  with  true  British  suspicion 
— I  daresay  a  pickpocket,  a  Rouge,  and  Fieschi,  were  all  mixed  up  in  his  mind 


570  QUID  A' S     WORKS. 

as  embodied  in  the  graceful  figure  and  bold  glance  of  the  Lion.  He  drew  the 
girl  on,  looking  much  like  a  heavy  cloud  with  a  bright  sun  ray  after  it;  but  she  half 
turned  her  head  over  her  shoulder  to  give  him  a  farewell  smile,  which  Ernest 
returned  with  ten  per  cent,  interest. 

"Anglais,"  said  Emile,  concisely. 

"  Malheureusement,"  said  Ernest  as  briefly,  as  he  pushed  his  way  into  the 
air,  and  saw  the  gold  hair  vanish  into  .her  carriage.  He  went  quickly  up  to  the 
cocher. 

"  Oil  demeurent-ils,  mon  ami  ?  "  he  whispered,  slipping  a  five-franc  piece 
into  his  hand. 

The  man  smiled.     "  A  1'Hotel  de  Londres,  monsieur;  No.  6,  au  premier." 

"  The  devil  !  pourquoir  ne  allez  pas  ?  "  said  an  unmistakably  English  voice 
from  the  interior  of  the  voiture.  The  man  set  off  at  a  trot;  Ernest  sprang  into 
his  own  trap. 

"  Au  Chateau  Rouge  !  May  as  well  go  there,  eh,  Emile  ?  What  a  deuced 
pity  la  chevelure  doree  is  English  !  " 

"  I  wish  she  were  a  danseuse,  an  actress,  a  fleuriste — anything  one  could 
make  his  own  introduction  to.  Confound  it  there's  the  '  heavy  father,'  I'm 
afraid,  in  the  case,  and  some  rigorous  mamma,  or  vigilant  beguine  of  a  govern- 
ess: but,  to  judge  by  the  young  lady's  smiles,  she'll  be  easy  game  unless  she's 
tremendously  fenced  in." 

With  which  consolatory  reflection  Vaughan  leaned  back  and  lighted  a 
cheroot,  en  route  to  spend  the  night,  as  he  had  spent  most  of  them  for  the  last 
ten  years,  till  the  fun  had  begun  to  be  more  bore  than  pleasure. 


II. 


NINA   GORDON. 

"  HAVE  you  been  to  the  Hotel  de  Londres,  Ernest  ? "  said  De  Concressault, 
as  Vaughan  lounged  into  Tortoni's  next  day,  where  Emile  and  three  or  four 
men  were  drinking  Seltzer  and  talking  of  how  Cerisette  had  beaten  Vivandiere 
by  a  neck  at  Chantilly,  or  (the  sport  to  which  a  Frenchman  takes  much  more 
naturally)  of  how  well  Riviere  played  in  the  "Prix  d'un  Bouquet;"  what  a  belle 
faille  la  De  Servans  had;  and  what  a  fool  Senecterre  had  made  of  himself  in 
the  duel  about  Madame  Viardot. 

"  Of  course  I  have,"  said  Vaughan.  The  name  is  Gordon — general  name 
enough  in  England.  They  were  gone  to  the  Expiatoire,  the  portiere  told  me. 
There  is  the  heavy  father,  as  I  feared,  and  a  quasi-governess  acting  duenna; 


SLANDER    AND     SILLERY.  571 

they're  travelling  with  another  family,  whose  name  I  could  not  hear:  the  woman 
said  '  C'etait  beaucoup  trop  dur  pour  les  levres.'  I  daresay  they're  some  Brum- 
magem people — some  Fudge  family  or  other — on  their  travels.  Confound  it  !  " 

"  Poor  Ernest,"  laughed  De  Concressault.  "  Some  gold  hair  has  bewitched 
him,  and  instead  of  finding  it  belongs  to  a  danseuse,  or  a  married  woman,  or  a 
fleuriste  of  the  Palais  Royal,  or  something  attainable,  he  finds  it  turn  into  an 
unapproachable  English  girl,  with  no  end  of  outlying  sentries  round  her,  who'll 
fire  at  the  first  familiar  approach." 

"  It  is  a  hard  case,"  said  De  Kerroualle,  a  dashing  fellow  in  one  of  the 
"  Regiments  de  famille."  "  Never  mind,  mon  ami;  '  centre  fortune  bon  coeur,' 
you  know:  it'll  be  more  fun  to  devastate  one  of  our  countrymen's  inviolate 
strongholds  than  to  conquer  where  the  white  flag's  already  held  out.  Halloa  ! 
here's  a  compatriot  of  yours,  I'd  bet;  look  at  his  sanctified  visage  and  stiff 
choker — a  Church  of  England  man,  eh  ?  " 

"  The  devil  !  "  muttered  Vaughan,  turning  round;  "  deuce  take  him,  it's  my 
cousin  Ruskinstone  !  What  in  the  world  does  he  do  in  Paris  ?  " 

The  man  he  spoke  of  was  the  Rev.  Eusebius  Ruskinstone,  the  Dean's 
Warden  of  the  cathedral  of  Faithandgrace,  a  tall,  thin  young  clerical  of  eight  or 
nine-and-twenty,  with  goodness  enough  (it^was  generally  supposed)  in  his  little 
finger  to  make  up  for  all  Ernest's  sins,  scarlet  though  they  were.  He  had  just 
sat  down  and  taken  up  the  carte  to  blunder  through  "  Potage  au  Due  de 
Malakaff,"  "  Fricassee  de  volaille  a  la  Princesse  Mathilde,"  and  all  the  rest  of 
it,  when  his  eye  lit  on  his  graceless  cousin,  and  a  vinegar  asperity  spread  over 
his  bland  visage.  Vaughan  rose  with  a  lazy  grace,  immensely  bored  within  him: 
"  My  dear  Ruskinstone,  what  an  unanticipated  pleasure.  I  never  hoped  Vanity 
Fair  would  have  power  to  lure  you  into  its  naughty  peep-shows  and  round- 
abouts." 

The  Rev.  Eusebius  reddened  slightly;  he  had  once  stated  strongly  his 
opinion  that  poor  Paris  was  Pandemonium.  "  How  do  you  do  ? "  he  said, 
giving  his  cousin  two  fingers;  "it  is  a  long  time  since  we  saw  you  in  England." 

"  England  doesn't  want  me,"  said  Ernest,  dryly.  "  I  don't  fancy  I  should 
be  very  welcome  at  Faithandgrace,  should  I  ?  The  dear  Chapter  would 
probably  consign  me  to  starvation  for  my  skeptical  notions,  as  Calvin  did  Cas- 
tellio.  But  what  has  brought  you  to  Paris  ?  Are  you  come  to  fight  the  Jesuits 
in  a  conference,  or  to  abjure  the  Wardenship  and  turn  over  to  them  ? " 

Eusebius  was  shocked  at  the  irreverent  tone,  but  there  was  a  satirical  smile 
on  his  cousin's  lips  that  he  didn't  care  to  provoke.  "  I  am  come,"  he  said, 
stiffly,  "  partly  for  health,  partly  to  collect  materials  for  a  work  on  the 
'  Gurgoyles  and  Rose  Moldings  of  Mediaeval  Architecture,'  and  partly  to 
oblige  some  friends  of  mine.  Pardon  me,  here  they  come." 

Vaughan  lifted  his  eyes,  expecting  nothing  very  delectable  in  Ruskinstone's 


573  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

friends;  to  his  astonishment  they  fell  on  his  beauty  of  the  Fran9ais!  with  the 
outlying  sentries  of  father,  governess,  and  two  other  women,  the  Warden's 
maiden  sisters,  stiff,  manierees,  and  prudish,  like  too  many  Englishwomen. 
The  young  lady  of  the  Francais  was  a  curious  contrast  to  them:  she  started  a 
little  as  she  saw  Vaughan,  and  smiled  brilliantly.  On  the  spur  of  that  smile 
Ernest  greeted  his  cousins  with  a  degree  of  empressement  that  they  certainly 
wouldn't  have  been  honored  by  without  it.  They  were  rather  frightened  at  com- 
ing in  actual  contact  with  such  a  monster  of  iniquity  as  a  Paris  Lion,  who,  they'd 
heard,  had  out-Juan'd  Don  Juan,  and  gave  him  but  a  frigid  welcome.  Mr. 
Gordon  had  doubtless  heard,  too,  of  Vaughan's  misdemeanors,  for  he  looked 
stocial  and  acidulated  as  he  bowed.  But  the  young  girl's  eyes  reconciled 
Ernest  to  all  the  rest,  as  she  frankly  returned  a  look  with  which  he  was  wont  to 
win  his  way  through  women's  hearts,  'midst  the  hum  of  ballrooms,  in  the  soft 
tete-a-tete  in  boudoirs,  and  over  the  sparkling  Sillery  of  petits  soupers.  So,  for 
the  sake  of  his  new  quarry,  he  disregarded  the  cold  looks  of  the  others,  and 
made  himself  so  charming,  that  nobody  could  withstand  the  fascination  of  his 
manner  till  their  dinner  was  served,  and  then,  telling  his  cousins  he  would  do 
himself  the  pleasure  of  calling  on  them  the  next  day,  he  left  the  cafe  to  drive 
over  to  Gentilly,  to  inspect  a  gray  colt  of  De  Kerroualle's. 

"  La  chevelure  doree  is  quite  as  pretty  by  daylight,  Ernest,"  said  De  Con- 
cressault.  "Bon  Dieu!  it  is  such  a  relief  to  see  eyes  that  are  not  tinted, 
and  a  skin  whose  pink  and  white  is  not  born  from  the  mysterious  rites  of  the 
toilet." 

Vaughan  nodded,  with  his  Manilla  between  his  teeth. 

"  That  cousin  of  yours  is  queer  style,  mon  garcon,"  said  Kerroualle.  "  How 
some  of  those  islanders  contrive  to  iron  themselves  into  the  stiffness  and  flat- 
ness they  do,  is  to  me  the  profoundest  enigma.  But  what  Church  of  England 
meaning  lies  hid  in  his  coat-tails  ?  They  are,  for  all  the  world,  like  our 
reverends  peres!  What  is  it  for  ?" 

"  High  Church.  Next  door  shop  to  yours,  you  know.  Our  ecclesiastics 
are  given  to  balancing  themselves  on  a  tight  rope  between  their  '  mother  '  and 
their  'sister,'  till  they  tumble  over  in  their  sister's  open  arms — the  Catholics 
say  into  salvation,  the  Protestants  into  damnation;  into  neither,  I  myself  opine, 
poor  simpletons.  Ruskinstone  is  fearfully  architectural.  The  sole  things  he'll 
see  here  will  be  facades,  gurgoyles,  and  clerestories,  and  his  soul  knows  no 
warmer  love  than  '  stone  dolls,'  as  Newton  calls  them.  I  say,  Gaston,  what  do 
you  think  of  my  love  of  the  Francpais;  isn't  she  chic,  isn't  she  mignonne,  isn't 
she  spirituelle  ? " 

"Yes,"  assented  De  Kerroualle,  "  prettier  than  either  Bluette  or  Madame 
de  Melusine  would  allow,  or — relish." 

Ernest  frowned.     "  I've  done  with   Bluette;  she's  a  pretty   face,  but — ah, 


SLANDER    AND     SILLERY.  573 

bah!  one  can't  amuse  oneself  always  with  a  little  paysanne,  for  she's  nothing 
better,  after  all;  and  I'm  half-afraid  the  Melusine  begins  to  bore  me." 

"  Better  not  tell  her  so,  mon  ami,"  said  De  Kerroualle;  "she'd  be  a  nasty 
enemy." 

"  Pooh!  a  woman  like  that  loves  and  forgets." 

"Sans  doute;  but  they  also  sometimes  revenge.  Poor  little  Bluette  you 
may  safely  turn  over;  but  Madame  la  Baronne  won't  so  easily  be  jilted." 

Vaughan  laughed.  "  Oh,  I'm  not  going  to  break  her  heart.  Don't  you 
know,  Gaston,  '  on  a  bien  de  la  peine  a  rompre,  meme  quand  on  ne  s'aime  plus.'  " 

"  I  shouldn't  have  said  you  found  it  so,"  smiled  De  Concressault,  "  for  you 
change  your  loves  as  you  change  your  gloves.  La  chevelure  dore"e  will  be  the 
next,  eh  ? " 

"  Poor  little  thing!  "  said  Ernest,  bitterly.     "  I  wish  her  a  better  fate." 

He  went  to  call  on  la  chevelure  doree,  nevertheless,  the  morning  after,  and 
found  her  in  the  salon  alone,  greatly  to  his  surprise  and  pleasure.  Nina  Gor- 
don was  pretty  even  in  the  morning — as  Byron  says — and  she  was  much  more, 
she  was  fascinating,  and  as  perfectly  demonstrative  and  natural  as  any  peasant 
girl  out  of  the  meadows  of  Aries,  ignorant  of  the  magic  words  toilette,  cosme- 
tique,  and  crinoline. 

She  received  him  with  evident  pleasure  and  perfect  unreserve,  which  even 
this  daring  and  skeptical  Lion  could  not  twist  or  contort  into  boldness,  and 
began  to  talk  fast  and  gaily. 

"  Do  I  like  Paris  ?  "  she  said,  in  answer  to  his  question.  "  Oh  yes;  or  at 
least  I  should,  if  I  could  see  it  differently.  I  detest  sight-seeing,  crowding 
one's  brains  with  pictures,  statues,  palaces,  Holy  Families  jostling  Polinchi- 
nelle,  races,  mixing  up  with  grand  masses,  Versailles,  clouding  St.  Cloud — the 
Trianon  rattled  through  in  five  minutes — all  in  inextricable  muddle,  /should 
like  to  see  Paris  at  leisure,  with  some  one  with  whom  I  had  a  '  rapport,'  my 
thoughts  undisturbed,  and  my  historical  associations  fresh  and  fervent." 

"  I  wish  I  were  honored  with  the  office  of  your  guide,"  said  Ernest,  smiling. 
"  Do  you  think  you  would  have  a  '  rapport '  with  me  ? " 

She  smiled  in  return.  "  Yes,  I  think  I  should.  I  cannot  tell  why.  But 
as  it  is,  my  warmest  souvenir  of  Conde  is  chilled  by  the  offer  of  an  ice,  and  my 
tenderest  thought  of  Louise  de  la  Valliere  is  shivered  with  the  suggestion  of 
dinner." 

Vaughan  laughed.  "  Bravo  !  "  thought  he.  "  Thank  God  this  is  no  tame 
English  icicle.  I  would  give  much,"  he  said,  "  to  be  able  to  take  my  cousin's 
place,  and  show  you  Paris.  We  would  have  no  such  vulgar  gastronomical 
interruptions;  we  would  go  through  it  all  perfectly.  I  would  make  you  hear 
the  very  whispers  with  which  La  Valliere,  under  the  old  oaks  of  St.  Germain, 
unknowingly,  told  her  love  to  Louis.  In  the  forest  glades  of  St.  Cloud  you 


574  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

should  see  Cinq-Mars  and  the  Royal  hunt  riding  out  in  the  chasse  de  nuit-  in 
the  gloomy  walls  of  the  prisons  you  should  hear  Andre  Chenier  reciting  his 
last  verses,  and  see  Egalite  completing  his  last  toilet.  The  glittering  'Cotil- 
lons '  on  the  terraces  of  Versailles,  the  fierce  canille  surging  through  the  salons 
of  the  Tuileries,  the  Templars  dying  in  the  green  meadows  at  the  back  of  St. 
Antoine — they  should  all  rise  up  for  you  under  my  incantations." 

Positively  Ernest,  bored  and  blase,  accustomed  to  look  at  Paris  through  the 
gas-lights  of  his  Lion's  life,  warmed  into  romance  to  please  the  eyes  that  now 
beamed  upon  him. 

"  Ah  !  that  would  be  delightful,"  said  the  girl,  her  eyes  sparkling.  "  Mr. 
Ruskinstone,  you  know,  is  terrible  to  me,  for  he  goes  about  with  '  Ruskin  '  in 
one  hand,  '  Murray  '  in  the  other,  and  a  Phrase-book  or  two  in  his  pocket  (of 
course  he  wants  it,  as  he's  a  <  classical  scholar ' ),  and  no  matter  whatever  asso- 
ciations cling  around  a  place,  only  looks  at  it  in  regard  to  its  architectural 
points.  I  beg  your  pardon,"  she  said,  interrupting  herself  with  a  blush,  "  I 
forgot  he  was  your  cousin;  but  really  that  constant  cold  stone  does  tease 
me  so." 

At  that  moment  the  heavy  father,  as  Ernest  irreverently  styled  the  tall,  pom- 
pous head  of  one  of  the  first  banks  in  London,  who  was  worth  a  million  if  he 
was  worth  a  sou,  entered,  and  the  Rev.  Eusebius  after  •  him,  who  had  been 
spending  a  lively  morning  taking  notes  among  the  catacombs.  He  was  pre- 
pared to  be  as  cold  as  a  refrigerator,  and  the  banker  to  follow  his  example,  at 
finding  this  bete  noire  of  the  Chaussee  d'Antin  tete-a-tete  with  Nina.  But  Ernest 
had  a  sort  of  haughty  high  breeding  and  careless  dignity  which  warned  people 
off  from  any  liberties  with  him;  and  Gordon  remembered  that  he  knew  Paris 
and  its  haute  volte  so  well  that  he  might  be  a  useful  acquaintance  if  kept  at 
arm's  length  from  Nina,  and  afterwards  dropped.  Unlucky  man  !  he  actually 
thought  his  weak  muscles  were  strong  enough  to  cope  with  a  Lion's  ! 

Vaughan  took  his  leave,  after  offering  his  box  at  the  Opera-Comique  to  Mr. 
Gordon,  and  drove  to  the  Jockey  Club,  pondering  much  on  this  new  species  of 
the  beau  sexe.  He  was  too  used  to  women  not  to  know  at  a  glance  that  she  had 
nothing  bold  about  her,  and  yet  he  was  too  skeptical  to  credit  that  a  girl  could 
possibly  exist  who  was  neither  a  coquette  nor  a  prude.  As  soon  as  the  door 
closed  on  him  his  friends  began  to  open  their  batteries  of  scandal. 

"  How  sad  is  it  to  see  life  wasted  as  my  cousin  wastes  his,"  said  the  Warden, 
balancing  a  paper-knife  thoughtfully,  with  a  depressed  air;  "  frittered  away  on 
mere  trifles,  as  valueless  and  empty  as  soap-bubbles,  but  not,  alas  !  so  innocent." 

"  What  do  you  mean  ? "  Nina  asked,  quickly. 

"What  do  I  mean,  Miss  Gordon?"  repeated  Eusebius,  reproachfully; 
"  what  can  I  mean  but  the  idle  whirl  of  gaiety,  vitiating  pleasures,  the  debts  and 
the  vices  which  are  to  be  laid  at  poor  Ernest's  door.  Ever  since  we  were  boys 


SLANDER    AND    SILLERY.  575 

together,  and  he  was  expelled  from  Rugby  for  going  to  Coventry  fair  and  stay- 
ing there  all  night,  he  has  been  going  rapidly  down  the  road  to  ruin." 

"  He  looks  very  comfortable  in  his  descent,"  smiled  the  young  lady.  "  Pray 
why,  after  all,  shouldn't  horses,  operas,  and  Manillas,  be  as  legitimate  objects 
to  set  one's  affections  upon  as  Norman  arches  and  Gregorian  chants  ?  He  has 
his  dissipations,  you  have  yours.  Chacun  a  son  gout  !  " 

The  Warden  had  his  reasons  for  conciliating  the  young  heiress,  so  he  made 
a  feeble  effort  to  smile.  u  You  know  as  well  as  I  that  you  do  not  think  what 
you  say,  Miss  Gordon.  Were  it  merely  Vaughan's  tastes  that  were  in  fault 
it  would  not  be  of  such  fearful  consequence,  but  unfortunately  it  is  his 
principles." 

"He  is  utterly  without  any,"  said  Miss  Selina  Ruskinstone,  who,  ten  years 
before,  had  been  deeply  and  hopelessly  in  love  with  Ernest,  and  never  forgave 
him  for  not  reciprocating  the  passion. 

"  He  is  a  sceptic,  a  gambler,  a  spendthrift;  and  a  more  heartless  flirt 
never  lived,"  averred  Miss  Augusta,  who  hated  the  whole  of  Ernest's  sex — even 
the  Chapter — -pour  cause" 

"  Gentlemen  can't  help  seeming  flirts  sometimes,  some  women  pay  such 
attention  to  them,"  said  Nina,  with  a  mischievous  laugh.  "  Poor  Mr.  Vaughan  ! 
I  hope  he's  not  as  black  as  he  is  painted.  His  physiognomy  tells  a  different 
tale;  he  is  just  my  ideal  of  'Ernest  Maltravers.'  How  kind  his  eyes  are;  have 
you  ever  looked  into  them,  Selina  ?  " 

Miss  Ruskinstone  gave  an  angry  sneer,  vouchsafing  no  other  response. 

"  My  dear  Nina,  how  foolishly  you  talk,  about  looking  into  a  young  man's 
eyes,"  frowned  her  father.  "  I  am  surprised  to  hear  you." 

Her  own  eyes  opened  in  astonishment.  "  Why  mayn't  I  look  at  them  ?  It 
is  by  the  eyes  that,  like  a  dog,  I  know  whom  to  like  and  whom  to  avoid." 

"  And  pray  does  your  prescience  guide  you  to  see  a  saint  in  a  ruined  Lion 
of  the  Chaussee  d'Antin  ? "  sneered  Selina.  with  another  contemptuous  sniff. 

"Not  a  saint.  I'm  not  good  enough  to  appreciate  the  race,"  laughed  Nina. 
"  But  I  do  not  believe  your  cousin  to  be  all  you  paint  him;  or,  at  least,  if  cir- 
cumstances have  led  him  into  extravagance,  I  have  a  conviction  that  he  has  a 
warm  heart  and  a  noble  character  au  fond." 

"  We  will  hope  so,"  said  the  Warden,  meekly,  with  an  expression  which 
plainly  said  how  vain  a  hope  it  was. 

"  I  think  we  have  wasted  a  great  deal  too  much  conversation  on  a  thankless 
subject,"  said  Selina,  with  asperity.  "  Don't  you  think  it  time,  Mr.  Gordon, 
for  us  to  go  to  the  Louvre  ? " 

That  day,  as  they  were  driving  along  the  Boulevards,  they  passed  Ernest 
with  Bluette  in  his  carriage  going  to  the  Pre  Catalan:  they  all  knew  her,  from 
having  seen  her  play  at  the  Odeon.  Selina  and  Augusta  turned  down  their 


576  OUIDA'S     WORKS. 

mouths,  and  turned  up  their  eyes.  Gordon  pulled  up  his  collar,  and  looked  a 
Brutus  in  spectacles.  Nina  colored,  and  looked  vexed.  Triumph  glittered  in 
Eusebius's  meek  eyes,  but  he  sighed  a  pastor's  sigh  over  a  lost  soul. 


III. 

"  LE  LION  AMOUREUX." 

THE  morning  after,  as  they  were  going  into  the  Expostion  des  Beaux  Arts, 
they  met  Vaughan;  and  no  ghost  would  have  been  more  unwelcome  to  the 
Warden  than  the  distingue  figure  of  his  fashionable  cousin.  Nina  was  the  only 
one  who  looked  pleased  to  recognize  him,  and  she,  as  she  returned  his  smile, 
forgot  that  the  evening  before  it  had  been  given  to  Bluette. 
"  Are  you  coming  in  too  ?  "  she  asked. 

"  I  was  not,  but  I  will  with  pleasure,"  said  Ernest.  And  into  the  Exhibition 
with  them  he  went,  to  Ruskinstone's  wrath  and  Gordon's  annoyance. 

Vaughan  was  a  connoisseur  in  art.  The  Warden  knew  no  more  than  what 
he  took  verbatim  from  the  god  of  his  idolatry,  Mr.  John  Ruskin.  It  was  very 
natural  that  Nina  should  listen  to  the  friend  of  Ingres  and  Vernet  instead  of  to 
the  second-hand  worshipper  of  Turner.  Vaughan,  by  instinct,  dropped  his 
customary  tone  of  compliment — compliment  he  never  used  to  women  he  de- 
lighted to  honor — and  talked  so  charmingly,  that  Nina  utterly  forgot  the  luck- 
less Eusebius,  and  started  when  a  low,  sweet  voice  said,  close  beside  her, 
"  What,  Ernest,  your  here  ?  " 

She  turned,  and  saw  a  woman  about  eight-and-twenty,  dressed  in  perfection 
of  taste,  with  an  exquisite  figure,  and  a  face  of  brunette  beauty;  the  rouge 
most  undiscoverable,  and  the  eyes  artiscally  tinted  to  make  them  look  larger, 
which,  Heaven  knows,  was  needless.  She  darted  a  quick  look  at  Vaughan's^ 
companion,  which  Nina  gave  back  with  a  dash  of  hauteur.  A  shade  came  over 
his  face  as  he  answered  her  greeting. 

"  Will  you  not  introduce  me  to  your  friend  ?  "  said  the  new  comer.  "  She 
is  of  your  nation,  I  fancy,  and  you  know  I  am  entetee  of  everything  English." 
Ernest  looked  rather  gloomy  at  the  compliment,  but  turning  to  Nina, 
begged  to  introduce  her  to  Madame  de  Melusine.  The  gay,  handsome 
baronne,  taking  in  all  the  English  girl's  points  as  rapidly  as  a  groom  at  Tatter- 
sail's  does  a  two-year-old's,  was  chatting  volubly  to  Nina,  when  the  others 
came  up.  Gordon,  though  wont  to  boast  that  he  belonged  to  the  aristocracy 
of  money,  was  always  ready  to  fall  in  the  dust  before  the  noblesse  of  blood, 
and  was  gratified  at  the  introduction,  remembering  to  have  read  in  the  Moni- 


SLANDER    AND     SILLERY.  577 

teur  the  name  of  De  Melusine  at  the  ball  at  the  Tuileries.  And  the  widow 
was  very  charming  even  to  the  professedly  stoical  eyes  of  a  Brutus  of  sixty- 
two.  She  soon  floated  off,  however,  with  her  party,  giving  Vaughan  a  gay  "  A 
ce  soir! "  and  requesting  to  be  allowed  the  honor  of  calling  on  the  Gordons. 

"Is  she  a  great  friend  of  yours  ?"  asked  Nina,  when  she  and  he  were  a 
little  in  advance  of  the  others. 

"  I  have  known  her  some  time." 

"  And  you  are  very  intimate,  I  suppose,  as  she  called  you  by  your  Christian 
name  ? " 

He  smiled  a  smile  that  puzzled  Nina.     "  Oh!  we  soon  get  familiar  here!  " 

"  Where  are  you  going  to  see  her  again  this  evening  ? "  she  persevered, 
playing  with  her  parasol  fringe. 

"  At  her  own  house — a  house  that  will  charm  you.  By  the  way,  it  once 
belonged  to  Bussy  Rabutin,  and  it  has  all  Louis  Quatorze  furniture." 

"  Is  it  a  dinner  ? — a  ball  ? " 

"  No,  an  Opera  supper — she  is  famed  for  her  Sillery  and  her  mots.  Ten  to 
one  I  shall  not  go;  what  amuses  one  once  palls  with  repetition." 

"  I  don't  understand  that,"  said  Nina,  quickly;  "  what  I  like,  I  like  pour 
toujours." 

"  Pauvre  enfant!  you  little  know  life,"  muttered  Ernest.  "Ah!  Miss 
Gordon,  you  are  at  the  happy  age  when  one  can  believe  in  the  feelings  and 
friendships,  and  all  the  charming  little  romances  of  existence.  But  I  have 
passed  it,  and  so  that  I  am  amused  for  a  moment,  so  that  something  takes 
time  off  my  hands,  I  look  no  further,  and  expect  no  more.  I  know  well 
enough  the  champagne  will  cease  to  sparkle,  but  I  drink  it  while  it  forms,  and 
don't  trouble  myself  to  lament  over  it.  Qu'importe  ?  when  one  bottle's  empty, 
there  is  another! " 

"  Ah  !  it  is  such  women  as  Madame  de  Melusine  who  have  taught  you  that 
doctrine,"  cried  Nina,  with  an  energy  that  rather  startled  Ernest,  though  his 
nerves  were  as  strong  as  any  man's  in  Paris.  "  My  romances,  as  you  term 
them,  still  I  believe  sleep  in  your  heart,  but  this  world  you  live  in  has  stifled 
them.  Do  you  think  amusement  will  always  be  enough  for  you  ? — do  you  think 
you  will  never  want  something  better  than  your  empty  champagne  foam  ? " 

"  I  hope  I  shall  not,  mademoiselle,"  said  Vaughan,  bitterly,  "  for  I  am  cer- 
tain I  do  not  believe  in  it,  and  am  quite  sure  I  should  never  get  it.  Leave  me 
to  the  roses  of  my  Tritericae;  they  are  all  I  shall  ever  enjoy,  and  they,  at  the 
best,  are  withered." 

"Nina,  love,"  interrupted  Selina,  coming  up  with  much  amiability,  "I  was 
obliged  to  come  and  tell  you  not  to  be  quite  so  energetic.  All  the  people  in  the 
room  are  looking  at  you." 

"  I  daresay  they  are,"  said  Vaughan,  calmly.  "  It  is  not  often  the  Parisians 

VOL.  III.— 19 


578  OU  IDA'S     WORKS. 

have  the  pleasure  of  seeing  beauty  unaffected,  and  fascinations  careless  of  their 
own  charms.  Nature,  Selina,  is  unhappily  as  rare  one  side  the  Channel  as  the 
other,  and  we  men  appreciate  it  when  we  do  see  it." 

When  Vaughan  parted  from  them  soon  after,  he  swore  at  himself  for  three 
things.  First,  for  having  driven  Bluette,  en  plein  jour, -through  the  Boulevards, 
though  he  had  driven  Bluette,  and  such  as  Bluette,  a  thousand  times  before; 
secondly,  for  having  been  so  weak  as  to  introduce  Madame  de  Melusine  to  the 
Gordons;  and,  thirdly,  for  having— he  the  thorough-paced  Lion,  whose  manual 
was  Rochefoucauld,  and  tutor  in  love,  De  Kock — actually  talked  romance  as  if 
he  were  Werter  or  Paul  Flemming,  or  some  other  sentimental  simpleton. 

Vaughan,  to  his  great  disgust,  felt  a  fit  of  blue  devils  stealing  on  him, 
hurled  one  or  two  rose  notes  waiting  for  him  into  the  fire  with  an  oath,  smoked 
half  a  dozen  Manillas  fiercely,  and  then,  to  get  excitement,  went  to  a  dinner  at 
the  Rocher  de  Cancale,  played  ecarte  with  a  beau  joueur,  went  to  an  Opera 
supper — not  to  the  De  Melusine's — then  to  Mabille  and  came  home  at  seven  in 
the  morning  after  a  night  such  as  would  have  raised  every  hair  off  Brutus's 
head,  given  a  triumphant  glitter  to  the  Warden's  small  blue  eyes,  and  possibly 
even  staggered  the  hot  faith  of  his  young  champion.  Pauline  de  Melusine  was 
as  good  as  her  word — she  did  call  on  the  Gordons — and  Brutus,  stoic  though 
he  was,  was  well  pleased;  for  the  baronne,  though  her  nobility  only  dated  from 
the  Restoration,  and  was  not  received  by  the  exclusive  Legitimists  of  the  old 
Faubourg  St.  Germain,  had  a  very  pleasant  set  of  her  own,  and  figured  among 
the  nouvelle  noblesse  and  bourgeois  decores  who  fill  the  vacant  places  of  the  De 
Rochefoucauld,  the  De  Rohan,  and  the  Montmorency,  in  the  "  imperial "  salons 
of  the  Tuileries,  where  once  the  noblest  blood  in  Europe  was  gathered. 

"  It  is  painful  to  me  to  frequent  Ernest's  society,"  the  Warden  was  wont  to 
say,  "  for  every  word  he  utters  impresses  me  but  more  sadly  with  the  conviction 
of  his  lost  state.  But  we  are  commanded  to  be  in  the  world  though  not  of  it, 
and,  if  I  shun  him,  how  can  I  hope  to  benefit  him  ? " 

"True;  and,  as  your  cousin,  it  would  scarcely  be  charitable  to  avoid  him 
entirely,  terrible  as  we  know  his  habits  to  be.  But  there  is  no  necessity  to  be 
too  intimate,  and  I  do  not  wish  Nina  to  be  too  much  with  him,"  the  banker  was 
accustomed  to  answer. 

"  Anglic*,  Vaughan  gets  us  good  introductions,  and  makes  Paris  pleasant  to 
us;  we'll  use  him  while  we  want  him:  when  we  don't,  we  will  give  him  his 
conge." 

That's  the  reading  of  most  of  our  dear  friends'  compliments  and  caresses, 
isn't  it  ? 

Vaughan  knew  perfectly  well  that  they  would  like  to  make  a  cat's-paw  of  him, 
and  was  the  last  man  likely  to  play  that  simple  and  certainly  not  agreeable  role 
unless  it  suited  him.  But  he  had  reasons  of  his  own  for  forcing  Gordon  to  be 


SLANDER    AND     SILLERY.  579 

civil  and  obliged  to  him,  despite  the  prejudices  of  that  English,  and  therefore, 
of  course,  opinionated  gentleman.  It  amused  him  to  mortify  Eusebius,  whom 
he  saw  at  a  glance  was  bewitched  with  the  prospect  of  Nina's  dot,  and  it  amused 
him  very  much  to  see  Nina's  joyous  laughter  as  he  leaned  over  her  chair  at  the 
Opera  Comique,  to  hear  her  animated  satire  on  Madame  de  Melusine,  for  whom, 
knowing  nothing  of  her,  the  young  lady  had  conceived  hot  aversion,  and  to 
listen  to  her  enthusiasm  when  she  poured  out  to  him  her  vivid  imaginings. 

Gradually  the  cafes,  and  the  Boulevards,  and  the  boudoirs  missed  Ernest 
while  he  accompanied  Nina  through  the  glades  of  St.  Cloud,  or  down  the  Seine 
to  AsniereSj  or  up  the  slopes  of  Pere  la  Chaise,  in  his  new  pursuit;  and  often  at 
night  he  would  leave  the  coulisses,  or  a  lansquenet,  or  the  gas-lights  of  the 
Maison  Doree,  and  the  Closerie  des  Lilas,  to  watch  her  thorough  enjoyment  of 
a  vaudeville,  her  fervent  feeling  in  an  opera,  or  to  waltz  with  her  at  a  ball,  and 
note  her  glad  recognition  of  him. 

To  this  girl,  Ernest  opened  his  heart  and  mind  as  he — being  a  reserved, 
proud,  and  skeptical  man — had  never  done  to  any  one;  there  was  a  sympathy 
and  confidence  between  them,  and  she  learned  much  of  his  inner  nature  as  she 
talked  to  him  soft  and  low  under  the  forest  trees  of  Fontainebleau,  such  talk 
as  could  not  be  heard  in  Bluette's  boudoir,  under  the  wax-lights  of  the  Quartier 
Breda,  or  in  the  flow  of  the  Sillery  at  la  Melusine's  soupers.  All  this  was  new 
to  the  tired  Lion,  and  amused  him  immensely.  La  chevelure  doree  was  twist- 
ing the  golden  meshes  of  its  net  round  him,  as  De  Concressault  told  him  one 
day. 

"  Nonsense,"  said  Ernest;  "  have  I  not  two  loves  already  on  my  hands  more 
than  I  want  ?  " 

"  Dethrone  them,  and  promote  la  petite." 

Vaughan  turned  on  his  friend  with  his  eyes  flashing. 

"  Bon  Dieu  !  do  you  take  her  for  a  ballet-girl  or  a  grisette  ?  " 

"  Well,  if  you  don't  like  that,  marry  her  then,  mon  cher.  You  will  satisfy 
your  fancy,  and  get  cinquante  mille  francs  de  rente — at  a  sacrifice,  of  course; 
but,  que  veux-tu  ?  There  is  no  medal  without  its  reverse,  though  a  '  lion 
marie '  is  certainly  an  anomaly,  an  absurdity,  and  an  intense  pity." 

"Tais-toi,"  said  Ernest,  impatiently;  "  tu  es  fou  !  Caught  in  the  toils  of  a 
wretched  intrigante,  in  the  power  of  any  tailor  in  the  Rue  Vivienne,  any  jeweller 
in  the  Palais  Royal,  my  money  spent  on  follies,  my  life  wasted  in  play,  the  turf, 
and  worthless  women,  I  have  much  indeed  to  offer  to  a  young  girl  who  has 
wealth,  beauty,  genius,  and  heart  ! " 

"  All  the  more  reason  why  you  should  make  a  good  coup,"  said  Emile, 
calmly,  after  listening  with  pitying  surprise  to  his  friend  in  his  new  mood. 
"You  have  a  handsome  face,  a  fashionable  reputation,  and  a  good  name.  Bah  ! 
you  can  do  anything.  As  for  your  life,  all  women  like  a  mauvais  sujet,  and 


580  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

unless  the  De  Melusine  turn  out  a  Brinvilliers,  I  don't  see  what  you  have  to 
fear." 

"When  I  want  your  counsel,  Emile,  I  will  ask  it,"  said  Vaughan,  shortly; 
"  but,  as  I  have  no  intention  of  going  in  for  the  prize,  there  is  no  need  for  you 
to  bet  on  the  chance  of  the  throw." 

"Commetu  veux  !  "  said  the  Parisian,  shrugging  his  shoulders.  "That 
homme  de  paille,  your  priestly  cousin,  will  take  her  back  to  the  English  fogs, 
and  make  her  a  much  better  husband  than  you'd  ever  be,  mon  gar9on." 

Vaughan  moved  restlessly. 

"  The  idiot !  if  I  thought  so —  -  The  devil  take  you,  Emile  !  why  do  you 
talk  of  such  things  ?  " 

At  that  minute  Nina  was  sitting  by  one  of  the  windows  of  their  hotel, 
watching  for  Ernest,  with  a  bouquet  he  had  sent  her  on  a  table  by  her  side; 
and  the  Rev.  Eusebius  was  talking  in  a  very  low  tone  to  her  father.  She 
caught  a  few  words.  "  Last  night — Vaughan  at  the  Freres  Provenfaux — a  souper 
au  cabinet — Mademoiselle  Celine,  premiere  danseuse — quite  terrible,"  etc.,  etc. 

Nina  flushed  scarlet,  and  turned  round.  "  If  you  blame  your  cousin,  Mr. 
Ruskinstone,  why  were  you  there  yourself  ?  " 

The  Warden  colored  too.  With  him,  as  with  a  good  many,  foreign  air 
relaxed  the  severity  of  the  Decalogue,  and  what  was  sin  at  home,  where  every- 
body knew  it,  was  none  at  all  abroad — under  the  rose.  Some  dear  pharisees 
will  not  endanger  their  souls  by  a  carpet-dance  in  England,  but  it  a  little  bird 
followed  them  in  their  holiday  across  the  Channel,  it  might  chance  to  see  them 
disporting  under  a  domino  noir. 

"  I  had  been,"  he  stammered,  "  to  see,  as  you  know,  a  beautiful  specimen 
of  the  arcboutant  in  a  ruined  chapel  of  the  Carmelites,  some  miles  down  the 
Seine.  It  was  very  late,  and  I  was  very  tired,  so  turned  into  the  Freres  Pro- 
vencaux  to  take  some  little  refreshment,  and  I  there  saw  my  unhappy  cousin 
in  society  which  ought,  Miss  Gordon,  to  disqualify  him  from  yours.  It  is  very 
painful  to  me  to  mention  such  things  to  you.  I  never  thought  you  over- 
heard  " 

"  Then,  if  it  is  very  painful  to  you,"  Nina  burst  in,  impetuously,  her  bouche  de 
rose,  as  De  Kerroualle  called  it,  curving  haughtily,  "  why  are  you  ceaselessly  rak- 
ing up  every  possible  bit  of  scandal  that  you  can  against  your  cousin  ?  His  life 
does  not  clash  with  yours,  his  acts  do  not  matter  to  you,  his  extravagance  does  not 
rob  you.  I  used  to  fancy  charity  should  cover  a  multitude  of  sins,  but  it  seems 
to  me  that,  nowadays,  clergymen,  like  Dr.  Watt's  naughty  dogs,  only  delight  to 
bark  and  bite." 

"You  are  cruelly  unjust,"  answered  the  Warden,  in  those  smooth  tones  that 
irritate  one  much  more  than  "  hard  swearing."  "  I  have  no  other  wish  than 
Christian  kindness  to  poor  Ernest.  If,  in  my  place  as  pastor,  I  justly  condemn 


SLANDER    AND     SILLERY.  581 

his  errors  and  vices,  it  is  only  through  a  loving  desire  to  wean   him  from  his 
downward  course." 

"  Your  love  is  singularly  vindictive,"  said  his  vehement  young  opponent, 
her  cheeks  hot  and  her  eyes  bright.  "  No  good  was  ever  yet  done  to  a  man 
by  proclaiming  his  faults  right  and  left.  7  should  like  you.  much  better,  Mr. 
Ruskinstone,  if  you  said,  candidly,  I  don't  like  my  cousin,  and  I  have  never 
forgiven  him  for  thrashing  me  at  Rugby,  and  playing  football  better  than  I  did." 

Eusebius  winced  at  this  little  touch  of  his  bygone  years,  but  he  smiled  a 
benign,  superior,  pitying  smile.  "  Such  petitesses,  I  thank  Heaven,  are  utterly 
beneath  me,  and  I  should  have  fancied  Miss  Gordon  was  too  generous  to  sup- 
pose them.  God  forbid  that  I  should  envy  poor  Vaughan  his  dazzling  quali- 
ties. I  sorrow  over  him  as  a  relative  and  a  precious  human  soul,  but  as  a 
minister  of  our  holy  Church  I  neither  can,  nor  will,  countenance  his  gross  vio- 
lations of  all  her  divinest  laws."  With  which  peroration  the  Warden,  with  a  sigh, 
took  up  a  work  on  "  The  Early  English  Piscini  and  Aspersoria,"  and  became 
immersed  therein. 

"  Poor  Mr.  Vaughan  !  "  cried  Nina,  impatiently.  "  Probably  he  is  too  wise 
to  concern  himself  about  what  people  buzz  in  his  absence,  or  else  he  need 
be  cased  in  mail  to  avoid  being  stung  to  death  with  the  musquito  bites  of 
scandal." 

Gordon  came  down  on  her  with  his  heavy  artillery.  "  Silence,  Nina  !  you 
do  not  know  what  you  are  defending.  I  fear  that  no  slander  can  darken  Mr. 
Vaughan's  character  more  than  he  merits." 

"  A  gambler — a  roue — a  lover  of  married  woman,  of  dancing-girls,"  mur- 
mured Eusebius,  in  an  aside,  meant,  like  those  on  the  stage,  to  tell  killingly 
with  the  audience. 

Nina  flushed  as  scarlet  as  the  camellias  in  her  bouquet,  and  put  up  her  head 
with  a  haughty  gesture.  "  Here  comes  the  subject  of  your  vituperation,  Mr. 
Ruskinstone,  so  you  can  repeat  your  denunciations,  and  favor  him  with  a  ser- 
mon in  person — unless,  indeed,  the  secular  recollections  of  Rugby  intimidate 
the  religious  arm." 

I  fear  something  as  irreverent  as  "  Little  devil  !  "  rose  to  the  Warden's 
pious  lips  as  he  flashed  a  fierce  glance  at  her  from  his  pale-blue  eyes,  for  he 
loved  not  her,  but  the  splendid  dot  which  the  banker  was  sure  to  pay  down  if 
his  son-in-law  were  to  his  taste.  He  caught  his  cousin's  glance  as  he  came  in- 
to the  salons,  and  in  the  superb  scorn  gleaming  in  Ernest's  dark  eyes,  Euse- 
bius saw  that  they  were  not  merely  enemies,  but — rivals:  a  Warden  with 
Church  principles,' all  the  cardinal  virtues,  strict  morality,  and  money;  and  a 
Lion  with  Paris  principles  (if  any),  great  fascinations,  debts,  entanglements, 
and  an  empty  purse.  Which  will  win,  with  Nina  for  the  cup  and  Gordon  for 
the  umpire  ? 


582  QUID  AS     WORKS. 


IV. 

MISCHIEF. 

"  Qui  cherchez-vous,  petite  ?  " 

The  speaker  was  la  Melusine,  and  the  hearer  was  Nina  who  considerably 
resented  the  half- patronizing,  half-mocking,  yet  intensely  amiable  manner  the 
widow  chose  to  assume  towards  her.  Gordon  was  stricken  with  warm  admir- 
ation of  madame,  and  never  inquired  into  her  morality,  only  too  pleased  when 
she  condescended  to  talk  to  or  invite  him.  They  had  met  at  a  soiree  at  some 
intimate  friends  of  Vaughan's  in  the  Champs  Elysees.  (Ernest  was  a  favorite 
wherever  he  went,  and  the  good-natured  French  people  at  once  took  up  his 
relatives  to  please  him.)  He  was  not  there  himself,  but  the  baronne's  quick 
eyes  soon  caught  and  construed  her  restless  glances  through  the  crowded 
rooms. 

"  Je  ne  cherche  personne,  madame,"  said  Nina,  haughtily.  Dressed  simply 
in  white  tulle,  with  the  most  exquisite  flowers  to  be  had  out  of  the  Palais  Royal 
in  the  famous  golden  hair,  which  gleamed  in  the  gaslight  like  sunshine,  she 
aroused  the  serpent  which  lay  hid  in  the  roses  of  madame's  smiles. 

Pauline  laughed  softly,  and  flirted  her  fan.  "  Nay,  nay,  mignonne,  those 
soft  eyes  are  seeking  some  one.  Who  is  it  ?  Ah  !  it  is  that  mechant  Mon- 
seiur  Vaughan  n'est-ce  pas  ?  He  is  very  handsome,  certainly,  but 

On  dit  au  village 
Qu'Argire  est  volage." 

"  Madame's  own  thoughts  possibly  suggest  the  supposition  of  mine,"  said 
Nina,  coldly. 

"  Comme  ces  Anglaises  sont  impolies,"  thought  the  baronne.  "  No,  indeed," 
she  said,  laughing  carelessly,  "  I  know  Ernest  too  well  to  let  my  thoughts  dwell 
on  him.  He  is  charming  to  talk  to,  to  waltz  with,  to  flirt  with,  but  from  any- 
thing further  Dieu  nous  garde  !  Lauzun  himself  were  not  more  dangerous  or 
more  unstable," 

"  You  speak  as  bitterly,  madame,  as  if  you  had  suffered  from  the  fickle- 
ness," said  Nina,  with  a  contemptuous  curl  of  her  soft  lips.  Sweet  temper  as 
she  was,  she  could  thrust  a  spear  in  her  enemy's  side  when  she  liked. 

Madame's  eyes  glittered  like  a  rattlesnake's.  Nina's  chance  ball  shot  home. 
But  madame  was  a  woman  of  the  world,  and  could  mask  her  batteries,  with  a 
skill  of  which  Nina,  with  her  impetuous  abandon,  was  incapable.  She  smiled 
very  sweetly,  as  she  answered,  "  No,  petite,  I  have  unhappily  seen  too  much  of 
the  world  not  to  know  that  we  must  never  put  our  trust  in  those  charming  mau- 


SLANDER    AND     SILLER Y.  583 

vais  sujets.  At  your  age,  I  daresay  I  should  not  have  been  proof  against  your 
countryman's  fascinations,  but  now,  I  know  just  how  much  his  fondest  vows 
are  worth,  and  I  have  been  deaf  to  them  all,  for  I  would  not  let  my  heart  mis- 
lead me  against  my  reason  and  my  conscience.  Ah,  petite  !  you  little  guess 
what  the  traitor  word  '  love  '  means  here,  in  Paris.  We  women  grow  accus- 
tomed to  our  fate,  but  the  lesson  is  hard  sometimes." 

"  You  have  been  reading  '  Mes  Confidences,'  lately  ?  "  asked  Nina,  with  a 
sarcastic  flash  of  her  brilliant  eyes. 

"  How  cruel  !  Do  you  suppose  I  can  have  no  emotions  except  I  learn  them 
second-hand  through  Lamartine  or  Delphine  Gay  ?  You  are  very  satirical, 

Miss  Gordon: How  strange  !  "  said  the  baronne,  interrupting  herself;  "your 

bouquet  is  the  fac-simile  of  mine  !  Look  !  De  Kerroualle  sent  you  that  I 
fancy  ?  You  know  he  raffoles  of  you.  I  was  very  silly  to  use  mine,  but  Mr. 
Vaughan  sent  me  such  a  pretty  note  with  it,  that  I  had  not  the  resolution  to 
disappoint  him.  Poor  Ernest  !  "  And  Madame  sighed  softly,  as  if  bewailing 
in  her  tender  heart  the  woes  her  obduracy  caused.  The  blood  flamed  up  in 
Nina's  cheeks,  and  her  hand  clenched  on  Ernest's  flowers  :  they  were  the  fac- 
similes of  the  widow's  ;  delicate  pink  blossoms,  mixed  with  white  azalias.  "  Is 
he  here  to-night,  do  you  know  ?  "  madame  continued.  "  I  daresay  not;  he  is 
behind  the  coulisses,  most  likely.  Celine,  the  new  danseuse  from  the  Fenice, 
makes  her  debut  to-night.  Here  comes  poor  Gaston  to  petition  for  a  valse. 
Be  kind  to  him,  pray." 

She  herself  went  off  to  the  ballroom,  and  the  effect  of  her  exordium  was 
to  make  Nina  very  disagreeable  to  poor  De  Kerroualle,  whom  she  really  liked, 
and  who  was  enteti  about  her.  Not  long  afterwards,  Nina  saw  in  the  distance 
Vaughan's  haughty  head  and  powerful  brow,  and  her  silly  little  heart  beat  as 
quick  as  a  pigeon's  just  caught  in  the  trap:  he  was  talking  to  the  widow. 

"  Look  at  our  young  English  friend,"  Pauline  was  saying,  "  how  she  is 
flirting  with  Gaston,  and  De  Lafitolle,  and  De  Concressault.  Certainly,  when 
your  Englishwomen  do  coquet,  they  go  further  than  any  of  us." 

"  Est-ce  possible  ?  "  said  Ernest,  raising  his  eyebrows. 

"  Mechant  !  "  cried  madame,  with  a  chastising  blow  of  her  fan.  "  But,  do 
you  know,  I  admire  the  petite  very  much.  I  believe  all  really  beautiful  women 
had  that  rare  golden  hair  of  hers — Lucrezia  Borgia  (I  could  never  bear  Grisi  as 
Lucrezia,  for  that  very  reason).  La  Cenci,  the  Duchess  of  Portsmouth,  ^Enone 
— and  Helen,  I  am  sure,  netted  Paris  with  those  gold  threads.  Don't  you 
think  it  is  very  lovely  ?  " 

"  I  do,  indeed,"  said  Vaughan,  with  unconscious  warmth. 

Madame  laughed  gaily,  but  there  was  a  disagreeable  glitter  in  her  eye. 
"  What,  fickle  already  ?  Ah  well,  I  give  you  full  leave." 

"  And  example,  madame,"  said  Ernest,  as  he  bowed  and  left  her  side,  glad 


584  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

to  have  struck  the  first  blow  of  his  freedom  from  this  handsome  tyrant,  who  was 
as  capricious  and  exacting  as  she  was  clever  and  captivating.  But  fetters  made 
of  fairer  roses  were  over  Ernest  now,  and  he  never  bethought  himself  of  the 
probable  vengeance  of  that  bitterest  foe,  a  woman  who  is  piqued. 

"  Tout  beau  !  "  thought  Pauline,  as  she  saw  him  waltzing  with  Nina. 
"  Mais  je  vous  donnerai  encore  1'echec  et  mat,  mon  brave  joueur." 

"  Did  you  give  Madame  de  Melusine  the  bouquet  she  carries  this  evening  ?  " 
asked  Nina,  as  he  whirled  her  round. 

"  No,"  said  Ernest,  astonished.     "  Why  do  you  ask  ?  " 

"  Because  she  said  you  did,"  answered  Nina,  never  accustomed  to  conceal 
anything;  "  and,  besides,  it  is  exactly  like  mine." 

"  Infernal  woman  !  "  muttered  Ernest,  "  How  could  you  for  a  moment 
believe  that  I  would  have  so  insulted  you  ?  " 

"  I  didn't  believe  it,"  said  Nina,  lifting  her  frank  eyes  to  his.  "  But  how 
very  late  you  are;  have  you  been  at  the  ballet  ? " 

His  face  grew  stern.     "  Did  she  tell  you  that  ? " 

"  Yes.  But  why  did  you  go  there,  instead  of  coming  to  dance  with  me  ? 
Do  you  like  those  danseuses  better  than  you  do  me  ?  What  was  Celine's  or 
anydody's  debut,  to  you  ?  " 

Ernest  smiled  at  the  native  indignation  of  the  question.  "  Never  think 
that  I  do  not  wish  to  be  with  you;  but — I  wanted  oblivion,  and  one  cannot 
shake  off  old  habits.  Did  you  miss  me  among  all  those  other  men  that  you 
have  always  round  you  ? " 

"  How  unkind  that  is  !  "  whispered  Nina,  indignantly.  "  You  know  I 
always  do." 

He  held  her  closer  to  him  in  the  waltz,  and  she  felt  his  heart  beat  quicker, 
but  she  got  no  other  answer. 

That  night  Nina  stood  before  her  toilette-table,  putting  her  flowers  in  water, 
and  some  hot  tears  fell  on  the  azalias. 

"I  will  have  faith  in  him,"  she  cried,  passionately;  "  though  all  the  world 
be  witness  against  him,  I  will  believe  in  him.  Whatever  his  life  may  have  been, 
his  heart  is  warm  and  true;  they  shall  never  make  me  doubt  it." 

Her  last  thoughts  were  of  him,  and  when  she  slept  his  face  was  in  her 
dreams,  while  Ernest,  with  some  of  the  wildest  men  of  his  set,  smoked  hard  and 
drank  deep  in  his  chambers  to  drive  away,  if  he  could,  the  fiends  of  Regret 
and  Passion  and  the  memory  of  a  young,  radiant,  impassioned  face,  which  lured 
him  to  an  unattainable  future. 

"  Nina  dearest,"  said  Selina  Ruskinstone,  affectionately,  the  morning  after, 
"  I  hope  you  will  not  think  me  unkind— you  know  I  have  no  wish  but  for  your 
good— but  dont  you  think  it  would  be  better  to  be  a  little  more— more  reserved, 
a  little  less  free,  with  Mr.  Vaughan  ?  " 


SLANDER    AND     SILLER Y.  585 

"  Explain  yourself  more  clearly,"  said  Nina,  tranquilly.  "  Do  you  wish  me 
to  send  to  Turkey  for  a  veil  and  a  guard  of  Bashi-Bazouks,  or  do  you  mean 
that  Mr.  Vaughan  is  so  attractive  that  he  is  better  avoided,  like  a  man-trap  or 
a  Maelstrom  ?  " 

"^Don't  be  ridiculous,"  retorted  Augusta;  "  you  know  well  enough  what  we 
mean,  and  certainly  you  do  run  after  him  a  great  deal  too  much." 

"  You  are  so  very  demonstrative,"  sighed  Selina,  "  and  it  is  so  easily  mis- 
construed. It  is  not  feminine  to  court  any  man  so  unblushingly." 

Nina's  eyes  flashed,  and  the  blood  colored  her  brow.  "  I  am  not  afraid  of 
being  misconstrued  by  Mr.  Vaughan,"  she  said,  haughtily;  "gentlemen  are 
kinder  and  wiser  judges  in  those  things  than  our  sex." 

"  I  wouldn't  advise  you  to  trust  to  Ernest's  tender  mercies,"  sneered  Augusta. 

"  My  dear  child,  remember  his  principles,"  sighed  Selina;  "his  life — his 
reputation " 

"  Leave  both  him  and  me  alone,"  retorted  Nina,  passionately.  "  I  will  not 
stand  calmly  by  to  hear  him  slandered  with  your  vague  calumnies.  You  preach 
religion  often  enough;  practise  it  now,  and  show  more  common  kindness  to 
your  cousin:  I  do  not  say  charity,  for  I  am  sick  of  the  cant  word,  and  he  is 
above  your  pity.  You  think  me  utterly  lost  because  I  dance,  and  laugh,  and 
enjoy  my  life,  but,  bad  as  my  principles  are,  I  should  be  shocked — yes,  Selina, 
and  I  should  think  I  merited  little  mercy  myself,  were  I  as  harsh  and  bitter 
upon  any  one  as  you  are  upon  him.  How  can  you  judge  him? — how  can  you 
say  what  nobility,  and  truth,  and  affection — that  will  shame  your  own  cold 
pharisaism — may  lie  in  his  heart  unrevealed  ? — how  can  you  dare  to  censure 
him  ?  " 

In  the  door  of  the  salon,  listening  to  the  lecture  his  young  champion  was 
giving  these  two  blue,  opinionated,  and  strongly  pious  ladies,  stood  Ernest,  his 
face  even  paler  than  usual,  and  his  eyes  with  a  strange  mixture  of  joy  and  pain 
in  them.  Nina  colored  scarlet  but  went  forward  to  meet  him  with  undisguised 
pleasure,  utterly  regardless  of  the  sneering  lips  and  averted  eyes  of  the  Miss 
Ruskinstones.  He  had  come  to  go  with  them  to  St.  Germain,  and,  with  a 
dexterous  manoeuvre,  took  the  very  seat  in  the  carriage  opposite  Nina  that 
Eusebius  had  planned  for  himself.  But  the  Warden  was  no  match  for  the  Lion 
in  such  affairs,  and,  being  exiled  to  the  barouche  with  Gordon  and  Augusta, 
took  from  under  the  seat  a  folio  of  the  "  Stones  of  Venice,"  and  read  sulkily 
all  the  way. 

"My  dear  fellow,"  said  Vaughan,  when  they  reached  St.  Germain,  "don't 

you  think  you  would  prefer  to  sit  in  the  carriage,  and   finish  that  delightful 

work,  to  coming  to  see  some  simple  woods  and  terraces  ?     If  you  would,  pray 

don't  hesitate  to  say  so;  I  am  sure  Miss  Gordon  will  excuse  your  absence." 

The  solicitous  courtesy  of  Ernest's  manner  was  boiling  oil  to  the  fire  raging 


586  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

in  the  Warden's  gentle  breast,  and  Eusebius,  besides,  was  not  quick  at  retorts. 
"I  am  not  guilty  of  any  such  bad  taste,"  he  said,  stiffly,  "  though  I  do  discover 
a  charm  in  severe  studies,  which  I  believe  you  never  did." 

"  No,  never,"  said  Ernest,  laughing;  "  my  genius  does  not  lie  that  way; 
and  I've  no  vacant  bishopric  in  my  mind's  eye  to  make  such  studies  profitable. 
Even  you,  you  know,  light  of  the  Church  as  you  are,  want  recreation  some- 
times. Confess  now,  the  chansons  a  boire  last  night  sounded  pleasant  after 
long  months  of  Faithandgrace  services!  " 

Eusebius  looked  much  as  I  have  seen  a  sleek  tom-cat,  who  bears  a  respect- 
able character  generally,  surprised  in  surreptitiously  licking  out  of  the  cream- 
jug.  He  had  the  night  before  (when  he  was  popularly  supposed  to  be  sitting 
under  Adolphe  Monod)  tasted  rather  too  many  petits  verres  up  at  the  Pre 
Catalan,  utterly  unconscious  of  his  cousin's  proximity.  The  pure-minded  soul 
thus  cruelly  caught  looked  prayers  of  piteous  entreaty  to  Vaughan  not  to  dam- 
age his  milk-white  reputation  by  further  revelation  of  this  unlucky  detour  into 
the  Broad  Road;  and  Ernest,  who,  always  kind-hearted,  never  hit  a  man  when 
he  was  down,  contented  himself  with  saying: 

"  Ah  !  well,  we  are  none  of  us  pure  alabaster,  though  some  of  the  sepulchres 
do  contrive  to  whiten  themselves  up  astonishingly.  My  father,  poor  man,  once 
wished  to  put  me  in  the  Church.  Do  you  think  I  should  have  graced  it,  Selina  ? " 

"  I  can't  say  I  do,"  sneered  Selina. 

"You  think  I  should  disgrace  it?  Very  probably.  I  am  not  good  at 
'canting.'  "  And  giving  Nina  his  arm,  the  Warden  being  much  too  confused 
to  forestall  him,  he  whispered:  "when  is  that  atrocious  saint  going  to  take4iim- 
self  over  the  water  ?  Couldn't  we  bribe  his  diocesan  to  call  him  before  the 
Arches  Court  ?  Surely  those  long  coats,  so  like  the  little  wooden  men  in  Noah's 
Ark,  and  that  straightened  hair,  so  mathematically  parted  down  the  centre, 
look  'perverted  '  enough  to  warrant  it." 

Nina  shook  her  head.  "  Unhappily,  he  is  here  for  six  months  for  ill  health  ! 
— the  sick-leave  of  clergymen  who  wish  for  a  holiday,  and  are  too  holy  to  leave 
their  flock  without  an  excuse  to  society." 

Vaughan  laughed,  then  sighed.  "  Six  months — and  you  have  been  here 
four  already  !  Eusebius  hates  me  cordially — all  my  English  relatives  do,  I  be- 
lieve; we  do  not  get  on  together.  They  are  too  cold  and  conventional  for  me. 
I  have  some  of  the  warm  Bohemian  blood,  though  God  knows  I've  seen  enough 
to  chill  it  to  ice  by  this  time;  but  it  is  not  chilled — so  much  the  worse  for 
me,"  muttered  Ernest.  "  Tell  me,"  he  said,  abruptly — "  tell  me  why  you  took 
the  trouble  to  defend  me  so  generously  this  morning  ?  " 

She  looked  up  at  him  with  her  frank,  beaming  regard.  "  Because  they  dare 
to  misjudge  you,  and  they  know  nothing,  and  are  not  worthy  to  know  anything 
of  your  real  self." 


SLANDER    AND     SILLER  Y.  587 

He  pressed  his  lips  together  as  if  in  bodily  pain.  "  And  what  do  you 
know  ? " 

"  Have  you  not  yourself  said  that  you  talk  to  [me  as  you  talk  to  no  one 
else?"  answered  Nina,  impetuously;  "besides — I  cannot  tell  why,  but  the  first 
day  I  met  you  I  seemed  to  find  some  friend  that  I  had  lost  before.  I  was  cer- 
tain that  you  would  never  misconstrue  anything  I  said,  and  I  felt  that  I  saw 
further  into  your  heart  and  mind  than  anyone  else  could  do.  Was  it  not  very 
strange  ?  "  She  stopped,  and  looked  up  at  him.  Ernest  bent  his  eyes  on  the 
ground,  and  breathed  fast. 

"  No,  no,"  he  said  at  last;  "  yours  is  only  an  ideal  of  me.  If  you  knew  me 
as  I  really  am,  you  would  cease  to  feel  the — the  interest  that  you  say — 

He  stopped  abruptly;  facile  as  he  was  at  pretty  compliments,  and  versed  in 
tender  scenes  as  he  had  been  from  his  school-days,  the  longing  to  make  this 
girl  love  him,  and  his  struggle  not  to  breathe  love  to  her,  deprived  him  of  his 
customary  strength  and  nonchalance. 

"  I  do  not  fear  to  know  you  as  you  are,"  said  Nina,  gently.  "  I  do  not 
think  you  yourself  allow  all  the  better  things  that  are  in  you.  People  have  not 
judged  you  rightly,  and  you  have  been  too  proud  to  prove  their  error  to  them. 
You  have  found  pleasure  in  running  counter  to  the  prudish  and  illiberal  bigots, 
who  presumed  to  judge  you;  and  to  a  world  you  have  found  heartless  and  false 
you  have  not  cared  to  lift  the  domino  and  mask  you  wore." 

Vaughan  sighed  from  the  bottom  of  his  heart,  and  walked  on  in  silence  for 
a  good  five  minutes.  "  Promise  me,  Nina,"  he  said  at  length  with  an  effort, 
"  that  no  matter  what  you  hear  against  me,  you  will  not  condemn  me 
unheard." 

"  I  promise,"  she  answered,  raising  her  eyes  to  his,  brighter  still  for  the 
color  in  her  cheeks.  It  was  the  first  time  he  had  called  her  Nina. 

"  Miss  Gordon,"  said  Eusebius,  hurriedly  overtaking  them,  "  pray  come 
with  me  a  moment:  there  is  the  most  exquisite  specimen  of  the  Flamboyant 
style  in  an  archway " 

"  Thank  you  for  your  good  intentions,"  said  Nina,  pettishly,  "  but  really,  as 
you  might  know  by  this  time,  I  never  can  see  any  attractions  in  your  prosaic 
and  matter-of-fact  study." 

"  It  might  be  more  profitable  than- " 

"  Than  thinking  of  La  Valliere  and  poor  Bragelonne,  and  all  the  gay  glories 
of  the  exiled  Bourbons  ?  "  laughed  Nina.  "  Very  likely;  but  romance  is  more 
to  my  taste  than  granite.  You  would  never  have  killed  yourself,  like  Brage- 
lonne, for  the  beaux  yeux  of  Louise  de  la  Beaumesur-Blanc,  would  you  ? " 

"  I  trust,"  said  Eusebius,  stiffly,  "  that  I  should  have  had  a  deeper  sense  of 
the  important  responsibilities  of  the  gift  of  life  than  to  throw  it  away  because  a 
silly  girl  preferred  another." 


588  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

"You  are  very  impolitic,"  said  Ernest,  with  a  satirical  smile.  "No  lady 
could  feel  remorse  at  forsaking  you,  if  you  could  get  over  it  so  easily." 

"  He  would  get  over  it  easily,"  laughed  Nina.  "  You  would  call  her  Delilah, 
and  all  the  Scripture  bad  names,  order  Mr.  Ruskin's  new  work,  turn  your  desires 
to  a  deanship,  marry  some  bishop's  daughter  with  high  ecclesiastical  interest, 
and  console  yourself  in  the  bosom  of  your  Mother  Church — eh,  Mr.  Ruskin- 
stone  ? " 

"  You  are  cruelly  unjust,"  sighed  Eusebius.     You  little  know " 

"The  charms  of  architecture?  No;  and  I  never  shall,"  answered  his  tor- 
mentor, humming  the  "  Queen  of  the  Roses,"  and  waltzing  down  the  forest 
glade,  where  they  were  walking.  "  How  severe  you  look  !  "  she  said  as  she 
waltzed  back.  "  Is  that  wrong,  too  ?  Miriam  danced  before  the  ark  and  Jephtha's 
daughter." 

The  Warden  appeared  not  to  hear.  Certainly  his  mode  of  courtship  was 
singular. 

"  Ernest,"  he  said,  turning  to  his  cousin  as  the  rest  of  the  party  came  up, 
"  I  had  no  idea  your  sister  was  in  Paris.  I  have  not  seen  her  since  she  was  four- 
teen. I  should  not  have  known  her  in  the  least." 

"  Margaret  is  in  India  with  her  husband,"  answered  Vaughan.  "  What  are 
you  dreaming  of  ?  \Vhere  have  you  seen  her  ?  " 

"  I  saw  her  in  your  chambers,"  answered  the  Warden,  slowly.  "  I  passed 
three  times  yesterday,  and  she  was  sitting  in  the  centre  window  each  time." 

"  Pshaw  !  You  dreamt  it  in  your  sleep  last  night.  Margaret's  in  Vellore, 
I  assure  you." 

"  I  saw  her,"  said  the  Warden,  softly;  "  or,  at  least,  I  saw  some  lady,  whom 
I  naturally  presumed  to  be  your  sister." 

Ernest,  who  had  not  colored  for  fifteen  years,  and  would  have  defied  man 
or  woman  to  confuse  him,  flushed  to  his  very  temples. 

"  You  are  mistaken,"  he  said,  decidedly.  "  There  is  no  woman  in  my 
rooms." 

Eusebius  raised  his  eyebrows,  bent  his  head,  smiled  and  sighed.  More 
polite  disbelief  was  never  expressed.  The  Miss  Ruskinstones  would  have 
blushed  if  they  could;  as  they  could  not,  they  drew  themselves  bolt  upright, 
and  put  their  parasols  between  them  and  the  reprobate.  Nina,  whose  hand 
was  still  in  Vaughan's  arm,  turned  white,  and  flashed  a  quick,  upward  look  at 
him;  then,  with  a  glance  at  Eusebius,  as  fiery  as  the  eternal  wrath  that  that  dear 
divine  was  accustomed  to  deal  out  so  largely  to  other  people,  she  led  Ernest 
up  to  her  father,  who  being  providentially  somewhat  deaf,  had  not  heard 
this  by-play,  and  said,  to  her  cousin's  horror,  "  Papa,  dear,  Mr.  Vaughan  wants 
you  to  dine  with  him  at  Tortoni's  to-night,  to  meet  M.  de  Vendanges.  You 
will  be  very  happy,  won't  you?  " 


SLANDER    AND     SILLERY.  589 

Ernest  pressed  her  little  hand  against  his  side,  and  thanked  her  with  his 
eyes. 

Gordon  was  propitiated  for  that  day;  he  was  not  likely  to  quarrel  with  a  man 
who  could  introduce  him  to  "Son  Altesse  Monseigneur  le  due  de  Vendanges." 


V. 

MORE    MISCHIEF — AND   AN   END. 

IN  a  little  cabinet  de  peinture,  in  a  house  in  the  Place  Vendome,  apart  from 
all  the  other  people,  who  having  come  to  a  dejeuner  were  now  dispersed  in  the 
music  rooms,  boudoirs,  and  conservatories,  sat  Madame  de  Melusine,  talking 
to  Gordon,  flatteringly,  beguilingly,  bewitchingly,  as  that  accomplished  widow 
could.  The  banker  found  her  charming,  and  really,  under  her  blandishments, 
began  to  believe,  poor  old  fellow,  that  she  was  in  love  with  him  ! 

"Ah  !  by-the-by,  cher  monsieur,"  began  madame,  when  she  had  soft-soaped 
him  into  a  proper  frame  of  mind,  "  I  want  to  speak  to  you  about  that  mignonne 
Nina.  You  cannot  tell,  you  cannot  imagine,  what  interest  I  take  in  her." 

"  You  do  her  much  honor,  madame,"  replied  her  bourgeois  gentilhomme, 
always  stiff,  however  enraptured  he  might  feel  internally. 

"  The  honor  is  mine,"  smiled  Pauline.  "  Yes,  I  do  feel  much  interest  in 
her;  there  is  a  sympathy  in  our  natures,  I  am  certain,  and — and,  Monsieur 
Gordon,  I  cannot  see  that  darling  girl  on  the  brink  of  a  precipice  without 
stretching  out  a  hand  to  snatch  her  from  the  abyss." 

"  Precipice — abyss — Nina  !  Good  Heavens  !  my  dear  madame,  what  do 
you  mean  ? "  cried  Gordon — a  fire,  an  elopement,  and  the  small-pox  all  pre- 
senting themselves  to  his  mind. 

"  No,  no,"  repeated  madame,  with  increasing  vehemence,  "  I  will  not  permit 
any  private  feelings,  I  will  not  allow  my  own  weakness  to  prevent  me  from 
saving  her.  It  would  be  a  crime,  a  cruelty,  to  let  your  innocent  child  be  de- 
ceived, and  rendered  miserable  for  all  time,  because  I  lack  the  moral  courage 
to  preserve  her.  Monsieur,  I  speak  to  you,  as  I  am  sure  I  may,  as  one  friend 
to  another,  and  I  am  perfectly  certain  that  you  will  not  misjudge  me.  Answer 
me  one  thing;  no  impertinent  curiosity  dictates  the  question.  Do  you  wish 
your  daughter  married  to  Mr.  Vaughan  ?  " 

"  Married  to  Vaughan  !  "  exclaimed  the  startled  banker;  "  I'd  sooner  see 
her  married  to  a  crossing  sweeper.  She  never  thought  of  such  a  thing.  Im- 
possible !  absurd  !  she'll  marry  my  friend  Ruskinstone  as  soon  as  she  comes 
of  age.  Marry  Vaughan  !  a  fellow  without  a  penny " 


590 


QUID  AS     WORKS. 


Pauline  laid  her  soft,  jewelled  hand  on  his  arm: 

"  My  dear  friend,  he  thinks  of  it  if  you  do  not,  and  I  am  much  mistaken  if 
dear  Nina  is  not  already  dazzled  by  his  brilliant  qualities.  Your  countryman 
is  a  charming  companion,  no  one  can  gainsay  that;  but,  alas  !  he  is  a  roue,  a 
gambler,  an  adventurer,  who,  while  winning  her  young  girl's  affections,  has 
only  in  view  the  wealth  which  he  hopes  he  will  gain  with  her.  It  is  painful  to 
me  to  say  this  "  (and  tears  stood  in  madame's  long,  velvet  eyes).  "  We  were 
good  friends  before  he  wanted  more  than  friendship,  while  poor  De  Melusine 
was  still  living,  and  his  true  character  was  revealed  to  me.  It  would  be  false 
delicacy  to  allow  your  darling  Nina  to  become  his  victim  for  want  of  a  few 
words  from  me,  though  I  know,  if  he  were  aware  of  my  interference,  the  infer- 
ence he  would  basely  insinuate  from  it.  But  you,"  whispered  madame,  brush- 
ing the  tears  from  her  eyes,  and  giving  him  an  angelic  smile,  "  I  need  not  fear 
that  you  would  ever  misjudge  me  ?  " 

"  Never,  I  swear,  most  generous  of  women  !  "  said  the  banker,  kissing  the 
snow-white  hand,  very  clumsily,  too.  "  I'll  tell  the  fellow  my  mind  directly — 
an  unprincipled,  gambling " 

"  Non,  non,  je  vous  en  prie,  monsieur  !  "  cried  the  widow,  really  frightened, 
for  this  would  not  have  suited  her  plans  at  all.  "  You  would  put  me  in  the 
power  of  that  unscrupulous  man.  He  would  destroy  my  reputation  at  once  in 
his  revenge." 

"  But  what  am  I  to  do  ?  "  said  the  poor  gulled  banker.  "  Nina's  a  will  of 
her  own,  and  if  she  take  a  fancy  to  this  confounded " 

"  Leave  that  to  me,"  said  la  baronne,  softly.  "  I  have  proofs  which  will 
stagger  her  most  obstinate  faith  in  her  lover.  Meanwhile  give  him  no  sus- 
picion, go  to  his  supper  on  Tuesday,  and — you  are  asked  to  Vauvenay,  accept 
the  invitation — and  conclude  the  fiancailles  with  Monseiur  le  Ministre  as  soon 
as  you  can." 

"  But — but,  madame,"  stammered  this  new  Jourdain  to  his  enchanting 
Dorimene,  "Vauvenay  is  an  exile.  I  shall  not  see  you  there?" 

"  Ah,  silly  man,"  laughed  the  widow,  "  I  shall  be  only  two  miles  off.  I  am 
going  to  stay  with  the  Salvador;  they  leave  Paris  in  three  weeks.  Listen — your 
daughter  is  singing  «  The  Swallows.'  Her  voice  is  quite  as  good  as  Ristori's." 

Three  hours  after,  madame  held  another  tete-a-tete  in  that  boudoir.  This 
time  the  favored  mortal  was  Vaughan.  They  had  had  a  pathetic  interview,  of 
which  the  pathos  hardly  moved  Ernest  as  much  as  the  widow  desired. 

"  You  love  me  no  longer,  Ernest,"  she  murmured,  the  tears  falling  down 
her  cheeks— her  rogue  was  the  product  of  high  art,  and  never  washed  off—"  I 
see  it,  I  feel  it;  your  heart  is  given  to  that  English  girl.  I  have  tried  to  jest 
about  it;  I  have  tried  to  affect  indifference,  but  I  cannot.  The  love  you  once 
won  will  be  yours  to  the  grave." 


SLANDER    AND     SILLER  Y.  591 

Ernest  listened,  a  satirical  smile  on  his  lips. 

"I  should  feel  more  grateful,"  he  said,  calmly,  "  if  the  gift  had  not  been 
given  to  so  many;  it  will  be  a  great  deal  of  trouble  to  you  to  love  us  all  to  our 
graves.  And  your  new  friend  Gordon,  do  you  intend  cherishing  his  gray  hairs, 
too,  till  the  gout  puts  them  under  the  sod  ? " 

She  fell  back  sobbing  with  exquisite  abandon.  No  deserted  Calypso's  pose 
was  ever  more  effective. 

"  Ernest,  Ernest !  that  I  should  live  to  be  so  insulted,  and  by  you  !  " 

"  Nay,  madame,  end  this  vaudeville,"  said  he,  bitterly.  "  I  know  well 
enough  that  you  hate  me,  or  why  have  you  troubled  yourself  to  coin  the  un- 
truths about  me  that  you  whispered  to  Miss  Gordon  ? " 

"  Ah  !  have  you  no  pity  for  the  first  mad  vengeance  dictated  by  jealously 
and  despair  ?  "  murmured  Pauline.  "  Once  there  was  attraction  in  this  face 
for  you,  Ernest;  have  some  compassion,  some  sympathy " 

Well  as  he  knew  the  worth  of  madame's  tears,  Ernest,  chivalric  and  gener- 
ous at  heart,  was  touched. 

"  Forgive  me,"  he  said,  gently,  "  and  let  us  part.  You  know  now,  Pauline, 
that  she  has  my  deepest,  my  latest  love.  It  were  disloyalty  to  both  did  we 
meet  again  save  in  society." 

"  Farewell,  then,"  murmured  Pauline.  "  Think  gently  of  me,  Ernest,  for  I 
have  loved  you  more  than  you  will  ever  know  now." 

She  rose,  and,  as  he  bent  towards  her,  kissed  his  forehead.  Then,  floating 
from  the  room,  passed  the  Reverend  Eusebius,  standing  in  the  doorway,  look- 
ing in  on  this  parting  scene.  The  widow  looked  at  herself  in  her  mirror  that 
night  with  a  smile  of  satisfaction. 

"  C'est  bien  en  train,"  she  said,  half  aloud.  "  Le  fou  !  de  penser  qu'il 
puisse  me  braver.  Je  ne  1'aime  plus,  c'est  vrai,  mais  je  ne  veux  pas  qu'elle 
reussisse." 

Nina  went  to  bed  very  happy.  Ernest  had  sat  next  her  at  the  dejeuner; 
and  afterwards  at  a  ball  had  waltzed  often  with  her  and  with  nobody  else;  and 
his  eyes  had  talked  love  in  the  waltzes  though  his  tongue  never  had. 

Ernest  went  to  his  chambers,  smoked  hard,  half  mad  with  the  battle  within 
him,  and  took  three  grains  of  opium,  which  gave  him  forgetfulness  and  sleep. 
He  woke,  tired  and  depressed,  to  hear  the  gay  hum  of  life  in  the  street  below, 
and  to  remember  that  he  had  promised  Nina  to  meet  them  at  Versailles. 

It  was  Sunday  morning.  In  England,  of  course,  Gordon  would  have  gone 
up  to  the  sanctuary,  listened  to  Mr.  Bellew,  frowned  severely  on  the  cheap 
trains,  and,  after  his  claret,  read  edifying  sermons  to  his  household;  but  in  Paris 
there  would  be  nobody  to  admire  the  piety,  and  the  "  grandes  eaux  "  only  play 
once  a  week,  you  know — on  Sundays.  So  his  Sabbath  severity  was  relaxed, 
and  down  to  Versailles  he  journeyed.  There  must  be  something  peculiar  in  con- 


592  QUID  AS    WORKS. 

tinental  air,  for  it  certainly  stretches  our  countrymen's  morality  and  religion 
uncommonly:  it  is  only  up  at  Jerusalem  that  our  pharisees  worship.  Eusebius 
dare  not  go — he'd  be  sure  to  meet  a  brother-clerical,  who  might  have  reported 
the  dereliction  at  home — so  that  Vaughan,  despite  Gordon's  cold  looks,  kept  by 
Nina's  side  though  he  wasn't  alone  with  her,  and  when  they  came  back  in  the 
wagon  the  banker  slept  and  the  duenna  dozed,  and  he  talked  softly  and  low  to 
her — not  quite  love,  but  something  very  like  it — and  as  they  neared  Paris  he 
took  the  little  hand  with  its  delicate  Jouvin  glove  in  his,  and  whispered. 

"  Remember  your  promise:  I  can  brave,  and  have  braved  most  things,  but 
I  could  not  bear  your  scorn.  That  would  make  me  a  worse  man  than  I  have 
been,  if,  as  some  folks  would  tell  you,  such  a  thing  be  possible." 

It  was  dark,  but  I  daresay  the  moonbeams  shining  on  the  chevelure  doree 
showed  him  a  pair  of  truthful,  trusting  eyes  that  promised  never  to  desert  him. 

The  day  after  he  had,  by  dint  of  tact  and  strategy,  planned  to  spend  en- 
tirely with  Nina.  He  was  going  with  them  to  the  races  at  Chantilly,  then  to  the 
Gaite  to  see  the  first  representation  of  a  vaudeville  of  a  friend  of  his,  and  after- 
wards he  had  persuaded  Gordon  to  enter  the  Lion's  den,  and  let  Nina  grace  a 
petit  souper  at  No.  10,  Rue  des  Mauvais  Sujets,  Chaussee  d'Antin. 

The  weather  was  delicious,  the  race-ground  full,  if  not  quite  so  crowded  as 
the  Downs  on  Derby  Day.  Ernest  cast  away  his  depression,  he  gave  himself 
up  to  the  joy  of  being  loved,  his  wit  had  never  rung  finer  nor  his  laugh  clearer 
than  as  he  drove  back  to  Paris  opposite  Nina.  He  had  never  felt  in  higher 
spirits  than,  after  having  given  carte  blanche  to  a  cordon  bleu  for  the  entertain- 
ment, he  looked  round  his  salons,  luxurious  as  Engene  Sue's,  and  perfumed  with 
exotics  from  the  Palais  Royal,  and  thought  of  one  rather  different  in  style  to 
the  woman  that  had  been  wont  to  drink  his  Sillery  and  grace  his  symposia. 

He  knew  well  enough  she  loved  him,  and  his  heart  beat  high  as  he  put  a 
bouquet  of  white  flowers  into  a  gold  bouquetiere  to  take  to  her. 

On  his  lover-like  thoughts  the  voice  of  one  of  his  parrots — Ernest  had  al- 
most as  many  pets  as  there  are  Bluette  !  "  Scarce  bleu,  elle  est  jolie  !  Bluette  ! 
Bluette  !  " — in  the  Jardin  des  Plantes — broke  in,  screaming  "  Bluette  !  " 

The  recollection  was  unwelcome.  Vaughan  swore  a  "  scarce  bleu  !  "  too. 
"  Diable  !  she  mustn't  hear  that.  Franfois,  put  that  bird  out  of  the  way.  He 
makes  such  a  confounded  row." 

The  parrot,  fond  of  him,  as  all  things  were  that  knew  him,  sidled  up,  arch- 
ing its  neck,  and  repeating  what  De  Concressault  had  taught  it:  "  Fi  done, 
Ernest !  Tu  es  volage  !  Tu  ne  m'aimes  plus  !  Tu  aimes  Pauline  !  " 

"Devil  take  the  bird  !  "  thought  its  master;  "even  he'll  be  witness  against 
me."  And  as  he  went  down  stairs  to  his  cab,  a  chorus  of  birds  shouting  "  Tu 
aimes  Pauline  !"  followed  him,  and  while  he  laughed,  he  sighed  to  think  that 
even  these  unconscious  things  could  tell  her  how  little  his  love  was  worth.  He 


SLANDER    AND    SILLER  Y.  593 

forgot  all  but  his  love,  however,  when  he  leaned  over  her  chair  in  the  Gaite, 
and  saw  that,  strenuously  as  De  Concressault  and  De  Kerroualle  sought  to  dis- 
tract her  attention,  and  many  as  were  the  lorgnons  levelled  at  the  chevelure 
doree,  all  her  thoughts  and  smiles  were  given  to  him. 

Ernest  had  never,  even  in  his  careless  boyhood,  felt  so  happy  as  he  did  that 
night  as  he  handed  her  into  Gordon's  carriage,  and  drove  to  the  Chaussee 
d'Antin;  and  though  Gordon  sat  there  heavy  and  solemn,  looming  like  an  ice- 
berg on  Ernest's  golden  future,  Vaughan  forgot  him  utterly,  and  only  looked 
at  the  sunshine  beaming  on  him  from  radiant  eyes  that,  skeptic  in  her  sex  as 
he  was  from  experience,  he  felt  would  always  be  true  to  him.  The  carriage 
stopped  at  No.  10,  Rue  des  Mauvais  Sujets.  He  had  given  her  one  or  two  din- 
ners with  the  Senecterre,  the  De  Salvador,  and  other  fine  ladies — grand  affairs 
at  the  Freres  Provencaux  that  would  have  satisfied  Brillat-Savarin — but  she 
had  never  been  to  his  rooms  before,  and  she  smiled  joyously  in  his  face  as  he 
lifted  her  out — the  smile  that  had  first  charmed  him  at  the  Frangais.  He  gave 
her  his  arm,  and  led  her  across  the  salle,  bending  his  head  down  to  whisper  a 
welcome.  Gordon  and  Selina  and  several  men  followed.  Selina  felt  that  it 
was  perdition  to  enter  the  Lion's  den,  but  a  fat  old  vicomte,  on  whom  she'd 
fixed  her  eye,  was  going,  and  the  "  femmes  de  trente  ans  "  that  Balzac  cham- 
pions risk  their  souls  rather  than  risk  their  chances  when  the  day  is  far  spent, 
and  good  offers  grow  rare. 

Ernest's  Abyssinian,  mute,  subordinate  to  that  grand  gentlemen,  M.  Fran- 
cois, ushered  them  up  the  stairs,  making  furtive  signs  to  his  master,  which 
Vaughan  was  too  much  absorbed  to  notice.  Francois,  in  all  his  glory,  flung 
open  the  door  of  the  salon.  In  the  salon  a  sight  met  Ernest's  eyes  which  froze 
his  blood  more  than  if  all  the  dead  had  arisen  out  of  their  graves  on  the  slopes 
of  Pere  la  Chaise. 

The  myriad  of  wax-lights  shone  on  the  rooms,  fragrant  with  the  perfume  of 
exotics,  gleamed  on  the  supper-table,  gorgeous  with  its  gold  plate  and  flowers, 
lighted  up  the  aviary  with  its  brilliant  hues  of  plumage,  and  showed  to  full 
perfection  the  snowy  shoulders,  raven  hair,  and  rose-hued  dress  of  a  woman 
lying  back  in  a  fauteuil,  laughing,  as  De  Cheffontaine,  a  man  but  slightly  known 
to  Ernest,  leaned  over  her,  fanning  her.  On  a  sofa  in  an  alcove  reclined  an- 
other girl,  young,  fair,  and  pretty,  the  amber  mouthpiece  of  a  hookah  between 
her  lips,  and  a  couple  of  young  fellows  at  her  feet. 

The  brunette  was  Bluette,  who  played  the  soubrette  roles  at  the  Odeon;  the 
blonde  was  Celine  Gamelle,  the  new  premiere  danseuse.  Bluette  rose  from 
the  depths  of  her  amber  satin  fauteuil,  with  her  little  pttillant  eyes  laughing, 
and  her  small  plump  hands  stretched  out  in  gesticulation.  "  Me"chant !  Comme 
tu  es  tard,  Ernest.  Nous  avons  ete  ici  si  longtemps — dix  minutes  au  moins  ! 
And  dis  is  you  leetler  new  Ingleesh  friend.  How  do  you  do,  my  dear  ?  " 


594  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

Nina,  white  as  death,  shrank  from  her,  clinging  with  both  hands  to  Ernest's 
arms.  As  pale  as  she,  Vaughan  stood  staring  at  the  actress,  his  lips  pressed 
convulsively  together,  the  veins  standing  out  on  his  broad,  high  forehead.  The 
bold  Lion  hunted  into  his  lair,  for  once  lost  all  power,  all  strength. 

Gordon  looked  over  Nina's  shoulder  into  the  room.  He  recognized  the 
women  at  a  glance,  and,  with  his  heavy  brow  dark  as  night,  he  glared  on  Ernest 
in  a  silence  more  ominous  than  words  or  oaths,  and  snatching  Nina's  arm  from 
his,  he  drew  her  hand  within  his  own,  and  dragged  her  from  the  room. 

Ernest  sprang  after  him.  "  Good  God  !  you  do  not  suppose  me  capable  of 
this.  Stay  one  instant.  Hear  me " 

"Let  us  pass,  sir,"  thundered  Gordon,  "  or  by  Heaven  this  insult  shall  not 
go  unavenged." 

"  Nina,  Nina  !  "  cried  Ernest,  passionately,  "  do  you  at  least  listen  ! — you 
at  least  will  not  condemn " 

Nina  wrenched  her  hands  from  her  father,  and  turned  to  him,  a  passion  of 
tears  falling  down  her  face.  "  No,  no  !  have  I  not  promised  you  ?  " 

With  a  violent  oath  Gordon  carried  her  to  her  carriage.  It  drove  away, 
and  Ernest,  his  lips  set,  his  face  white,  and  a  fierce  glare  in  his  dark  eyes  that 
made  Bluette  and  Cecline  tremble,  entered  his  salons  a  second  time,  so  bitter 
an  anguish,  so  deadly  a  wrath  marked  in  his  expressive  countenance,  that  even 
the  Frenchmen  hushed  their  jests,  and  the  women  shrunk  away,  awed  at  a 
depth  of  feeling  they  could  not  fathom  or  brave. 

The  fierce  anathemas  of  Gordon,  the  "  Christian  "  lamentations  of  Eusebius, 
the  sneers  of  Selina,  the  triumphs  of  Augusta,  all  these  vials  of  wrath  were 
poured  forth  on  Ernest,  in  poor  little  Nina's  ears,  the  whole  of  the  next  day. 
She  had  but  one  voice  among  many  to  raise  in  his  defence,  and  she  had  no 
armor  but  her  faith  in  him.  Gordon  vowed  with  the  same  breath  that  she 
should  never  see  Vaughan  again,  and  that  she  should  engage  herself  to  Rus- 
kinstone  forthwith.  Eusebius  poured  in  at  one  ear  his  mild  milk-and-water  at- 
tachment, and,  in  the  other,  details  of  Ernest's  scene  in  the  boudoir  with 
Madame  de  Melusine,  or,  at  least,  what  he  had  seen  of  it,  /'.  e.  her  parting  caress. 
Selina  rang  the  changes  on  her  immodesty  in  loving  a  man  who  had  never  pro- 
posed to  her;  and  Augusta  drew  lively  pictures  of  the  eternal  fires  which  were 
already  being  kept  up  below,  ready  for  the  Lion's  reception.  Against  all  these 
furious  batteries  Nina  stood  firm.  All  their  sneers  and  arguments  could  not 
shake  her  belief,  all  her  father's  commands — and,  when  he  was  roused,  the  old 
banker  was  very  fierce — could  not  move  her  to  promise  not  to  see  Ernest 
again,  or  alter  her  firm  repudiation  of  the  Warden's  proposals.  The  thunder 
rolled,  the  lightning  flamed,  the  winds  screamed  all  to  no  purpose,  the  little 
reed  that  one  might  have  fancied  would  break,  stood  steady. 

The  day  passed,  and  the  next  passed,  and  there  were  no  tidings  of  Ernest. 


SLANDER    AND     SILLER  Y.  595 

Nina's  little  loyal  heart,  despite  its  unhesitating  faith,  began  to  tremble  lest  it 
should  have  wrecked  itself:  but  then,  she  thought  of  his  eyes,  and  she  felt  that 
all  the  world  would  never  make  her  mistrust  him. 

On  the  surlendemain  the  De  Melusine  called.  Gordon  and  Eusebius  were 
out,  and  Nina  wished  her  to  be  shown  up.  Ill  as  the  girl  felt,  she  rose  haugh- 
tily and  self-possessed  to  greet  madame,  as,  announced  by  her  tall  chasseur, 
with  his  green  plume,  the  widow  glided  into  the  room. 

Pauline  kissed  her  lightly  (there  are  no  end  of  Judases  among  the  dear  sex), 
and,  though  something  in  Nina's  eye  startled  her,  she  sat  down  beside  her,  and 
began  to  talk  most  kindly,  most  sympathizingly.  She  was  chagrinte,  aesolcc 
that  her  chere  Nina  should  have  been  so  insulted ;  every  one  knew  M.  Vaughan 
was  quite  entete  with  that  little,  horrid,  coarse  thing,  Bluette;  but  it  was  cer- 
tainly very  shocking;  men  were  such  demons.  The  affair  was  already  repandue 
in  Paris;  everybody  was  talking  of  it.  Ernest  was  unfortunately  so  well  known; 
he  could  not  be  in  his  senses;  she  almost  wished  he  was  mad,  it  would  be  the 
only  excuse  for  him;  wild  as  he  was,  she  could  scarcely  have  thought,  etc.,  etc., 
etc.  "  Ah  !  chere  enfant,"  madame  went  on  at  the  finish,  "  you  do  not  know 
these  men — I  do.  I  fear  you  have  been  dazzled  by  this  naughty  fellow;  he  is 
very  attractive,  certainly:  if  so,  though  it  will  be  a  sharp  pang,  it  will  be  better 
to  know  his  real  character  at  once.  Voyez  done  !  he  has  been  persuading  you 
that  you  were  all  the  world  to  him,  while  at  the  same  time,  he  has  been  trying 
to  make  me  believe  the  same.  See,  only  two  days  ago  he  sent  me  this." 

She  held  out  a  miniature.  Nina,  who  hitherto  had  listened  in  haughty 
silence,  gave  a  sharp  cry  of  pain  as  she  saw  Vaughan's  graceful  figure,  stately 
head,  and  statue-like  features.  But,  before  the  window  could  pursue  her  ad- 
vantage, Nina  rallied,  threw  back  her  her  head,  and  said,  her  soft  lips  set  sternly: 

"  If  you  repulsed  his  love,  why  was  he  obliged  to  repulse  yours  ?  Why  did 
you  tell  him  on  Saturday  night  that  '  you  had  loved  him  more  than  he  would 
ever  know  now  ? ' ' 

The  shot  Eusebius  had  unconsciously  provided,  struck  home.  Madame  was 
baffled.  Her  eyes  sank  under  Nina's,  and  she  colored  through  her  rouge. 

"You  have  played  two  roles,  madame,"  said  Nina,  rising,  "and  not  played 
them  with  your  usual  skill.  Excuse  my  English  ill-breeding,  if  I  ask  you  to  do 
me  the  favor  of  ending  this  comedy." 

"  Certainly,  mademoiselle,  if  it  is  your  wish,"  answered  the  widow,  now 
smiling  blandly.  "  If  it  please  you  to  be  blind,  I  have  no  desire  to  remove  the 
bandage  from  your  eyes.  Seulement,  je  vous  prie  de  me  pardonner  mon  indis- 
cretion, et  j'ai  1'honneur,  mademoiselle,  de  vous  dire  adieu  !  " 

With  the  lowest  of  reverences  madame  glided  from  the  room,  and,  as  the 
door  closed,  Nina  bowed  her  head  on  the  miniature  left  behind  in  the  de"rvoutc, 
and  burst  into  tears. 


596 


QUID  AS     WORKS. 


Scarcely  had  la  Melusine's  barouche  rolled  away,  when  another  visitor  was 
shown  in,  and  Nina,  brushing  the  tears  from  her  cheeks,  looked  up  hurriedly, 
and  saw  a  small  woman,  finely  dressed,  with  a  Shetland  veil  on,  through  which 
her  small  black  eyes  roved  listlessly. 

"  Mademoiselle,"  she  said,  in  very  quick  but  very  bad  English,  "  I  is  come 
to  warn  you  against  dat  ver  wrong  man,  Mr.  Vaughan.  I  have.like  him,  helas  ! 
I  have  like  him  too  veil,  but  I  do  not  vish  you  to  suffer  too." 

Nina  knew  the  voice  in  a  moment,  and  rose  like  a  little  empress,  though 
she  was  flushed  and  trembling.  "  I  wish  to  hear  nothing  of  Mr.  Vaughan. 
If  this  is  the  sole  purport  of  your  visit,  I  shall  be  obliged  by  your  leaving  me," 

"  But  mademoiselle " 

"  I  have  told  you  I  wish  to  hear  nothing,"  interposed  Nina,  quietly. 
"Ver  veil,  ma'amselle;  den  read  dat.     It  is  a  copy,  and  I  got  de  original." 
She  laid  a  letter  on  the  sofa  beside  Nina.     Two  minutes  after,  Bluette 
joined  her  friend  Celine  Gamelle  in  a  fiacre,  and  laughed  heartily,  clapping 
her  little  plump  hands.      "Ah,    mon  Dieu!      Celine,   comme   elle   est   fiere, 
la  petite!     Je  ne  lui  ai  pas  dit  un  seul  mot — elle  m'a  arretee  si  vite!     Mais  la 
lettre  fera  notre  affaire  n'est  pas?     Oui,  oui!  " 

The  letter  unfolded  in  Nina's  hand.  It  was  a  promise  of  marriage  from 
Ernest  Vaughan  to  Bluette  Lemaire.  Voiceless  and  tearless,  Nina  sat  gazing 
on  the  paper:  first  she  rose,  gasping  for  breath;  then  she  threw  herself  down, 
sobbing  convulsively,  till  she  heard  a  step,  caught  up  the  miniature  and  letter, 
dreading  to  see  her  father,  and,  instead,  saw  Ernest,  pale,  worn,  deep  lines  round 
his  mouth  and  eyes,  standing  in  the  doorway.  Involuntarily  she  sprang  towards 
him.  Ernest  pressed  her  to  heart,  and  his  hot  tears  fell  on  the  chevelure  doree, 
as  he  bent  over  her,  murmuring,  "  You  have  not  deserted  me.  God  bless  you 
for  your  noble  faith."  At  last  he  put  her  gently  from  him,  and,  leaning  against 
the  mantel-piece,  said,  with  an  effort,  between  his  teeth,  "  Nina,  I  came  to  bid 
you  farewell,  and  to  ask  your  forgiveness  for  the  wrong  I  have  done  you." 

Nina  caught  hold  of  him,  much  as  Malibran  seized  hold  of  Elvino:  "  Leave 
me  !  leave  me  !  No,  no;  you  cannot  mean  it !  " 

"  I  have  no  strength  for  it  now  I  see  you,"  said  Ernest,  looking  down  into 
her  eyes;  and  the  bold,  reckless  Lion  shivered  under  the  clinging  clasp  of  her 
little  hands.  "  I  need  not  say  I  was  not  the  cause  of  the  insult  you  received 
the  other  night.  Pauline  de  Melusine  was  the  agent,  women  willing  to  injure 
me  the  actors  in  it.  But  there  is  still  much  for  you  to  forgive.  Tell  me,  at 
once,  what  have  you  heard  of  me  ? " 

She  silently  put  the  miniature  and  letter  in  his  hand.  The  blood  rushed  to 
his  very  temples,  and,  sinking  his  head  on  his  arms,  his  chest  rose  and  fell  with 
uncontrollable  sobs.  All  the  pent-up  feelings  of  his  vehement  and  affectionate 
nature  poured  out  at  last. 


SLANDER    AND     SILLERY.  597 

"  And  you  have  not  condemned  me  even  on  these  ? "  he  said  at  length,  in  a 
hoarse  whisper. 

"  Did  I  not  promise  ?  "  she  murmured. 

"But  if  I  told  you  they  were  true?" 

She  looked  at  him  through  her  tears,  and  put  her  hand  in  his.  "  Tell  me 
nothing  of  your  past;  it  can  make  no  difference  to  my  love.  Let  the  world 
judge  you  as  it  may,  it  cannot  alter  me." 

Ernest  strained  her  to  him.  kissing  her  wildly.  "  God  bless  you  for  your 
trust !  would  to  God  I  were  more  worthy  of  it !  I  have  nothing  to  give  you 
but  a  love  such  as  I  have  never  before  known;  but  most  would  tell  you 
all  my  love  is  worthless,  and  my  life  has  been  one  of  reckless  dissipation  and 
of  darker  errors  still,  until  you  awoke  me  to  a  deeper  love — to  thoughts 
and  aspirationsthat  I  thought  had  died  out  forever.  Painful  as  it  is  to 
confess " 

"  Hush  !  "  interrupted  Nina,  gently.  "  Confess  nothing;  with  your  past 
life  I  can  have  nothing  to  do,  and  I  wish  never  to  hear  anything  that  it  gives 
you  pain  to  tell.  You  say  that  you  love  me  now,  and  will  never  love  another 
— that  is  enough  for  me." 

Ernest  kissed  the  flushed  cheeks  and  eloquent  lips,  and  thanked  her  with 
all  the  fiery  passion  that  was  in  him;  and  his  heart  throbbed  fiercely  as  he  put 
her  promise  to  the  test. 

"  No,  my  darling  !  Priceless  as 'your  love  is  to  me  I  will  not  buy  it  by  con- 
cealment. I  will  not  sully  your  ears  with  the  details  of  my  life.  God  forbid  I 
should  !  hut  it  is  only  due  to  you  to  know  that  I  did  give  both  these  women 
the  love-tokens  they  brought  you.  Love  !  It  is  desecration  of  the  name,  but 
I  knew  none  better  then  !  Three  years  ago,  Bluette  Lemaire  first  appeared  at 
the  Odeon.  She  is  illiterate,  coarse,  heartless,  but  she  was  handsome,  and  she 
drew  me  to  the  coulisses.  I  was  infatuated  with  her,  though  her  ignorance 
and  vulgarity  constantly  grated  against  all  my  tastes.  One  night  at  her  petit 
souper  I  drank  more  Sillery  than  was  wise.  I  have  a  stronger  head  than  most 
men:  perhaps  there  was  some  other  stimulant  in  it;  at  any  rate,  she  who  was 
then  poor,  and  is  always  avaricious,  got  from  me  a  promise  to  marry  her,  or  to 
pay  twenty  thousand  francs.  Three  months  after  I  gave  it  I  cared  no  more 
for  her  than  for  my  old  glove.  France  is  too  wise  to  have  Breach  of  Promise 
cases,  and  give  money  to  coarse  and  vengeful  women  for  their  pretended 
broken  hearts;  but  I  had  no  incentive  to  create  a  scene  by  breaking  with  her, 
and  so  she  kept  the  promise  in  her  hands.  What  Pauline  de  Melusine  is,  you 
can  judge.  Twelve  months  ago  I  met  her  at  Vichy;  the  love  she  gave  me,  and 
the  love  I  vowed  her,  were  of  eqnal  value — the  love  of  Paris  boudoirs.  That 
I  sent  her  that  picture  only  two  days  ago,  is,  of  course,  false.  On  my  word, 
as  a  man  of  honor,  since  the  moment  I  felt  your  influence  upon  me  I  have 


598  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

shunned  her.  Now,  my  own  love,  you  know  the  truth.  Will  you  send  me 
from  you,  or  will  you  still  love  and  still  forgive  ? " 

In  an  agony  of  suspense  he  bent  his  head  to  listen  for  her  answer.  Tears 
rained  down  her  cheeks  as  she  put  her  arms  round  his  neck,  and  whispered: 

"  Why  ask  ?  Are  you  not  all  the  world  to  me  ?  I  should  love  you  little  if 
I  condemned  you  for  any  errors  of  your  past.  I  know  your  warm  and  noble 
heart,  and  I  trust  to  it  without  a  fear.  There  is  no  doubt  between  us  now  !  " 

Oh,  my  prudent  and  conventional  young  ladies,  standing  ready  to  accuse 
my  poor  little  Nina,  are  you  any  wiser  in  your  generation  ?  You  have  had  all 
nature  taken  out  of  you  by  "finishing,"  whose  heads  are  crammed  with 
"  society's "  laws,  and  whose  affections  are  measured  out  by  rule,  who  would 
have .  been  cold,  and  dignified,  and  read  Ernest  a  severe  lesson,  and  sent  him 
back  hopeless  and  hardened  to  go  ten  times  worse  than  he  had  gone  before — 
believe  me,  that  impulse  points  truer  than  "  the  world,"  and  that  the  dictates  of 
the  heart  are  better  than  the  regulations  of  society.  Take  my  word  for  it,  that 
love  will  do  more  for  a  man  than  lectures;  and  faith  in  him  be  more  likely  to 
keep  him  straight  than  all  your  moralizing;  and  before  you  judge  him  severely 
for  having  drunk  a  little  too  deep  of  the  Sillery  of  life,  remember  that  his 
temptations  are  not  your  temptations,  nor  his  way  your  ways,  and  be  gentle  to 
dangers  which  society  and  custom  keep  out  of  your  own  path.  The  stern  thorn 
crows  you  offer  to  us  when  we  are  inclined  to  ask  your  absolution,  are  not  the 
right  means  to  win  us  from  the  rose  wreaks  of  our  bacchanalia. 

Nina,  as  you  see,  loved  her  Lion  too  well  to  remember  dignity,  or  take  her 
stand  on  principle;  and  gallantly  did  the  young  lady  stand  the  bombard- 
ment from  all  sides  that  sought  to  break  her  resolutions  and  crash  her  "  mis- 
placed affections."  Gordon  chanced  to  come  in  that  day  and  light  upon  Ernest, 
and  the  fury  into  which  he  worked  himself  ill  beseemed  so  respectable  a  phar- 
isee.  Vaughan  kept  tranquilly  haughty,  and  told  the  banker,  calmly,  that  he 
"  thanked  God  he  had  his  daughter's  love,  and  his  money  he  would  never  have 
stooped  to  accept."  Gordon  forbade  him  the  house,  and  carried  Nina  back  to 
England;  but  before  she  went  they  had  a  parting  interview,  in  which  Ernest 
offered  to  leave  her  free.  But  such  freedom  would  have  been  worse  than  death 
to  Nina,  and,  before  they  separated,  she  told  him  that  in  three  months  more  she 
would  be  of  age,  and  then,  come  what  might,  she  would  be  his  if  he  would  take 
her  without  wealth.  Take  her  he  would  have  done  from  the  arms  of  Satanus 
himself,  but  to  disentangle  himself  from  all  his  difficulties  was  a  task  that  beat 
the  Augean  stables  hollow.  The  three  months  of  his  probation  he  worked  hard; 
he  sold  off  all  his  pictures,  his  stud,  and  his  meubles;  he  sold,  what  cost  him  a 
more  bitter  pang,  his  encumbered  estates  in  Surrey;  he  paid  off  all  his  debts, 
Bluette's  twenty  thousand  francs  included;  and  shaking  himself  free  of  the 
accumulated  embarrassments  of  fifteen  years,  he  crossed  the  water  to  claim  his 


SLANDER    AND    SILLER  Y.  599 

last  love.  No  poor  little  Huguenot  was  ever  persecuted  for  her  faith  more  than 
poor  little  Nina  for  her  engagement.  Every  relative  she  had  thought  it  his 
duty  to  write  admonitory  letters,  plentifully  interspersed  with  texts.  Eusebius 
and  his  4000!.  a  year,  and  his  perspective  bishopric;  were  held  up  before  her 
from  morning  to  night;  the  banker,  whose  deception  in  the  Melusine  had 
turned  him  into  sharper  vinegar  than  before,  told  her  with  chill  stoicism  that 
she  must  of  course  choose  her  own  path  in  life,  but  that  if  that  path  led  her  into 
the  Chaussee  d'Antin,  she  need  never  expect  a  sou  from  him,  for  all  his  property 
would  be  divided  between  her  two  brothers.  But  Nina  was  neither  to  be 
frightened  nor  bribed.  She  kept  true  to  her  lover,  and  disinherited  herself. 

They  were  married  a  week  or  two  after  Nina's  majority;  and  Gordon  knew 
it,  though  he  could  not  prevent  it.  They  did  not  miss  the  absence  of  brides- 
maides,  Bishop,  dejeuner,  and  the  usual  fashionable  crowd.  It  was  a  marriage 
of  the  heart,  you  see,  and  did  not  want  the  trappings  v/ith  which  they  gild  that 
bitter  pill  so  often  swallowed  nowadays — a  "  mariage  de  convenance."  Nina, 
as  she  saw  further  still  into  the  wealth  of  deep  feeling  and  strong  affection 
which,  at  her  touch,  she  had  awoke  in  his  heart,  felt  that  money,  and  friends, 
and  the  world's  smile  were  well  lost  since  she  had  won  him.  And  Ernest — 
Ernest's  sacrifice  was  greater;  for  it  is  not  a  little  thing,  young  ladies,  for  a 
man  to  give  up  his  accustomed  freedom  and  luxuries,  and  careless  vie  de  gar- 
<pon,  and  to  have  to  think  and  work  for  another,  even  though  dearer  than  him- 
self. But  he  had  long  since  seen  so  much  of  life,  had  exhausted  all  its  pleasures 
so  rapidly,  that  they  palled  upon  him,  and  for  some  time  he  had  vaguely 
wanted  something  of  deeper  interest,  of  warmer  sympathy.  Unknown  to  him- 
self, he  had  felt  the  "  besoin  d'etre  aime  " — a  want  the  trash  offered  him  by 
the  women  of  his  acquaintance  could  never  satisfy — and  his  warm,  passionate 
nature,  found  rest  in  a  love  which,  though  the  strongest  of  his  life,  was  still 
returned  to  him  fourfold. 

After  some  months  of  delicious/ar  niente  in  the  south  of  France,  they  came 
back  to  Paris.  Though  anything  but  rich,  he  was  not  absolutely  poor,  after  he 
had  paid  his  debts,  and  the  necessity  to  exertion  rousing  his  dormant  talents,  the 
Lion  turned  litterateur.  He  was  too  popular  with  men  to  be  dropped  because 
he  had  sold  his  stud  or  given  up  his  petits  soupers.  The  romance  of  their  story 
charmed  the  Parisians,  and,  though  (behind  his  back)  they  sometimes  jested 
about  the  "  Lion  amoureux,"  there  were  not  a  few  who  envied  him  his  young 
love,  and  the  sunshine  that  shone  round  them  in  his  expensive  apartement  garni. 

Ernest  was  singularly  happy — and  suddenly  he  became  the  star  of  the 
literary,  as  he  had  been  of  the  fashionable  world.  His  mots  were  repeated, 
his  vaudevilles  applauded,  his  feuilletons  adored.  The  world  smiled  on  Nina 
and  her  Lion;  it  made  little  difference  to  them — they  had  been  as  contented 
when  it  frowned. 


600  OUIDAS     WORKS. 

But  it  made  a  good  deal  of  difference  across  the  Channel.  Gordon  began 
to  repent.  Ernest's  family  was  high,  his  Austrian  connections  very  aristo- 
cratic: there  would  be  something  after  all  in  belonging  to  a  man  so  well  known. 
(Be  successful,  ami  lecteur,  and  all  your  relatives  will  love  you.)  Besides,  he 
had  found  out  that  it  is  no  use  to  put  your  faith  in  princes,  or  clergymen.  Euse- 
bius  had  treated  him  very  badly  when  he  found  he  could  not  get  Nina  and 
her  money,  and  spoke  against  the  poor  banker  everywhere,  calling  him,  with 
tender  pastoral  regret,  a  "  worldly  Egyptian,"  a  "  Dives,"  a  "  whitened  sepul- 
chre," and  all  the  rest  of  it. 

Probably,  too,  stoic  though  he  was,  he  missed  the  chevelure  doree;  at  any 
rate,  he  wrote  to  her  stiffly,  but  kindly,  and  settled  two  thousand  a  year  upon 
her.  Vaughan  was  very  willing  she  should  be  friends  with  her  father,  but 
nothing  would  make  him  draw  a  sou  of  the  money.  So  Nina — the  only  sly 
thing  she  ever  did  in  her  life — after  a  while  contrived  to  buy  back  the  Surrey 
estate,  and  gave  it  to  him,  with  no  end  of  prayers  and  caresses,  on  the  Jour  de 
1'An. 

"  And  you  do  not  regret,  my  darling,"  smiled  Ernest,  after  wishing  her  the 
new  year's  wishes,  "  having  forgiven  me  for  once  drinking  too  much  Sillery, 
and  all  the  other  naughty  things  of  my  vie  de  garcon  ?  " 

"  Regret ! "  interrupted  Nina,  vehemently — "  regret  that  I  have  won  your 
love,  live  your  life,  share  your  cares  and  joys,  regret  that  my  existence  is  one 
long  day  of  sunshine  ?  Oh,  why  ask  !  you  know  I  can  never  repay  you  for  the 
happiness  of  my  life." 

"  Rather  can  I  never  repay  you,"  said  Vaughan,  looking  down  into  her  eyes, 
"  for  the  faith  that  made  you  brave  calumny  and  opposition,  and  cling  to  my 
side  despite  all.  I  was  heart-sick  of  the  world,  and  you  called  me  back  to  life. 
I  was  weary  of  the  fools  who  misjudged  me,  and  I  let  them  think  me  what  they 
might." 

"  Ah,  how  happy  you  make  me  !  "  cried  Nina.  "  I  should  have  been  little 
worthy  of  your  love  if  I  had  suffered  slander  to  warp  me  against  you,  or  if  any 
revelations  you  cared  enough  for  me  to  make  of  your  past  life,  had  parted  us: 

Love  is  not  love 

That  alters  where  it  alteration  finds, 

Or  bends  with  the  remover  to  remove. 

There,  monsieur  !  "  she  said,  throwing  her  arms  round  him  with  a  laugh,  while 
happy  tears  stood  in  her  eyes — "  there  is  a  grand  quotation  for  you.  Mind  and 
take  care,  Ernest,  that  you  never  realize  the  Ruskinstone  predictions,  and  make 
me  repent  having  caught  and  caged  such  a  terrible  thing  as  a  hunted  PARIS 
LION  ! " 


BLUE    AND     YELLOW.  601 


BLUE    AND    YELLOW. 


I. 

FITZ    GOES  DOWN   BY   THE   EXPRESS,    AND    MAKES   AN    ACQUAINTANCE    EN    ROUTE. 

THERE  was  to  be  an  Election.  The  Lords  and  Commons  hadn't  hit  it;  one 
hon.  gentleman  had  blackguarded  another  hon.  gentleman;  the  big  school- 
boys of  St.  Stephen's  had  thrown  stones  at  each  other,  and  as  they  all  lived  in 
glass  houses,  the  practice  was  dangerous;  the  session  had  not  benefited  the 
country — so  far  as  the  country  could  see — one  bit;  the  Times  opined  that  the 
nation  was  going  to  the  dogs,  and  suggested  that  parliament  should  dissolve. 
The  Times  is  Caesar  nowadays,  so  parliament  obeyed,  broke  itself  up,  and  ap- 
pealed to  the  country — i.  e.  set  the  Carlton  and  Reform  counting  up  their 
money,  the  lawyers  quarrelling  for  all  the  dirty  work,  and  the  io/.  voters  look- 
ing out  for  XXX  and  rivers,  and  the  country  responded  promptly,  loving  a 
tussle  as  dearly  as  a  beagle,  by  sharpening  its  bowie-knives  for  the  contest, 
wondering  who  would  buy  its  votes  the  highest,  and  hunting  up  its  stock  of 
Blue  and  Yellow  banners. 

"  So  the  governor  wants  me  to  stand  for  Cantitborough.  I'm  not  sure  I 
won't.  I'm  confoundedly  tired  of  this  life  year  after  year.  Perhaps  the  elec- 
tion will  give  me  a  little  fun.  What  do  you  say,  Lady  Fanny  ?  began  my 
brother  Fitz  one  morning,  lying  reading  the  Field  and  drinking  strong  coffee 
with  brandy  in  it  by  way  of  breakfast,  when  I  called  on  him  in  his  chambers  in 
the  Albany. 

This  atrocious  sobriquet  of  "  Lady  Fanny  "  arose  simply,  be  it  known,  from 
the  fact  of  my  name  being  Francis,  and  from  no  womanish  tendencies  or  taste 
for  ass's  milk,  like  my  namesake  of  the  Hervey  family.  If  any  of  us  had 
shown  an  effeminate  turn,  I  believe  the  governor  would  have  shot  him  straight 
away  as  unfit  to  cumber  the  earth. 

"  Well,"  I  answered,  "  I  think  I  would  if  I  were  you,  if  you  don't  mind 


602 


QUID  AS     WORKS. 


spending  a  couple  of  thousand  or  so  to  buy  two  little  letters  to  stick  after  your 
name,  and  have  no  objection  to  being  cooped  up  on  field-nights  while  the  old 
women  badger  each  other.  We  may  have  some  jolly  fun  cajoling  the  indepen- 
dent electors,  and  making  love  to  their  wives  and  daughters." 

"  I  think  I  will,"  said  Fitz,  twisting  a  refractory  leaf  around  his  weed.  "  I 
want  something  to  do;  and,  besides,  if  I'm  a  member,  they  won't  be  able  to  put 
me  in  quod,  that's  a  grand  consideration.  The  town's  so  confoundedly  Tory 
though,  there'll  be  no  end  of  opposition.  We  shall  set  them  all  together  by  the 
ears,  the  Blues  and  Yellows  won't  speak  for  years,  and  I  shall  be  written  up  in 
the  Canlitborough  Post  as  a  leveller,  a  socialist,  a  skeptic,  a  democrat,  and  all 
the  delicious  names  that  the  slow  coaches  call  anybody  who's  a  little  wide 
awake  and  original.  Yes,  I  think  I'll  put  up  for  it." 

"  Who  contests  it  with  you  ?  "  said  I.  I  was  just  home  from  a  reading  tour 
(where,  by-the-by,  we  read  not  at  all,  but  smoked  and  fished  determinedly) 
with  some  Trinity  men,  and  knew  nothing  about  my  native  county. 

"There  are  two  of  "em,"  answered  Fitz;  "one  an  old  Indian,  Tory  out- 
and-out,  worth  a  million,  and  consequently  worshipped  by  his  neighbors,  at 
whom,  I  believe,  when  heated  with  overmuch  curry  and  cognac,  he  swears 
more  than  is  customary  in  these  polite  times.  The  next  is  a  boy,  just  one-and- 
twenty — you  know  him,  Cockadoodle's  son.  He  was  in  petticoats  the  other 
day,  but,  as  his  father's  an  Earl,  he's  to  be  transplanted  from  the  nursery  to 
the  Commons  without  any  intermediate  education.  The  other  is  that  sneaking 
thing,  that  compromise  between  right  and  wrong,  that  hybrid  animal,  a  Liberal- 
Conservative.  You  know  him,  too,  Augustus  Le  Hoop  Smith;  that  creature 
who  made  his  tin  by  wool,  or  something  horrid,  and  bought  Foxley,  and  set  up 
as  the  patriarchal  father  of  his  people,  in  the  new-fangled  country  squire  style, 
with  improved  drainage,  model  cottages,  prize  laborers,  and  all  the  rest  of  it. 
Two  of  us  must  go  to  the  wall.  I  shall  like  the  fight,  and  you'll  do  the  chief 
of  the  canvassing;  mind,  I'm  no  hand  at  soft-soaping.  All  I  engage  to  do  is 
to  kiss  any  pretty  woman  there  may  be  in  the  place." 

"You're  very  kind,  taking  the  fun  and  giving  me  the  work.  I  suppose  you 
know  you'll  have  to  shake  hands  with  every  one  of  the  Great  Unwashed." 

"  Brutes  ! "  rejoined  Fitz,  who  was  popularly  supposed  to  be  a  Socialist  and 
Democrat;  "  I'll  see  them  all  hanged  first  !  " 

"  And  you  must  joke  with  the  butchers,  and  have  a  glass  with  the  coal- 
heavers,  and  make  friends  with  the  sweeps." 

"  I'd  sooner  lose  my  election,"  rejoined  the  Republican. 

"  And  you  must  kiss  a  baby  or  two." 

The  horror,  loathing,  and  disgust  expressed  on  Fitz's  face  were  as  good  to 
see  as  "  Box  and  Cox." 

"  Not  to  get  the  premiership  would  I  touch  one  of  the  brats.     Faugh  !    I'd 


BLUE    AND     YELLOW.  (JO:j 

lose  my  seat  fifty  times  over.     Of  all  the  loathsome  ideas  !     If  you've  nothing 
pleasanter  to  suggest,  Fan,  you'd  better  get  out  of  the  room,  if  you  please." 

"  Thank  you.  Don't  you  remember  the  sensation  Mr.  Samuel  Slunkey  pro- 
duced by  like  caresses  in  Pickwick?  " 

"Pickwick  go  to  the  devil,  and  you  too  !  I  shall  do  nothing  more  than  give 
them  my  tin,  as  everything  is  bought  and  sold  nowadays,  and  tell  them  I  shall 
vote  for  free  trade,  cheap  divorces,  marriage  with  whoever  one  likes,  religious 
toleration — in  fact,  for  liberty,  '  liberte  cherie,'  for  everything  and  everybody. 
Then,  if  they  don't  like  my  opinions,  they  can  have  the  Liberal  Conservative 
instead,  /shan't  care  two  straws." 

"  Admirably  philosophic  !  It's  lucky  you're  not  going  to  try  the  county. 
The  farmers  and  clericals  wouldn't  have  you  at  any  price.  You  cut  at  the  root 
of  their  monopoly — corn-laws  and  tithes,  church-rates  and  protection.  How- 
ever, the  more  fight  the  more  fun.  We  shall  be  like  a  couple  of  terriers  in  a 
barn  full  of  rats.  When  shall  we  go  down  ?  " 

"  Tuesday.     I  shall  go  to  Hollywood,  it's  a  snug  little  box,  and  so  much 
closer  the  town  than  the  governor's;  and  as  he's  so  ill,  poor  chap,  he  won't  want 
the  bother  of  us.     I  mean  to  have  little  Beauclerc  as  my  agent;  he  was  with 
me  at  Eton,  and  is  the  sharpest  dog  in  Lincoln's  Inn.     That's  enough  business 
for  to-day,  Fan.     I'm  now  going  to  Tattersall's  to   look  at  a  roan  filly  to  run 
tandem  with  Rumpunch;  then  I'm  to  meet  my  lady  Frisette  in  the  Pantheon  at 
two;  and  at  five  I'm  going  to  dine  at  the  Castle  with  Grouse  and  some  other 
men.     So  ring  the  bell  for  Soames,  and  order  trie  cab  round,  there's  a  good  boy." 
My   brother  (Randolph   Fitzhardinge,  according  to  the  register  and  his 
visiting  cards,  but  to  us  and  to  everybody  briefly   Fitz)  is  a  fine,  tall,  handsome 
fellow,  a  trifle  bronzed,  and  more  than  a  trifle  blase,  with  aquiline  features,  a 
devil-may-care  expression,  and  a  figure  not  beat  in  the  Guards.     He  has  been 
amusing  himself  about  in  the  world  ever  since  he  left  Christ  Church,  ten  years 
ago,  and  as  he  will  come  into  i2,ooo/.  a  year  whenever  the  governor  leaves  him 
to  reign  in  his  stead,  has  not  thought  himself  necessitated  to  do  more  than  live 
in  the  Albany,  hunt  with  the  Pitchley,  lounge  in  the  "  bay-window,"  habituate 
the  coulisses,  and  employ  all  the  other  ingenious  methods  for  killing  time  in- 
vented by  men  about  town.     He  is  a  good  old  fellow,  is  Fitz,  and  the  govern- 
or's favorite,  which  I  don't  wonder  at,  though  I  believe   Fitz  has  been  more 
trouble  to  him  than  any  of  us,  as  far  as  I  O  Us  and  screws  at  Newmarket  and 
Doncaster  go.     But  he's  the  best  oar  in  the  Blue-Jersey  B.  C.,  the  firmest  seat 
and  the  lightest  hand  in  the  county,  as  good  a  batsman  as  any  in  Lord's  Eleven, 
and  these  cover  a  multitude  of  sins  in  the  governor's  eyes;  to  say  nothing  that 
Fitz  is  as  clear-headed,  generous-hearted,  plucky  a  fellow  as  any  man  I   know 
— and  I've  a  right  to  think  so,  for  Fitz  used  to  tip  me  royally  when   I  was  a 
little  chap  under  my  sisters'  governess  (by  George!  how  I  did  hate  that  woman, 


604 


OV 'IDA'S     WORKS. 


a  horrid  Wurtemburger,  with  red  hair),  and  he  a  six-foot  Etonian  just  going 
up  to  Oxford.  Besides,  when  I  was  in  that  devil  of  a  mess  for  tying  up  old 
Burton,  the  proctor  to  his  own  knocker,  was  it  not  Fitz  who  set  it  square  with 
the  governor  ?  and  when  I  dropped  a  couple  of  hundred  over  the  Cambridge 
Stakes,  backing  Mosella,  who  was  scarcely  fit  for  a  cab-horse,  did  not  Fitz 
lend  me  the  damage,  with  payment  postponed  ad  infinitum,  though  he  was 
nearly  cleaned  out  at  the  time  himself  ? 

Tuesday  came,  and  Fitz  (leaving  Lady  Frisette  dissolved  in  tears  in  her 
boudoir,  which  tears,  no  doubt,  were  dried  as  soon  as  his  back  was  turned, 
as  being  no  longer  necessary,  and  destructive  to  rouge  and  beauty,)  with 
Beauclerc  and  myself — and  Rumpunch  and  the  new  filly  in  a  horse-box — put 
himself  in  the  express  for  Pottleshire. 

We  had  a  carriage  to  ourselves,  and  of  course,  as  soon  as  we  were  out  of 
Paddington,  took  out  our  pipes  and  began  to  enjoy  a  quiet  smoke. 

"  I  do  wish,"  began,  Fitz,  opening  the  window  and  taking  off  his  cap,  for 
it  was  a  hot  June  afternoon,  "  they'd  keep  a  carriage,  as  they  do  in  Venice,  for 
the  muffs  that  can't  stand  the  sweet  odors  of  regalia,  and  not  sacrifice  us  by 
boxing  us  up  without  a  weed  for  four,  six,  perhaps  twelve  hours,  or  else  making 
us  pay  5/.  for  other  people's  olfactory  fancies.  I  wonder  somebody  don't  take 
it  up.  They  write  a  lot  of  nonsense  about  this  nuisance  and  that  evil,  that 
they're  great  idiots  to  notice  at  all;  but  if  they  would  write  up  the  crying  in- 
justice to  smokers  on  British  railways,  there'd  be  something  like  a  case — the 
Woolwich  flogging's  nothing  to  it." 

"  Wait  till  we've  got  the  election,  and  then  send  a  letter  to  the  Times  about 
it,  signed  '  M  P.,'  or  a  '  Lover  of  Justice,'  "  said  Beauclerc,  a  'cute  little  fellow, 
fast  as  a  telegraph,  and  sharp  as  a  ferret's  bite. 

"  I'll  get  up  a  petition  rather,  signed  by  all  smokers,  and  addressed  to  all 
the  directors.  I  think  we're  pretty  safe  for  to-day.  I  don't  fancy  the  express 
stops  at  more  than  a  couple  of  stations  between  this  and  Cantitborough,  so  we 
are  not  likely  to  have  any  women  to  bore  us.  I  detest  travelling  with Vomen," 
said  Fitz,  looking  out  of  the  window  as  if  he  dreaded  an  advent  of  feminines 
along  the  telegraph  wires.  "  You  have  to  put  out  your  pipe,  offer  them  your 
Punch,  and  squeeze  into  nothing  to  make  room  for  their  crinoline.  Let's  look 
at  the  Bradshaw.  No!  we  only  stop  twice:  thought  so.  It  will  certainly  be 
odd  if  we  can't  keep  the  carriage  to  ourselves." 

With  which  unchivalrous  sentiment  Fitz  poked  up  his  pipe,  cut  the  paper 
with  his  ticket,  and  settled  himself  comfortably.  Twenty  minutes  after,  the 
engine  gave  a  shriek,  which  woke  him  out  of  his  serenity. 

"  Here's  Bottleston,  confound  it !  "  cried  Fitz.  "  I  know  the  place— there's 
never  anybody  but  a  farmer  or  two  for  the  second  class.  No  fear  of  crinoline 
out  of  these  wilds." 


BLUE    AND     YELLOW.  005 

Fitz  made  rather  too  sure.  As  we  hissed,  and  whistled,  and  panted,  and 
puffed  into  the  station,  what  should  we  see  on  the  platform  but  six  women — 
absolutely  six — talking  and  laughing  together,  with  a  maid  and  a  lot  of  luggage 
cased  up,  after  the  custom  of  females,  in  brown  holland,  as  if  the  boxes  had 
put  on  smock-frocks  by  mistake.  Fitz  swore  mildly  as  he  took  his  pipe  out  of 
his  mouth,  and  leaned  forward  to  show  as  if  the  carriage  was  full.  Not  a  bit 
of  use  was  it — with  the  instinctive  obstinacy  of  her  sex,  up  to  our  very  door 
came  one  of  the  fatal  half  dozen. 

"  There's  room  in  here,  Timbs,"  she  said,  with  the  supremest  tranquillity, 
motioning  to  her  maid  to  put  in  the  hundred  things — bouquet,  dressing-case, 
book,  travelling-bag,  and  Heaven  knows  what,  with  which  young  ladies  will 
cumber  themslves  on  a  jounery  of  half  an  hour. 

"  The  perfume  is  extremely  like  that  of  a  tobacco-shop,  where  there  is 
a  license  to  smoke  on  the  premises,"  whispered  the  intruder  to  one  of  her  com- 
panions—all pretty  women,  by-the-by — with  a  significant  glance  at  us. 

The  whistle  screamed — the  young  ladies  bid  each  other  good-by  with  frantic 
haste  and  great  enthusiasm — the  train  started,  throwing  the  maid  into  Beau's 
arms,  who  (as  she  was  thirty  and  red-headed)  was  not  grateful  for  the  accident, 
and  her  mistress  seated  herself  opposite  Fitz  and  began  to  pay  great  attention 
to  a  poodle  imprisoned  in  a  basket,  and  very  prone  to  rebel  against  his  incar- 
ceration. 

"  That  little  brute  will  yap  all  the  way,  I  suppose  ?  "  muttered  Fitz,  looking 
supremely  haughty  and  stiltified. 

The  dog's  owner  glanced  up  quickly.     "  Dauphin  never  annoys  any  one." 

Fitz,  cool  as  he  was,  looked  caught,  bent  his  head,  and  putting  his  pipe  in 
his  pocket  with  a  sigh,  stuck  his  glass  in  his  eye  and  calmly  criticised  the  young 
lady. 

She  was  decidedly  good  style,  with  large  bright  hazel  eyes  and  hair  to 
match,  and  was  extremely  well  got  up  in  a  hat  with  drooping  feathers,  -and  one 
of  those  pretty  tight  jackets  that,  I  presume,  the  girls  wear  to  show  their  figures. 
She  was  pretty  enough  to  console  Beau  for  the  loss  of  his  smoke,  and  even  Fitz 
thawed  a  little,  and  actually  went  the  length  of  offering  her  (with  his  grandest 
air,  though,)  the  Athenaum  he  was  reading.  After  a  time  he  dropped  a  mono- 
syllable or  two  about  the  weather;  she  was  ready  enough  to  talk,  like  a  sensi- 
ble little  thing — I  hate  that  "  silent  system  "  of  John  Bull  and  his  daughters— 
and  in  half  an  hour  Fitz  had  examined  and  admired  the  poodle  and  was 
forgetting  his  lost  pipe  in  chatting  with  the  poodle's  mistress,  when  he  somehow 
or  other  got  upon  the  general  election. 

"We  are  all  excitement,"  laughed  the  young  lady,  whose  cameriste,  by  the 
way,  looked  rather  glum  on  our  conversation.  "  It  is  quite  delightful  to  have 
anything  to  stir  up  this  unhappy  county.  I  have  only  lived  in  it  six  months, 


GOG 


QUID  AS     WORKS. 


but  I  am  sure  it  is  the  dullest  place  in  the  world— the  North  Pole  couldn't  be 

worse." 

«  Is  it  indeed  ?  "  said  Fitz.     "  Pray  can  you  tell  me  who  are  the  candidates  ? ' 

"  General  Salter,  Mr.  Fitzhardinge,  Lord  Verdant,  and  a  Mr.  Smith— Le 
Hoop  Smith,  I  mean;  I  beg  his  pardon!  " 

"  May  I  ask  whom  you  favor  with  your  good  wishes  ?  " 

"  They  are  none  of  them  worth  much,  I  fancy,"  she  answered.  Mr.  Fitz- 
hardinge, I  understand,  is  the  only  clever  one;  but  everybody  says  he  is  good 

for  nothing." 

"  Not  exactly  the  man  to  be  a  member,  then,"  observed  Fitz,  gravely, 
stroking  the  poodle.  "  What  is  said  against  him  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know,  they  call  him  extravagant,  skeptic,  socialist,  republican— 
in  fact,  there  is  no  name  they  don't  give  him.  I  think  he  would  do  Pottleshire 
good  for  that  very  reason;  it  wants  something  original." 

"  Then  you  are  a  Radical,"  smiled  Fitz. 

She  smiled  too. 

"  It  is  treason  for  me  to  say  so;  we  are  all  Blue  a  outrance.  Ah!  here  is 
Cantitborough." 

It  was  Cantitborough,  that  neat,  clean,  quiet,  antiquated  town  that  always 
puts  me  in  mind  of  an  old  maid  dressed  for  a  party;  that  slowest  and  drearest 
of  boroughs,  where  the  streets  are  as  full  of  grass  as  an  acre  of  pasture-land, 
and  the  inhabitants  are  driven  to  ring  their  own  door-bells  lest  they  should 
rust  from  disuse. 

The  train  stopped,  and  Fitz  looked  as  disgusted  at  losing  his  travelling 
companion  as  he  had  done  at  her  first  appearance,  and  stared  with  "  Who  the 
devil  are  you  ?  "  plainly  written  on  his  face,  at  a  young  fellow  who  met  her  on 
the  platform.  Fitz  was  before  him,  though,  in  handling  her  the  poodle  out, 
and  went  to  look  after  her  luggage,  for  motives  of  his  own,  as  you  can  guess. 
He  was  "very  graciously  thanked  for  his  trouble,  had  a  pretty  bow  to  repay  him, 
and  saw  the  poodle  and  its  mistress  off  with  her  unknown  cavalier  (a  brother, 
probably,  from  the  don't  carish  way  that  he  met  her)  before  he  got  on  a  dog- 
cart and  tooled  us  down  the  road  to  Hollywood,  a  snug  little  box  two  miles  from 
Cantitborough,  left  him  by  Providence,  impersonated  by  a  godfather,  with  eight 
or  nine  hundred  a  year. 

"  Of  course  you  improved  the  occasion,  Fitz,  and  saw  the  name  on  the 
boxes  ?  "  said  Beau,  as  we  drove  along. 

"Of  course.  It's  Barnardiston.  I  never  heard  of  it  in  the  county,  did  you, 
Fan  ?  She  ought  to  be  a  lady,'  by  her  style,  and  her  voice  (though  it's  wonder- 
ful how  the  under-bred  ones  do  contrive  to  get  themselves  up,  so  that  you  can 
hardly  tell  the  difference  till  they  begin  to  speak,  or  move:  then,  I  never  mis- 
take a  lady.)  I  wonder  who  that  young  fool  was  who  met  her  ?  " 


BLUE    AND     YELLOW.  GOT 

"  Why  of  necessity  a  fool  because  he  chanced  to  be  in  your  way  ?  "  laughed 
Beau.  "  He  was  a  Cantab,  I  guess,  by  his  cut;  Cambridge  is  always  stamped 
on  those  little  straw  hats  and  fast  coats,  as  Balmoral  boots  indicates  a  strong- 
minded  young  woman,  earrings  out  of  their  bonnets  girls  that  want  one  to  look 
at  'em,  Quaker  colors  and  sun-shades  girls  who  can't  go  in  for  the  attractive 
line,  so  have  sought  refuge  in  the  district  visiting.  Bless  your  heart,  I  always 
know  a  woman  by  her  dress." 

"  What  do  you  say  to  Dauphin's  owner,  then  ?  " 

"  Black  hat  and  feathers — possibly  coquettish;  tight  jacket — fast  enough  to 
be  pleasant;  general  style — not  fast  enough  to  be  bold;  lavender  gloves — good 
taste,  but  not  a  notion  of  economy;  unexceptionable  boots — knows  she's  pretty 
feet,  and  is  too  wise  to  disfigure  them,"  promptly  responded  little  Beau. 

"  Bravo  !  "  said  Fitz,  whipping  up  the  mare  (three  parts  thorough-bred,  and 
one  of  the  best  goers  I  ever  saw),  "  that's  just  my  style.  We'll  fish  the  girl  up, 
and  show  her  that  if  I'm  '  good  for  nothing  '  in  all  the  other  capacities  of  life,  I'm 
first-rate  at  a  flirtation:  can't  live  without  one,  indeed,  and  I  don't  see  why  one 
should  try,  since,  as  the  women  are  never  easy  but  when  we're  making  love  to 
them,  it  would  be  a  want  of  charity  not  to  oblige  them.  Here  we  are.  By 
Jove  !  I  hope  they'll  have  iced  the  wine  properly;  don't  you  long  for  a  bottle, 
Fanny  ?  " 

"  Soames,"  said  Fitz  to  his  man,  when  he  had  discussed  the  champagne,  which 
was  iced  as  cold  as  a  "  wall-flower's  "  answer  when  you  ask  if  she  has  enjoyed 
her  ball — "  Soames,  go  over  this  evening  to  Cantitborough,  and  find  out  for  me 
if  there  are  any  people  called  Barnardiston  living  anywhere  there,  and  bring  me 
word  all  about  them." 

"  Certainly,  sir,"  said  Soames. 

And  that  night,  when  we  were  smoking  out  on  the  lawn,  Soames,  who  had 
often  sped  on  like  errands,  made  his  report.  There  was  a  Barnardiston  ptrc,  a 
gentleman  of  independent  fortune,  living  at  the  Larches;  a  Barnardiston  mere, 
over  whom  he  tyrannized  greatly;  a  son,  Mr.  Herbert  Barnardiston,  who  was 
at  John's;  two  small  boys,  and  two  daughters,  one,  Valencia,  who  was  engaged 
to  the  perpetual  curate  of  St.  Hildebrande's,  and  one,  Caroline,  who,  as  far  as 
Soames  could  hear,  was  not  engaged  to  anybody  at  all. 

"  Now,  by  George  ! "  said  Fitz,  puffing  his  regalia  in  the  moon's  face, 
"  Dauphin's  mistress  is  a  fat  lot  too  good  for  that  pursy  little  Low  Church 
brute  at  St.  Hildebrande's.  I  remember  being  by  ill  luck  in  that  church  once 
when  he  was  preaching,  and  he  thumped  his  cushion  so  violently  in  his  passion 
with  us  sinners,  that  he  sent  the  dust  out  of  it  in  a  regular  simoom,  which  set 
the  old  clerk  off  sneezing  so,  that  we  couldn't  hear  a  word  of  the  sermon- 
providential  interposition,  considering  the  malice  of  the  discourse.  I  wonder 
if  it  is  she  ?  Valencia  sounds  more  like  her  than  Caroline." 


608 


QUID  AS     WORKS. 


"  Calm  your  mind,  old  fellow,"  said  Beau;  "  our  beauty  isn't  engaged  to  a 
parson,  take  my  word  for  it.  I  always  know  the  betrothed  of  the  Church  at  a 
glance.  They're  getting  in  training  to  take  interest  in  the  distribution  of 
flannel  petticoats  and  brown-papered  tracts;  they  cast  their  eyes  away  from 
good-looking  fellows,  for  fear  they  should  be  tempted  to  compare  black  ties 
with  white  chokers;  they  wear  already  the  Lady  Bountiful  head  of  the  parish 
air;  they  try  to  inflate  themselves  with  big  talk  on  the  duties  of  a  clergyman's 
wife,  but  in  their  secret  souls  are  they  already  weighed  down  by  the  dreadful 
decree  that  'deacons'  wives  must  be  grave,  not  slanderous;  sober,  faithful  in 
all  things;'  as  if  women  would  not  just  as  soon  be  put  in  Newgate  for  life  as 
denied  their  natural  food — scandal  and  flirtation.  No  !  take  comfort,  Fitz, 
your  love  of  the  railway  carriage  is  no  parson's  fiancee,  I'll  swear." 


II. 

BEAU   BEGINS  ONE  CANVASS   AND   FITZ   ANOTHER. 

UPON  my  honor  I  never  saw  a  funnier  contrast  in  my  life,  sir,  than  the 
candidates  for  the  borough;  and  when  I  saw  them  all  four  on  the  Market  Hill, 
I  never  laughed  more  at  old  Buckstone.  There  was  first,  of  course,  little 
Verdant,  long,  lanky,  and  meek-looking,  like  all  the  Cockadoodles,  sitting  for- 
ward on  his  horse's  neck,  as  if  he  were  afraid  of  tumbling  off.  There  was  his 
brother  Conservative,  Le  Hoop  Smith,  bland,  sweet  smiling,  and  for  the  world 
like  a  tabby  cat  on  its  best  behavior  in  a  gorgeous  turn-out,  with  his  arms, 
fished  up  by  the  Herald's  Office,  blazoned  on  the  panels  as  big  as  a  sign-post. 
Then,  on  a  fat,  white  shooting  pony  was  Salter,  the  old  fellow  of  the  H.  E.  I. 
C.  S.,  as  round  as  a  pumpkin  and  as  yellow  as  a  buttercup,  who'd  have  thought 
nothing  of  lashing  the  independent  electors  as  he'd  flogged  his  Sepoys,  and 
who,  not  being  able  to  do  that,  swore  at  them  vigorously;  and  then,  last  of  all, 
was  Fitz,  haughty,  dashing,  "distingue"  (as  the  shop  people  say  of  a  2s.  5d. 
cotton),  setting  all  the  women  mad  about  him,  and  sticking  on  to  his  thorough- 
bred as  if  they  were  both  cast  togerher  in  bronze.  There  was  no  doubt  of 
Verdant's  coming  in;  the  fact  of  his  being  the  son  of  the  only  live  Earl  near 
Cantitborough  secured  that.  The  tradesmen  were  for  Salter,  because  he  ate 
much  and  paid  well.  The  clergy  and  professions  were  for  Le  Hoop  Smith,  be- 
cause he  was  such  a  pious,  poetical,  spotless  creature  (though  a  pompous  snob, 

like  all  those  money-made  men);  and  for  Fitz well,  poor  old  Fitz  had  the 

women,  and  one  or  two  enlightened   individuals,   on   his  side;  a  very  small 
hap'orth  of  bread  to  a  whole  ocean  of  sack  were  all  the  constituents  he  seemed 


BLUE    AND     YELLOW.  (>(>!> 

likely  to  gain,  though  Beau  and  other  agents  set  to  work  as  hard  as  steam-en- 
gines, and  Fitz  and  I  canvassed  perseveringly,  though  the  Socialist  had  a  pro- 
found contempt  in  practice  for  the  Canaille,  whom  in  theory  he  dignified  into 
the  People;  and  despite  his  opinion  that  all  men  were  equal,  was  not  at  all  pre- 
pared to  suffer  familiarity  from  his  unwashed  brethren.  If  you  have  ever  had 
the  ill  luck,  as  I  have  had,  to  be  in  a  small  spiteful  country  town  in  election 
time,  when  everybody  is  spitting  and  swearing  like  cats  on  the  tiles,  you  can 
fancy,  sir,  what  Cantitborough  was  at  this  period  of  its  history.  We  stirred  its 
utmost  depths.  The  best  hotel  was  a  Blue  committee-room;  its  second  best  was 
a  Yellow  committee-room.  Big-wigs  talked  loud  of  their  principles;  gamins 
flaunted  rag  flags  in  the  gutters;  mysterious  strangers  haunted  its  tap-rooms. 
Mr.  Brown  cut  Mr.  Green  because  he  was  Yellow.  Mrs.  A.  dropped  her  bosom 
friend,  Mrs.  B.,  because  she  was  Blue.  The  Town  Council  was  divided  against 
itself,  and,  consequently,  couldn't  stand  straight  on  its  legs  (a  charge,  by  the 
way,  often  brought  against  its  members  individually).  Mary  the  kitchen-maid, 
would  no  longer  "  walk  along  "  with  James  the  milkman,  because  he  was  all 
for  that  "  hugly  Smith."  Cobblin,  the  shoemaker,  was  surprised  by  seeing  two 
fivers  lying  snug  in  the  heel  of  a  Wellington;  and  Chalice,  the  rector,  was 
startled  by  a  gentle  hint  that  the  Deanery  of  Turtlefat  might  be  vacant. 

"  Who  do  you  think  I'm  going  to  solicit  the  vote  from  this  morning  ? "  said 
Fitz  at  breakfast  two  or  three  mornings  after. 

"  Pottler,  of  the  Three  Kings,  I  hope,"  said  Beau,  helping  himself  to  a  devil, 
"  if  you  do  what  you  aught." 

"  The  Three  Kings  be  shot!  "  said  Fitz.  "  The  barmaid  there  is  as  ugly 
as  sin  and  forty,  I'm  certain.  He's  not  an  eye  to  trade  to  keep  her;  a  pretty 
face  at  a  bar  disposes  of  numberless  shilling  glasses." 

"Old  Hops,  then;  and  do  remember  to  tell  him  his  beer  is  better  than 
Bass's,"  said  Beau,  whose  refractory  client  gave  him  no  end  of  trouble. 

"  What!  that  beastly  stuff,  full  of  jack  ?  Oh!  confound  it,  I  can't  humbug 
like  that;  tisn't  my  line,  especially  with  those  canaille." 

"  The  devil  take  your  pride!  "  retorted  Beau.  "  How  do  you  expect  to  get 
along  with  your  election,  when  its  such  a  piece  of  work  to  make  you  shake 
hands  with  even  a  respectable  butcher  or " 

"Pah!  hold  your  tongue!  "  cried  the  Radical,  glancing  at  his  own  white 
fingers.  "  I  like  the  hydra-headed  to  have  all  the  bread  he  wants,  but  I  can't 
bear  touching  his  dirty  paw.  I'm  sure  I  kiss  the  girls,  Beau,  though,  with 
most  exemplary  perseverance — 

"Rather  too  perseveringly,"  growled  the  exigeant  Beau.  "I  don't  think  it 
tells  well  with  the  fathers,  and  I'm  quite  sure  it  influences  husbands  the  wrong 
way.  You're  unexceptionable  with  your  equals,  but  Rumpunch  herself  isn't 
more  unmanageable  than  you  are  with  your  inferiors.  I  always  notice  if  a 

VOL.  III.— 20 


G10 


QUID  AS     WORKS. 


gentleman— I  mean  a  thorough-bred  one— takes  up  democracy,  and  all  that 
in  opinions,  the  more  exclusive,  as  sure  as  a  gun,  does  he  grow  in  his  actions. 
He  may  put  on  the  bonnet  rouge  with  the  people,  but  he'll  always  expect  the 
people  to  doff  theirs  to  him.  .Well,  it's  human  nature,  I  suppose;  we're  all 

anamolies " 

"  For  Heaven's  sake,  don't  begin  to  moralize,  Beau,"  said  Fitz.     "  Of  all 
the    abominations   that  pester  the  earth,    the  didactic    style    is    the    worst. 
Well!  will  you  come  with  me  to  the  Larches  ?  " 
"  The  where  ? "  shouted  Beau,  in  amazement. 
"  The  Larches;  where  the  Barnardistons  hang  out." 

Beau  dropped  some  cutlet,  en  route  to  his  lips,  off  his  fork,  in  staring  at 
Fitz.  "  Are  you  mad  ?  Why,  he's  on  Verdant's  committee." 

"  What  of  that  ?  I've  walked  about  ten  entire  days  to  meet  his  daughter, 
and  haven't  met  her;  sequitur,  I  shall  call  there." 

Beau  gave  a  grunt  of  wonder  and  disgust.  "  Of  all  the  cool  chaps,  I  do 
think  you're  the  very  coolest." 

"  Of  course  I  am.  rfiave  you  only  now  found  it  out  ?  Ring  the  bell,  Fan, 
and  order  the  horses." 

"  Well,"  said  Beau,  with  a  touching  air  of  resignation,  "  if  you'd  keep  quiet, 
and  do  as  you're  told,  I'd  bring  you  in  as  sure  as  this  beer's  Brighton  Tipper; 
but  since  you  will  act  for  yourself,  why,  if  you  lose  you  election,  /  wash  my 
hands  of  it." 

Up  to  the  Larches  rode  Fitz  and  I,  a  pretty  house  of  very  white  stone,  and 
with  very  green  Venetians — that  tried  hard  to  look  like  an  Italian  villa  on  a 
small  scale,  and  failed  signally — standing  in  its  grounds  at  the  west  end  of 
Cantitborough. 

"  There  she  is,"  whispered  Fitz,  as  he  paced  up  the  carriage  drive.  True 
enough,  stooping  over  a  bed  of  verbena,  gardening  seduously,  with  Dauphin 
barking  furiously  round  her,  in  ecstatic  delight,  was  our  late  compagnon  de 
voyage.  At  the  sound  of  our  horses'  hoofs  the  poodle  rushed  at  us  after  the 
manner  of  small  dogs,  and  his  mistress  turned  round  to  see  the  cause  of  his 
irritation.  Off  went  Fitz's  hat,  and  he  bowed  to  his  saddlebow.  At  the  same 
moment  a  young  lady  came  out^of  a  French  window,  and  called  "  Valencia  !  " 
Dauphin's  mistress  threw  down  her  trowel,  obeyed  the  summons,  and  went  into 
the  house;  not  without  a  bow  to  Fitz,  though.  "  The  devil  !  she  is  Valencia, 
and  engaged  to  that  owl,  then,"  swore  Fitz.  "  I  say,  she  hasn't  one  bit  the  cut 
of  a  parson's  future,  has  she  ?  Upon  my  word  it's  a  devilish  pity — horrid  waste 
of  good  material — to  throw  her  into  the  Church's  arms.  Never  mind,  though; 
it  will  be  the  more  fun  for  me.  I  shan't  only  have  a  flirtation,  but  the  fun  of 
making  fat  little  Whitechurch  jealous  into  the  bargain,  which  will  be  a  little 
more  currant-jelly  to  my  hare." 


BLUE    AND     YELLOW.  Gil 

"  Glad  you  take  it  so  philosophically,  but  it  won't  do  you  much  good  in  the 
borough  to  flirt  with  their  pet  preacher's  fiancee." 

"  Hold  your  tongue,  Fanny.  If  I  prefer  a  flirtation  to  a  seat  in  the  Com- 
mons; mayn't  I  indulge  my  preference  ?  "  said  the  candidate  for  Cantitborough, 
throwing  his  bridle  to  Soames,  as  a  Buttons,  that  one  wanted  a  microscope 
to  see  clearly,  opened  the  door,  and  ushered  us  into  the  library  of  the  hottest 
out-and-out  Tory  in  the  county. 

There  sat  old  Barnardiston  in  state,  a  tall,  plethoric-looking  fellow,  the  very 
embodiment  of  conservatism,  orthodoxy,  and  British  prejudice.  It  was  as 
good  as  a  play  to  see  his  face  when  the  Radical  candidate  was  shown  in,  and 
to  see  Fitz,  with  his  most  nonchalant  yet  most  courtly  air,  address  him,  and 
solicit  his  vote,  as  if  in  perfect  ignorance  that  Lord  Verdant's  proposer,  the 
Bluest  of  Blues,  Barnardiston,  who  looked  on  free  trade  as  treason  to  the 
commonwealth,  and  on  the  ballot  as  a  device  of  Satan,  was  not  perfectly  d1  accord 
with  himself  upon  politics.  The  old  gentleman  was  as  chilling  as  achaperone's 
"  Good  evening!  "  to  an  ineligible,  and,  of  course,  proceeded  to  bow  us  out 
with  a  good  deal  of  grandiloquent  bosh  about  his  principles,  which  he  was 
evidently  very  injured  to  think  had  not  been  too  widely  known  to  have  pre- 
vented Fitz's  intrusion.  Fitz  was  nonplussed;  his  call  did  not  promise  to  be 
very  productive.  The  old  Tory  was  unpropitious,  and  there  was  no  sign  of 
the  girls  whatever.  He  was  just  going  to  take  his  leave  in  despair,  when,  by 
Jove!  as  luck  would  have  it,  down  came  all  at  once  such  a  shower  of  hailstones, 
such  claps  of  thunder,  such  a  conflict  of  the  elements,  as  the  novelwriters 
say,  that,  out  of  common  courtesy,  the  old  boy,  though  it  was  plain  to  see  that 
he  looked  on  us  as  a  brace  of  the  most  impudent  scoundrels  he  had  ever  come 
across,  was  obliged  to  ask  us  if  we  would  wait  till  it  was  over.  Fitz  thanked 
him,  and  said  he  would,  in  his  pleaernt,  easy  manner,  as  if  he  and  the  great 
Tory  were  the  best  possible  friends;  and  (very  stiffly,  though,)  Barnardiston, 
fairly  let  in  for  the  entertainment  of  the  dangerous  skeptic  and  socialist,  asked 
us  to  go  into  the  drawing-room. 

"  Bravo  !  brass  and  pluck  always  win,"  whispered  Fitz  aside  to  me,  as  the 
door  was  opened,  and  we  saw  the  identical  Valencia  feeding  a  brace  of  love- 
birds in  the  window,  her  sister,  quite  unlike  her — a  stout,  square,  business- 
looking  girl — writing  district  papers,  with  a  lot  of  tracts  round  her,  and  their 
mamma  reading  in  a  dormeuse. 

Breathing  an  inward  prayer  for  the  continuance  of  the  thunderstorm,  Fitz 
sat  himself  down  (just  under  the  love-birds,)  and  proceeded  to  make  himself 
agreeable — especially. to  the  betrothed  of  the  incumbent  of  St.  Hildebrande's. 
You  would  have  thought  him  the  "  enfant  de  la  maison  "  for  the  last  ten  years 
at  least,  to  hear  him  talk  news  and  literature  with  madame,  fun  and  ornithology 
with  mademoiselle,  utterly  regardless  that  Barnardiston  was  keeping  a  gloomy 


612  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

silence,  and  the  district  collector  looking  glum  on  her  sister's  vivacious  chat, 
probably  with  the  eye  of  a  belle-sceur  to  the  absent  Whitechurch's  interests. 
He  amused  them  so  well,  and  was  so  well  amused  himself,  that  the  sun  had 
stared  him  in  the  face  for  full  twenty  minutes,  and  the  birds  were  telling 
everybody  the  storm  was  gone,  before  Fitz  thought  proper  to  find  out  that  it 
was  "  beginning  to  clear  up  " — a  fact  so  undeniable  that  he  had  nothing  for  it 
but  to  make  his  adieux,  after  offering  to  lend  Mrs.  Barnardiston  some  book  or 
other  she  wanted;  and  when  the  lodge  gates  closed  behind  us,  Fitz  had  a  good 
shout  of  laughter. 

"  Now,  then,  Lady  Fan,  didn't  I  manage  that  gloriously  ? " 

"Yes!  I  never  doubted  your  powers  of  impudence  yet;  but  whether  your 
election " 

"  Confound  my  election!  It  was  worth  losing  fifty  votes  only  to  see  that 
old  boy's  face  when  I  asked  for  his  support;  and,  by  George!  isn't  she  pretty  ? 
To  see  all  that  going  to  Whitechurch  is  rather  a  trial  of  one's  patience.  What 
in  the  world  was  she  thinking  of  to  throw  herself  away  on  him  ?  A  little  flirta- 
tion will  be  only  common  humanity  to  her,  poor  girl!  Did  you  see  how  mis- 
chievous she  looked  when  she  saw  me  ?  The  '  good-for-nothing'  was  lurking 
in  her  mind,  I  bet  you." 

"  In  pleasant  contrast  with  the  good  in  everything  of  her  future  sposo. 
The  cardinal  virtues  ain't  relished  by  women." 

Fitz  laughed  as  he  pricked  Rumpunch  into  a  gallop.  "  She's  a  dashing 
little  thing;  I  must  have  some  fun  with  her.  I  won't  quite  spoil  her  matri- 
monial speculation,  though,  for  I  shan't  be  inclined  to  put  it  au  serieux,  like 
the  Rev.  Augustine.  Fish  out  the  young  fellow,  Fan;  he's  a  Cambridge  man; 
you  can  soon  scrape  acquaintance.  Brothers  are  very  useful  sometimes, 
though  occasionally  uncommonly  meddling  and  disagreeble.  By  Jove! 
look  there.  Confound  it,  there's  Jimmy!  What  in  the  world  is  he  doing 
here  ? " 

"  Hallo,  old  boy!  how  are  you  ?  "  said  the  man  thus  apostrophized,  Jimmy 
Villars,  a  chum  of  Fitz's.  "  I've  heard  lots  about  you,  Randolph.  You're 
turning  Cantitborough  upside  down  and  I'm  come  to  help  you!  " 

"  That's  right.     Nobody  more  welcome.     Where  are  you  staying?  " 

"  At  the  Levisons' — you  know  them.  No  ?  Then  you  shall  immediately. 
Levison  was  a  great  yachting  man.  He's  range  and  married  now;  a  very 
pleasant  girl  hooked  and  finished  him.  They're  county  people  and  thorough- 
going Liberals,  so  you  won't  frighten  'em,  though  they  are  connected  with  that 
Arch- Blue  old  Barnardiston." 

"  By  Jove  ! "  thought  Fitz,  «  « if  a  man  takes  luck  by  the  horns,  don't  it  al- 
ways favor  him!'  Introduce  me,  then,  Jimmy,"  he  said,  aloud;  "I  want  a 
little  fun.  I'm  bored  to  death  with  committees,  canvassing,  meetings,  dinners, 


BLUE    AND     YELLOW. 


613 


speechifying,  and  letter-writing.  Then  the  Cantitburghers  are  such  awful  owls, 
and  one's  aims  and  ends  do  seem  so  small  when  one's  mixed  up  with  the  bigotry 
of  prejudice  and  the  tomfoolery  of  party,  that  I'm  growing  heartily  sick  of  the 
whole  thing  already." 


III. 

CUPID   GIVES   BEAU    MORE    TROUBLE    THAN    ALL   THE    BLUES. 

POOR  Beau  was  distracted.  Fitz  had  been  a  refractory  client  enough  before, 
so  far  as  obstinately  speaking  his  mind,  telling  the  truth,  tilting  against  his 
voters'  opinions,  and  entirely  refusing  to  butter  anybody,  went;  but  after  he 
met  Jimmy  Villars,  Beau  had  ten  times  more  trouble,  for  while  little  Verdant 
was  calling  at  every  house  and  conquering  them  all  with  his  title,  and  Le  Hoop 
Smith  was  giving  to  all  the  charities,  and  quoting  the  "  Christian  Year  "  largely 
to  the  clergy,  and  giving  a  new  lectern  to  St.  Hildebrande,  and  Salter  was  de- 
lighting the  ten-pound  men  with  coarse  jokes,  and  flinging  guineas  and  stout 
away  recklessly,  Fitz,  ten  to  one,  was  either  bothering  poor  Beau  not  to  bribe, 
instead  of  letting  things  go  on  quietly;  or  talking  rationalism  and  liberalism, 
high  over  the  head  of  some  startled  constituent  (who  came  off  from  the  inter 
view  with  the  decision  that  Mr.  Fitzhardinge  was  as  eminently  "  dangerous  "  as 
O'Brien,  and  that  he  would  give  a  plumper  to  Lord  Verdant;)  or  playing  bill- 
iards, and  going  eel-netting  with  Villars  and  the  Levisons;  or  sitting  in  Edith 
Levison's  drawing-room  with  her  and  her  cousin,  Valencia  Barnardiston. 
Nevertheless,  Beau,  the  sharpest-witted,  neatest-handed  agent  that  ever  lived, 
worked  on  with  the  settled  despair  of  a  man  baling  water  out  of  a  leaking  ship 
with  a  teacup,  and  really  grew  quite  worried  and  anxious  in  his  personal  appear- 
ance, toiling  for  the  devil-may-care  Radical,  for  whom,  ever  since  Fitz  pounded 
him  on  their  first  introduction  at  Eton,  he  had  always  entertained  a  sort  of 
dogged  attachment,  something,  he  used  to  say,  like  that  of  an  aged  grand- 
mother for  the  "  poor  dear  boy  "  who  plagues  her  life  out  with  crackers,  and 
goes  more  wrong  than  all  his  brothers  put  together. 

The  Levisons  were,  as  Jimmy  had  promised,  very  pleasant,  and  liked  larks 
and  fun  as  all  pleasant  people  do;  and  as  soon  as  we  were  introduced  to  them, 
made  Fitz  and  me,  and  Beau  too,  if  he  had  had  time  for  such  puerilities,  wel- 
come to  Elm  Court,  Levison's  place,  just  four  miles  from  Cantitborough,  when- 
ever we  liked  to  go  there.  We  went  pretty  often,  for  Levison's  wife  was  a 
merry  little  thing,  and  generally  had  one  or  two  choice  spirits  like  herself  driven 
over  to  spend  the  day;  among  them,  her  cousin  and  favorite,  the  fiancee  of  the 


614  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

Rev.  Augustine  Whitechurch,  a  fat,  slick  man  of  large  Easter  offerings,  and 
touching  testimonials;  of  good  family,  and  wide  (Cantitborough)  fame,  whom 
everybody  praised,  though  nobody  liked,  as  a  sort  of  voucher  for  their  own 
religion.  I  have  seen  a  good  many  serpents  and  rabbits,  rats  and  beagles,  doves 
and  tiger-cats  chained  together,  but  I  never  saw  any  pair  who  seemed  to  be 
more  uncongenial  than  Valencia  and  her  pretendu.  She  was  lively,  high- 
spirited,  loved  fun,  parties,  and  mischief  as  much  she  hated  Dorcas  meetings, 
missionary  reports,  and  interesting  converted  beggars,  while  he  was  Low  Church 
— /.  e.  looked  upon  life  as  a  miserable  pilgrimage  that  it  was  our  duty  to  make 
with  the  hardest  possible  peas  in  our  shoes;  wanted  a  wife  the  embodiment  of 
that  dreadful  individual,  Hannah  More's  "  Lucilla,"  and  worried  poor  little 
Val's  very  life  out  with  animadversions  on  her  pursuits,  amusements,  and  friends. 
He  came  sometimes  with  her  to  Elm  Court,  where  he  had  as  chilling  an  effect 
as  the  inevitable  rain  on  the  swell  Chiswick  toilettes,  and  where  he  and  Fitz 
took  an  instantaneous  dislike  to  each  other,  and  kept  each  other  at  bay  like  a 
cat  and  a  spaniel.  Val,  though  she  was  engaged  was  the  centre  of  attraction. 
Dosen't  the  green  ticket  "  Sold  "  often  make  the  dilettanti  rave  over  a  picture 
in  the  Royal  Academy  they  might  not  have  noticed  without  it  ?  Jimmy  Villars 
adored  her,  en  passant;  little  Lord  Verdant,  whose  paternal  acres  joined  Levi- 
son's,  bid  fair  to  lose  his  silly  little  boyish  head  about  her — no  great  loss,  by 
the  way;  and  Fitz — Fitz  always  made  himself  agreeable  to  any  charming  woman 
he  came  across,  no  more  able  to  help  it  than  Rover  to  help  pointing  when  he 
scents  a  covey;  and  while  the  Great  Blue  was  throwing  his  influence  into  the 
scale  to  worst  the  Radical  candidate,  the  Radical  candidate  was  tranquilly  en- 
gaged in  riding,  singing,  waltzing,  and  talking,  three  days  out  of  the  week,  with 
Miss  Valencia,  at  Elm  Court,  where  Levison,  having  been  a  very  high  match 
for  his  little  niece  Edith,  Barnardiston  thought  it  impossible  for  Val  to  come  to 
any  grief,  and  encouraged  her  visits  despite  Whitechurch's  chagrin  at  them, 

"  Do  you  think  you  will  win  your  election,  Fitz  ?  "  asked  Villars  one  even- 
ing after  dining  there,  and  we  were  strolling  over  the  grounds  afterwards  in  the 
twilight. 

"  Haven't  an  idea,  my  dear  fellow,"  responded  Fitz,  cheerfully,  "  and  am 
not  sure  that  I  wish,  for  the  Cantitburghers  are  such  awful  idiots,  that  to  repre- 
sent them  faithfully  I  should  be  compelled  to  buy  a  pair  of  ass's  ears,  like 
Bottom,  which  might  produce  a  peculiar  sensation  in  the  House." 

"  Especially,"  smiled  Valencia,  "as  the  cap  would  fit .  so  many  of  its 
members." 

"  Those  that  are  '  good  far  nothing  '  included,"  whispered  Fitz,  mischiev- 
ously. 

She  laughed  and  colored. 

"  Oh,  I  had  hoped  you  had  not  recognized  me.     What  a  shame  to  keep  it 


BLUE    AND     YELLOW.  G15 

perdu  all  this  time.     I  might  have  been  begging  your  pardon  in  a  long  oration 
every  time  we  met.     I  shall  take  care  how  I  talk  to  strangers  again  in  a  train." 

"  Pray  don't.  I'm  exceptional  in  my  taste,  I  know,  but  I  do  like  truths 
sometimes,  even  if  they  hit  hard.  Don't  you  ?  " 

"  Yes;  but  I  fancy  my  truths  didn't  hit  you  severely  at  all.  I  think  I  told 
you  you  were  condemned  as  a  skeptic,  a  socialist,  and  a  republican;  and,  since 
all  great  men  have  been  classed  into  one  of  the  three,  you  should  be  super- 
excellent  to  combine  the  trio." 

Fitz  laughed. 

"  I  am  quite  content  to  be  condemned  by  Cantitborough  to  any  amount, 
so  long  as  you  don't  find  me  utterly  good  for  nothing." 

She  looked  up  at  him  merrily. 

"Certainly;  you  are  good  for  waltzing,  billiards,  and  German  songs;  those 
are  all  the  duties  I  require  of  you,  so  I  don't  ask  any  further." 

"  I  only  wish  you  required  more,"  said  Fitz,  softly.  "  I  am  sorry  you 
think  of  me  as  a  passing  acquaintance,  chatted  with  in  a  ballroom,  and  parted 
from  without  regret,  to  meet  no  more  in  the  eddies  of  society." 

"  I  never  said  that  I  considered  you  so,"  interrupted  Valencia,  hurriedly, 
snapping  the  roses  off  their  stems  as  they  walked  along. 

"  But  you  implied  it;  and  if  you  knew  the  pain  your  light  words  cause,  you 
would  not  speak  them." 

She  was  silent,  so  was  he.  It  was  part  of  Fitz's  code  of  warfare  to  leave 
his  sentences  to  bear  their  fruit. 

"  Valencia,  you  are  extremely  imprudent  to  be  out  in  this  damp  atmos- 
phere in  such  a  light  evening  dress,"  said  the  Rev.  Augustine  at  her  elbow. 

"  This  exquisite  evening  !  Thank  you  for  your  care,  but  I  don't  belong  to 
the  sanitary-mad  individuals,"  replied  Valencia,  impatiently,  "  I  never  cloak 
up,  so  never  take  cold;  if  I  do,  I  will  apply  to  you  for  some  of  those  extraor- 
dinary little  hundreds  and  thousands  you  carry  in  the  morocco  case,  and  physic 
the  parish  with,  in  alternate  doses  of  texts  and  globules." 

There  was  a  sarcastic  curl  on  Miss  Val's  lips  which  the  popular  preacher 
did  not  quite  relish,  for  he  was  an  apostle  of  that  arch-humbug  homoeopathy, 
firmly  believed  in  a  "millionth  part;"  in  its  strength  being  increased  by  dilu- 
tion; in  the  virtue  of  infinitesimal  doses,  and  all  the  rest  of  it;  and  was  keenly 
alive  to  any  ridicule  on  the  point,  as  people  are  when  a  point  is  untenable. 

"Ah!  do  you  believe  in  those  little  comfits,  Mr.  Whitechurch  ?  "  said  Fitz, 
taking  up  the  warfare.  "  You  save  the  souls  and  the  bodies  en  meme  temps — a 
very  nice  arrangement,  I  daresay.  It  must  be  delightful  to  practise  the  two  heal- 
ing arts  at  once;  and  then,  if  you  should  ever  chance  to  mistreat  a  case,  it 
wouldn't  so  much  matter,  because  you'd  have  made  sure  your  patient  was  '  fit 
to  die,'  whether  he  was  willing  or  not.  Homoeopathy's  a  capital  thing  for  trade. 


616 


QUID  AS     WORKS. 


I'm  very  glad  to  see  it  spreading;  they  say  the  undertakers  bid  fair  to  be  some 
of  the  wealthiest  men  in  the  kingdom  through  it,  and  the  sugar-bakers  thrive 
amazingly.  You  saw  in  the  paper  the  other  day— didn't  you  ?— that  one  of 
'em  gave  the  quantity  of  little  hundreds  and  thousands— some  ton  weight,  I 
think— he  had  made  for  one  of  your  great  homoeopaths— your  men  who  buy  a 
diploma  for  twenty  pounds  in  Germany,  and  set  up  here  with  a  tiger  and  a 
practice  as  minute  as  their  pet  medicine,  and  knowledge  as  infinitesimal  as  the 
power  of  their  doses." 

"  It  requires  no  wit  to  jest  upon  deep  subjects,"  said  Whitechurch,  loftily, 
"  The  holiest  topic,  the  gravest  matter,  can  of  course  be  turned  into  ridicule." 

"  If  it  is  weak,  certainly,"  returned  Fitz,  with  a  calm,  courteous  air. 

"  No,  sir!  "  said  the  pet  parson,  pompously.  "  Not  if  it  is  weak,  but  if  its 
opponents  are  bigoted  and  coarse-mouthed.  Ridicule  was  thrown  upon 
Moses's  divining-rod " 

"  And  he  turned  it  into  a  serpent,  and  made  it  eat  up  all  the  other  rods 
which  was  ingenious,  if  not  Christian,"  said  Fitz,  wickedly. 

"  I  refuse  to  discuss  such  subjects  in  such  a  tone,"  returned  Whitechurch, 
with  extreme  severity.  "  Homoeopathy  is  a  great,  enlightened,  rational,  and 
noble  discovery  in  science,  and  does  not  require  any  defence." 

"  It  can't  make  any,"  murmured  Fitz. 

Whitechurch  turned  from  him  with  immeasurable  disdain. 

"  My  dear  Valencia  allow  me  to  say  you  are  exceedingly  unwise  not  to  wear 
some  hat,  or  cloak,  or  something  warmer  than  that  flimsy  dress.  Careful 
wrapping " 

"  Is  always  followed  by  weak  health,"  laughed  Valencia.  "  We  know  what 
the  Sybarites  were,  and  the  English  will  be  as  bad  if  they  wrap  up  their  children, 
and  diet  and  frighten  themselves,  as  that  estimable  lady  in  Two-pence  a  Week  is 
so  fond  of  advising." 

"  But  old  maids'  children  are  proverbial,"  laughed  Fitz.  "  Of  all  mortals  do  I 
pity  most  an  unlucky  small  one  in  the  clutches  of  a  well-meaning,  anxious  maiden 
aunt,  who  is  primed  with  prescriptions,  won't  let  him  stir  out  if  there's  no 
'ozone'  in  the  air,  or  a  breath  of  north  wind;  measures  his  warm  young  blood 
by  her  own  chill  veins,  and  loads  him  with  flannel  like  a  gouty  old  man.  Pretty 
mess  she'll  make  of  him  !  If  it's  a  boy,  he'll  go  down  under  the  first  breath  of 
east  wind;  and  if  it's  a  girl,  she'll  grow  up  an  invalid,  good  for  nothing,  a  misery 
to  herself  and  everybody  else,  with  neither  color  in  her  cheeks  nor  use  in  her 
limbs." 

Valenica  laughed,  and  her  glance  compared,  disparagingly  enough  to  the 
clergyman,  Fitz's  sinewy,  vigorous  frame,  which  would  have  lifted  ten  stone 
like  a  feather,  with  the  fat,  sleek,  feminine,  puffy  form  of  the  popular  preacher, 
as  she  answered, 


BLUE    AND     YELLOW.  017 

"  We  should  soon  see  an  end  to  the  hardy,  strong-muscled,  sport-loving 
Britons.  People  nowadays  study  sanitary  rules  till  they  study  all  their  health 
away.  I  confess  I've  no  patience  with  those  lady  dictators,  such  as  that  strong- 
minded  political  economist  who  writes  such  awful  advice  from  her  '  Farm  of 
Three  Inches.'  Wants  us  to  leave  off  high  heels — I  wonder  what  for  ?— and 
wear  wretched,  poking  straw  bonnets,  so  that  nobody  can  see  our  faces,  (con- 
venient to  those  who  have  faces  that  won't  bear  looking  at,  I  daresay,)  and 
would  squeeze  all  romance  out  of  everything,  and  would  sweep  all  beauty  off 
the  earth  if  she  could.  Why  mayn't  we  have  a  pretty  thing,  if  it  isn't  useful  ? 
Our  eyebrows  are  no  particular  use,  but  we  should  look  very  funny  without 
them." 

"  I  quite  agree  with  you ;  I  hate  utilitarians.  It  is  your  oracle  from  the 
'Farm'  who  laments  the  sensual  tendencies  of  schoolboys  because  they  like 
rabbit  suppers  and  tuck.  I  wouldn't  give  much  for  a  boy  who  didn't.  Those 
very  spiritual  individuals  are  nasty  ones  to  deal  with;  they're  so  exalted 
themselves,  they  have  no  sympathy  with  one's  natural  weaknesses,  and  as  they 
pretend  to  go  in  for  no  errors  themselves,  of  course  won't  pity  them  in  other 
people." 

"  We  are  to  condemn  errors,  not  to  sympathize  with  them,"  snapped  White- 
church. 

"  Indeed  !  said  Fitz,  carelessly.  "  When  I  find  a  man  free  from  all  errors 
himself,  I'll  let  him  find  fault  with  another — and  I  shan't  chance  on  him  for 
many  a  year." 

The  clergyman  smiled — not  pleasantly. 

"  All  the  borough  are  acquainted  with  your  latitudinarian  opinions,  Mr. 
Fitzhardinge." 

"  Are  they  ?  "  laughed  Fitz.  "  They  must  be  rather  a  treat  to  Cantitbor- 
ough,  after  all  the  conservative  oratory  it  has  expended  on  it.  By  the  way, 
Mr.  Whitechurch,  that  election  sermon  of  yours  last  Sunday  was  an  admirable 
hit.  I  heard  Lord  Cockadoodle  say  that  he  wished  old  Ewen  would  kick  off 
and  leave  Dunslop  in  his  gift." 

Whitechurch  colored.  The  sermon  was  a  gross  piece  of  toadyism,  and 
though  he  did  keep  his  affections  on  things  above,  he  couldn't  help  sometimes 
taking  a  glance  downwards,  where  the  fat  living  of  Dunslope  was  among  the 
prominent  points  that  caught  his  eye. 

Valencia  sighed  quickly,  turned  round,  and  said  something  about  going 
into  the  house. 

"  Do,"  said  Fitz,  bending  towards  her.     "  Let  us  go  and  try  those  German 

airs." 

Go  they  did,  and  Fitz's  cornet,  which  he  played  as  well  as  Koenig,  sent  out 
its  mellow  notes  in  a  concert  of  sweet  sounds,  which  was  anything  but  har- 


618  O  UIDA '  S     I VORKS. 

monious  to  the  ears  of  the  incumbent  of  St.  Hildebrande,  as  he  walked  up  and 
clown  before  the  drawing-room  windows,  listening  to  Caroline,  who,  regarding 
him  already  as  a  brother,  took  the  liveliest  interest  in  his  parochial  business 
affairs,  doubtless  with  the  kindly  view  of  covering  her  sister's  short-comings  in 
that  line. 

"  Poor  dear  Valencia  ! "  I  heard  her  sigh,  as  she  passed  me  when  I  was 
smoking  on  the  terrace  with  Jimmy.  "  Don't  be  annoyed  with  her,  Augustine. 
She  does  flirt  a  little,  perhaps;  but  they  say  all  pretty  women  do.  I'm  not 
tempted,  you  know;  I  am  plain  and  unpretending;  but,  thank  Heaven  !  my 
thoughts  are  not  fixed  on  this  world,  or  on  men's  idle  admiration.  Don't  be 
vexed  with  her;  she  is  thoughtless,  I  am  afraid." 

"  But  I  am  extremely  annoyed,"  said  the  parson's  dictorial  tones.  "  I 
spoke  to  her  the  other  day  about  fixing  the  time  for  our  marriage.  I  require  a 
wife;  I  cannot  attend  to  the  schools,  and  the  cook  wastes  a  great  deal;  but  she 
put  me  off — would  give  me  no  answer,  /am  not  to  be  treated  so  lightly;  and 
as  for  her  dancing,  and  singing,  and  riding  with  those  idle  men,  especially  with 
that  wild,  dissolute  Fitzhardinge,  it  is  intolerable,  unbearable,  most  inde- 
corous  " 

"  I  know  it  is  very  sad,"  chimed  in  the  gentle  Gary.  "  But  dear  Val  never 
had  any  due  sense  of  the  responsible  position  your  wife  will  occupy.  She  is 
careless,  worldly 

Here  they  went  out  of  hearing,  and  I  was  no  further  enlightened,  but  went 
into  the  drawing-room,  where  they  were  all  playing  vingt-et-un,  and  called  me 
to  join  them:  and  I  thought,  as  I  saw  Valencia  got  up  very  becomingly,  with 
her  large  hazel  eyes  full  of  animation  and  fun,  Verdant  gazing  at  her  senti- 
mentally on  her  left,  and  Fitz  discoursing  with  eloquent  glances,  and  facile 
compliment,  on  her  right,  her  light  laugh  ringing  through  the  room,  and 
her  merry  talk  keeping  all  going,  that  it  was  a  thousand  pities  for  her  to  be 
imprisoned  in  the  sombre  atmosphere  of  St.  Hildebrande's  rectory,  under  the 
regime  of  St.  Hildebrande's  incumbent,  whose  gloomy  doctrine  would  infallibly 
silence  the  laughter,  hush-hush  the  jest,  burn  the  cards,  interdict  the  waltz- 
ing— in  short,  crush  all  the  native  song  out  of  the  poor  bird  he  had  netted. 

"  I  say,  old  boy,"  said  I,  when  we  were  having  a  pipe  that  night  in  the 
dining-room  at  Hollywood,  "  make  hay  while  the  sun  shines;  you  won't  have 
much  longer  to  flirt." 

"  Why  not  ?  "  said  Fitz,  sharply. 

"  Because  Whitechurch  wants  to  get  married;  not  from  any  particular  pen- 
chant for  the  state,  or  any  fresh  acces  of  love,  but  because  his  girls'  schools 
want  looking  after,  and  his  cook's  ruining  him." 

"The  fool!"  ejaculated  Fitz,  with  a  giant  cloud  of  Cavendish;  "why 
doesn't  he  go  to  the  register-office  and  hire  a  seamstress  and  a  housekeeper  ?" 


BLUE    AND     YELLOW.  G19 

"  Possibly  because  a  wife  will  combine  both,  and  be  cheaper.  Barnardiston 
will  give  his  daughters  ten  thousand  pounds  each  if  he  like  his  son-in-law. 
Fancy  Valencia  arming  herself  with  needles  and  thread,  and  teaching  half  a 
dozen  charity-girls  to  make  pocket-handkerchiefs  for  Ojibbeways,  and  going 
into  her  kitchen  to  see  that  dear  Augustine's  curry  is  peppered  to  a  T,  or  that 
the  cook  doesn't  encourage  the  policeman — 

"  Faugh  !  Be  quiet,  can't  you  ?  "  growled  Fitz,  in  intense  disgust.  "  You 
might  talk  with  just  as  much  coolness  of  Rumpunch  being  set  to  run  in  a  cos- 
termonger's  cart.  The  idea  of  the  girl  throwing  herself  away  on  that  white- 
chokered  humbug  !  What  on  earth  could  make  her  accept  him  ?  " 

"First  offer,"  interrupted  Beau;  "couldn't  tell  she'd  get  another." 

"  Pooh  !  nonsense;  at  her  age  girls  ain't  hard  up  in  that  way.  If  she  were 
thirty  she  might  have  been  desperate;  very  rusty  hooks  are  snapped  up  when 
there's  no  longer  a  chance  for  silver  ones,  but  at  nineteen — 

"  Hooks  of  all  kinds  are  snapped  at  by  all  ages,"  interrupted  Beau  again, 
"  and  you've  said  so  scores  of  times,  Fitz,  when  it  suited  you,  and  your  per- 
ceptions weren't  clouded.  Women  are  always  mad  to  be  married.  Heaven 
knows  why  they  trouble  themselves  to  tell  the  girls  at  the  end  of  the  marriage 
service  not  to  be  afraid,  with  any  amazement;  there  never  was  more  needless 
waste  of  words,  for  I  never  knew  any  of  the  crinolines  who  didn't  catch  at  a 
wedding-ring  as  Rover  catches  at  a  mutton-bone." 

Fitz  was  quiet,  puffing  away  with  as  much  energy  as  if  he  were  smoking 
Whitechurch,  as  Bugeaud  smoked  the  Algerines. 

"  It  does  puzzle  me,  though,"  said  I,  "  how  Val,  with  the  pick  of  the  county, 
could  choose  that  parson.  She  don't  like  him,  I  fancy." 

"  Like  him  !  "  cried  Fitz,  with  immeasurable  scorn.  "  How  should  she  ? 
An  ugly  brute,  with  the  pluck  of  a  chicken,  and  as  sour  as  beer  after  a  thun- 
derstorm !  " 

"  Don't  call  your  spiritual  pastors  and  masters  bad  names,  Fitz,"  said  Beau. 
"  You  keep  me  in  hourly  terror,  for  if  you  have  a  row  with  the  Cantitburghers' 
pet  preacher,  it'll  be  all  up  with  your  election." 

"  I  shan't  have  a  row  with  him,"  sneered  Fitz,  with  much  contempt.  "  I 
flirt  with  her  because  she  amuses  me,  but  if  she  likes  the  parson,  she's  welcome 
to  him  for  me." 

Though  she  was  so  very  welcome  to  him,  I  heard  Fitz  in  his  room  (the 
room  is  next  to  mine,  and  the  walls  are  lath  and  plaster,)  mutter  to  himself,  as 
he  undressed,  "  What  the  devil  does  she  tie  herself  to  that  fool  for  ?  "  a  ques- 
tion to  which  I  do  not  suppose  either  his  pipe,  or  his  bed-candle,  or  Rover, 
who  always  sleeps  by  his  bedside,  or  the  harvest  moon  that  was  looking  through 
the  window,  vouchsafed  him  any  reply. 


G2o  QUID  AS     WORKS.     • 

IV. 

THE    RADICAL   CANDIDATE    BEATS    THE    POPULAR    PREACHER    OUT    OF   THE    FIELD. 

"  THE  Larches  was,  of  course,  forbidden  ground  to  Fitz.  He  did  call  there 
with  the  book  for  Mrs.  Barnardiston,  and  was  received  very  cordially  by 
that  lady,  but  in  the  evening  received  a  note  from  the  old  Tory  thanking  him 
for  his  courtesy,  but  saying  that  at  least  until  the  "  coming  important  contest" 
was  decided,  he  thought  acquaintance,  since  their  opinions  were  so  opposite, 
had  better  not  continue.  That  was  a  settler;  Fitz,  with  all  the  brass  in  the 
kingdom,  could  not  push  himself  in  after  that,  especially  as  Fitz  would  not 
make  himself  cheap  for  a  kingdom.  Nevertheless,  sometimes  when  Valencia 
was  not  at  Elm  Court,  he  would  find  occasion  to  ride  past  the  Larches,  Valen- 
cia being  given  to  amateur  gardening,  which  generally  consisted  in  gathering 
the  flowers,  or  throwing  guelder  roses  at  Dauphin,  and  a  very  pretty  sight  she 
was  when  so  occupied,  though  Caroline  considered  it  childish,  and  Whitechurch 
waste  of  time.  By  Jove  !  if  one  may  not  dawdle  a  little  time  on  the  road 
gathering  the  flowers  one  finds  in  life — and  precious  few  they  are  ! — what 
earthly  use,  I  wonder,  do  the  flowers  grow  there  for  ?  Past  the  Larches  we 
were  riding  one  evening  after  dinner,  having  spent  all  day  in  election  business 
that  had  bored  us  both  to  death,  and  very  slowly  was  Rumpunch  pacing  under 
the  shadow  of  the  shrubberies  that  divided  the  stronghold  of  "  Blue  "  opinion 
from  the  high  road.  Just  opposite  a  break  in  the  laburnums  and  hawthorns 
that  gave  a  view  through  a  white  gate  into  the  garden,  Rumpunch  had,  or  was 
supposed  to  have  a  nasty  stone  in  his  foot — a  stone  that  a  man  who  adored 
horseflesh  as  Fitz  did  was  bound  to  look  after.  The  stone  took  some  moments 
to  find — indeed  I  am  uncertain  that  it  was  found  after  all — but  while  Fitz  was 
examining  the  off  hoof,  through  the  trees  we  perceived  Whitechurch  and  his 
fiancee.  Whitechurch  looked  more  pompous  than  usual,  and  the  serene  brow 
that  the  ladies  of  his  parish  raved  about  was  certainly  contracted.  Val  looked 
excited,  and  rather  ready  to  cry.  They  drew  near  the  gate,  not  being  able  to 
see  us  for  the  trees,  and  we  caught  the  clergyman's  last  words — very  stiff 
and  icy  they  were,  too. 

"  You  will  think  over  what  I  have  said,  Valencia,  and  I  expect  you  to  pay 
some  attention  to  it.  Good  night." 

And  Augustine  bent  his  head  over  his  stiff  choker,  and  touched  Val's  fore- 
head with  his  lips  in  as  cool  a  sort  of  manner  as  a  man  kisses  a  plain  sister. 
Valencia  gave  not  the  slightest  response.  Whitechurch  swung  the  gate  open 
and  passed  down  the  road  with  his  back  to  us.  Val  stood  still  with  her  eyes  on 
the  ground,  in  a  reverie;  then  she  caught  Dauphin  up,  kissed  him,  burst  into 


BLUE    AND     YELLOU'.  <;•>! 

tears  as  she  bent  over  the  dog,  and  walked  away  through  the  trees.  I  glanced 
at  Fitz.  His  teeth  were  set  like  a  mastiffs,  and  he  looked  after  Whitechurch  as 
if  he  longed  to  deliver  from  his  left  shoulder,  and  floor  the  retreating  figure. 

"Very  paternal,  wasn't  he?"  said  I.  "  You'd  have  improved  the  occasion 
better  than  that,  Fitz." 

"  Curse  the  fellow  !  "  muttered  the  Radical  candidate.  "  I  just  wish  I  had 
him  out  for  a  couple  of  rounds  on  a  quiet  morning— a  hypocritical  idiot,  that'll 
worry  all  her  young  life  out  of  her." 

With  which  disconnected  remark,  and  sundry  smothered  curses,  the  sight  of 
the  farewell  having  seemingly  stirred  him  into  mighty  wrath,  Fitz  sprang  on 
Rumpunch,  and  tore  over  the  roads  at  a  pace  fit  to  win  the  Grand  Military. 
When  he  got  home  he  vented  it  in  pipes  and  whisky,  and  Beau  looked  at  him 
as  a  man  might  look  on  a  pet  hound,  that  he  feared  was  going  in  for 
hydrophobia. 

"Something's  come  to  Fitz,"  said  Beau,  anxiously,  "for  he's  just  signed  me 
a  1000/.  check  without  a  word;  and  I  know  he  wouldn't  have  given  it  to  me  to 
corrupt  the  people  with  without  some  bother,  if  he'd  known  what  he  was  doing." 

"  I'm  going  over  to  Levison's,  Beau,"  said  he  at  breakfast  the  next  day. 
"  We're  to  drive  over  to  the  Chase,  for  a  sketching  party;  will  you  come  ?  " 

"  I  ?"  growled  Beau.  "  I  should  think  I've  something  better  to  do;  if  I 
hadn't,  the  figure  at  your  poll  would  be  an  O.  The  idea  of  a  man's  coming 
down  to  stand  for  a  borough,  and  then  going  spending  all  his  time  with  a  set  of 
women!  I've  no  patience  with  you,  Randolph." 

"  Haven't  you,  old  fellow  ?  "  laughed  Fitz.  "  Patience  is  a  virtue,  and  as 
no  lawyer  has  any  virtues  at  all,  I  suppose  we  can't  wonder  at  you.  I  did 
begin  enunciating  my  opinions,  but  you  stopped  my  mouth." 

"Opinions!  Pray  what  have  they  to  do  with  an  election ?"  retorted  Beau. 
"  One  would  take  you  for  a  boy  of  twenty,  talking  as  if  you  didn't  know  every- 
thing going  on  on  the  face  of  the  earth  was  an  affair  of  pounds,  shillings,  and 
pence.  Who  the  devil  cares  two  straws  what  opinions  you  have  ?  Can't  you 
keep  'em  quiet,  if  you  will  have  such  things  ?  They  hinder  a  man  shock- 
ingly. If  he's  a  taste  for  'em,  he  should  lock  'em  up  in  his  study.  You  want 
to  get  returned " 

"  Don't  care  a  hang  about  it,"  cried  Fitz. 

"  For  Cantitborough  ?"  continued  Beau,  too  irate  to  mind  the  interruption; 
"  and  if  you  do,  you  should  make  up  your  mind  to  give  your  money  to  me  and 
Warning  with  your  eyes  shut,  as  a  verger  takes  a  Christmas-box,  and  to  put 
the  stopper  for  a  time  on  all  that  liberalist  and  rationalist  stuff.  It's  all  very 
sensible,  when  shared  with  the  esprits  forts;  but  it  don't  sell  just  now — it  must 
wait  another  century  or  two.  If  you  want  to  get  on  with  the  world,  you  mustn't 
frighten  it  by  drawing  Truth  out  of  her  well;  for  the  world  at  present  is  a  very 


622  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

great  baby,  and  truth  is  its  bogy,  and  makes  it  run  away.  But  you're  as  wilful 
as  an  unbroke  colt,  and  one  might  as  well  talk  to  this  reindeer  tongue  as  to  you. 
So  get  along  to  your  sketching  party;  you're  out  of  mischief  there,  if  you  don't 
make  love  to  Whitechurch's  bride,  and  raise  the  hue  and  cry  after  you,  with 
old  Blue  Bar  springing  the  rattle." 

With  which  oration,  delivered  with  the  spurt  of  a  champagne  cork,  Beau 
pushed  his  plate  away,  drank  a  glass  of  Bass,  and  ordered  the  dog-cart  to  drive 
into  the  town,  while  his  obstinate  client  put  his  block  and  his  moist-color  box  in 
his  pocket,  and  took  his  cap  to  walk  over  to  Elm  Court.  A  nicer  place  to  flirt 
in  than  that  Chase,  with  its  soft  turfy  seats,  and  its  thick  shadowy  woodlands, 
and  its  picturesque  distance,  as  an  excuse  for  sketching,  it  was  impossible  to 
find.  Fitz  was  very  great  at  sketching;  he  made  a  sketching  tour  once  with 
one  of  the  "  Associates,"  but  to-day  I  fancy  the  outline  of  Dauphin's  nose  was 
all  he  achieved,  for  he  was  chiefly  busy  mixing  Miss  Val's  colors,  fetching  her 

water,  telling  her  how  to  tone  down  this,  and  deepen  that,  till Well,  I  didn't 

envy  the  Reverend  Augustine,  as  his  fiancee  sat  at  the  roots  of  an  old  beech,  a 
little  apart  from  the  rest  of  us,  with  Fitz  lying  at  full  length  on  the  turf  beside 
her,  as  handsome  a  dog  as  ever  turned  a  girl's  head  with  his  pretty  speeches. 

Valencia  was  very  shy  and  quiet  with  him  that  day;  she,  who  generally 
talked  nineteen  to  the  dozen,  and  was  always  ready  for  any  lark.  I  was  listen- 
ing to  the  "  Princess,"  which  Jimmy  Villars  was  reading  aloud  to  Mrs.  Levison 
and  another  fair  one,  but  it  really  did  bore  me  to  such  a  degree  that  I  was 
obliged  to  sneak  out  of  sound  to  where  I  could  light  a  pipe  without  offending 
female  nerves.  I  was  near  Fitz,  who  was  smoking — permitted  the  indulgence 
by  Valencia,  who  has  no  nonsence  about  her— and  I  caught  the  end  of  his  sen- 
tence as  he  lay  looking  up  at  her,  and  gathering  the  ferns  with  his  left  hand. 
Fitz  has  a  quiet  way  of  flirting,  but  it's  a  very  effective  one. 

"  No;  I  don't  wish  to  get  the  election,"  he  was  saying.  "  My  views  have 
changed  since  I  came  down  here." 

"What!  has  Cantitborough  air  turned  you  Blue?"  laughed  Valencia,  with 
her  customary  gaiety. 

"Not  exactly;  but  since,  when  I  leave  Cantitborough,  I  shall  be  forgotten 
as  a  passagere  acquaintance  by  those  who  have  made  the  place  dear  to  me,  I 
shall  never  set  foot  in  it  again,  which  I  must  do  were  I  to  become  its  represen- 
tative. Isn't  it  old  North,  in  the  '  Noctes,'  who  says  '  there  are  places  in  this 
earth  that  we  shudder  to  revisit,  haunted  by  images  too  beautiful  to  be 
endured  ? '  I  feel  the  truth  of  that  now." 

"  By  George!  "  thought  I,  "  Fitz  is  growing  very  serious.  Won't  poor  little 
Val  credit  it  all,  and  never  dream  it  will  be  talked  in  the  same  strain  to  some 
new  flirtation  next  month!  " 

"  Will  you  give  me  that  sketch  ?  "  Fitz  went  on,  after  a  pause,  in  which  the 


BLUE    AND     YELLOW.  (j->3 

ferns  had  come  to  considerable  grief.     "  It  is  not  much  to  ask,  but  I   should 
like  some  memorial  of  days  that  I  shall  never  forget,  though  you  will." 

"  Do  you  think  I  shall  ever  forget  them  ?"  began  Valencia,  passionately; 
then  stopped  short,  bending  her  head  over  her  drawing. 

The  temptation  to  revenge  yesterday's  scene  was  too  sweet  to  be  resisted. 
Fitz  put  his  arm  round  her  waist,  and  drew  her  down  towards  him.  "  Will  you 
promise  me  that  you  will  not " 

But  Valencia  sprang  up,  scattering  her  materials  to  the  four  winds;  her 
face  was  flushed,  and  her  voice  agitated.  "  Hush,  hush,  you  must  not  speak 
so  to  me;  you  do  not  know " 

What  he  didn't  know  never  appeared,  for  Edith  Levison  turned  her  head 
over  her  shoulder,  saying. 

"  Val,  darling,  have  you  any  ultramarine  ?     I  can't  find  mine." 

Val  went  towards  her,  and  Fitz  rose  with  a  worried,  anxious  look  on  his  face, 
very  different  to  the  fun  his  love  affairs  generally  brought  him. 

"  Why  did  your  cousin  engage  herself  to  Mr.  Whitechurch  ?  "  asked  Fitz, 
point-blank,  of  Mrs.  Levison,  finding  himself  alone  with  her  for  two  minutes 
before  dinner  that  night. 

"Ah  !  isn't  it  a  pity  ?  "  cried  Edith,  plaintively;  "  a  dreadful  man  like  that, 
who'll  think  it  sinful  for  her  to  waltz  or  go  to  the  Opera.  If  Gerald  wouldn't 
let  me  waltz,  or  have  a  box,  I  would  sue  for  a  divorce  to-morrow.  It's  shameful, 
isn't  it?  " 

"  But  why  accept  him  ?  "  said  Fitz,  impatiently. 

"  That  was  all  my  uncle's  doing,"  answered  Edith.  "  He's  terribly  mean, 
you  know,  without  the  slightest  reason  to  be  so.  Valencia  came  home  from 
school  at  seventeen.  Augustine  thought  her  very  pretty,  (clergymen  are  ttot 
above  those  weaknesses,)  and  proposed  for  her.  My  uncle  thought  it  a  good 
match,  and  ordered  her  to  accept  him;  her  mamma  begged  her  not  to  go  against 
her  papa.  Poor  little  Val,  as  thoughtless  as  my  canary  bird,  never  knew  the 
misery  she  was  making  for  herself,  and  consented.  She  has  been  miserable 
ever  since,  poor  child  !  They've  been  engaged  two  years;  and,"  continued 
Edith  with  immense  energy,  "  oh  !  Mr.  Fitzhardinge,  I'd  as  soon  see  her  join- 
ing the  poor  Clares  as  wearing  orange-blossoms  for  that  pompous,  bigoted 
Whitechurch." 

So  would  Fitz,  probably,  on  the  well  known  principle  of  the  dog  in  the 
manger;  a  very  natural  principle,  especially  when  one  has  a  fancy  to  eat  the 
straw  oneself.  He  did  not  say  so,  however,  but  leaned  against  a  console  in 
profound  silence,  while  Edith  whispered,  as  Valencia  came  into  the  room,  "  I 
shouldn't  be  surprised  if  my  uncle  broke  off  the  engagement  now,  for  he  thinks 
Verdant  is  in  love  with  her,  as,  indeed,  he  is,  poor  boy,  and  the  peer's  robes  are 
better  than  the  priest's." 


624  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

Whitechurch  came  to  dine  that  night  at  Elm  Court.  The  dinner  was  not 
so  lively  as  usual,  for  Fitz  and  Valencia,  generally  the  fastest  hitters  in  the 
tennis-ball  of  conversation,  might  have  been  Gog  and  Magog  set  down  at  the 
table  for  any  amusement  they  afforded  the  society.  Whitechurch,  too,  looked 
more  glum  and  self-sufficient  than  ever,  and  Jimmy  Villars  whispered  to  me, 
"  that  one  might  as  well  ask  the  terrace  statues  in  the  garden  to  dinner  as  a 
trio  of  lovers  and  rivals,  for  any  company  that  they  were." 

After  dinner  at  Elm  Court  we  were  wont  to  take  our  cigars  about  in  the 
grounds  instead  of  over  the  wine  in  the  glorious  sultry  August  evenings.  Levi- 
son  went  after  his  wife — he  was  still  dreadfully  spoony  about  her — Fitz 
lighted  a  Havana  and  strolled  off  by  himself,  and  Jimmy  and  I  sat  down  in  a 
Robinson  Crusoe  hut  to  have  a  chat  about  the  Cambridge  Eight,  the  October 
meetings,  and  other  subjects  we  had  in  common.  Villers  was  just  telling  me 
how  it  was  that  Long  Fortescue  happened  to  make  such  a  pot  of  money  on 
the  Cesarewitch,  when,  through  the  thick  shrubs  and  young  trees  that  surrounded 
our  smoking-room,  I  caught  a  glimpse  of  Valencia's  pink  dress,  as  she  stood 
in  earnest  talk  with  somebody  or  other,  invisible  to  us. 

"Oh  !  hang  it,  Jimmy,"  said  I,  "there's  another  love-scene  going  on;  let's 
get  out  of  the  way." 

"  Keep  still,  young  one,  rather,"  retorted  Villars,  "  or  you  may  just  walk 
into  the  middle  of  it,  and  smash  all  the  fun.  Is  it  that  dear  little  pet,  and  Fitz 
making  a  fool  of  himself  about  her  ?  It's  horridly  dirty  to  listen,  but,  boxed 
up  here,  one  can't  help  it.  Fitz  would  shoot  us  if  we  walked  out  in  his  face  and 
spoiled  sport.  Besides,  we  shan't  hear  anything  new;  love-scenes  are  all  alike." 

This,  however,  seemed  far  from  being  a  love-scene.  Valencia  was  speaking 
impetuously  and  hurriedly.  "  I  have  acted  very  wrongly,  I  know  I  have.  A 
girl  always  does,  if  she  engages  herself  where  she  cannot  give  her  affection.  I 
beg  your  pardon  for  having  misled  you.  I  blame  myself  very  much  for  not 
having  spoken  frankly  to  you  long  ago,  and  asked  you  to  release  me  from  an 
engagement  I  can  never  fulfil." 

"  It  is  a  pity  you  did  not  think  so  long  "ago,"  replied  Whitechurch,  senten- 
tiously. 

"  It  is  a  pity.     I  wish  to  Heaven  I  had,"  cried  poor  little  Val. 

"  I  daresay  you  do,  since  you  have  seen  your  favorite  reprobate,  Mr.  Fitz- 
hardinge,"  smiled  the  pastor.  "You  say  very  justly  that  we  are  ill  suited  to 
each  other;  our  tastes,  and  aims  and  pursuits  are  utterly  alien.  I  was  lured,  I 
confess,  by  your  personal  attractions.  I  trusted  that  the  good  seed,  once 
sown,  might  flourish  in  so  fair  a  soil;  but  I  was  deceived.  You  have  only  fore- 
stalled me  in  the  rupture  of  our  engagement.  I  confess  that  I  dared  not  take 
a  helpmate  out  of  Philistia,  and  I  have  learnt  that  there  are  treasures  elsewhere 
superior  to  the  ephemeral  charms  of  mere  exterior  beauty." 


BLUE    AND     YELLOW.  (#5 

"  I  am  rejoiced  to  hear  it,"  retorted  Val,  rather  haughtily.  «  Our  want  of 
congeniality  cannot  have  struck  you  more  forcibly  than  it  has  done  me.  You 
will,  at  least,  do  me  the  justice  to  admit  that  I  never  simulated  an  affection  I 
could  not  feel." 

"Certainly;  we  part  in  peace,  and  shall,  I  trust,  meet  again  on  perfectly 
friendly  terms,"  returned  Whitechurch,  with  doubly  pompous  self-consciousness 
to  cover  his  inward  mortification. 

"  He'll  take  Gary,  mark  my  word,"  said  Villars,  as  the  incumbent  of  St. 
Hildebrande's  took  the  tips  of  his  late  fiancee's  fingers,  raised  his  hat,  and  left 
her.  "All  her  district  visiting  and  ragged  school  teaching  hasn't  been  without 
an  eye  to  business,  I'll  bet." 

Valencia,  fancying  herself  alone,  threw  herself  down  on  a  turf  seat  under  a 
mountain  ash,  looking  pretty  enough,  with  the  sunset  lighting  up  her  bright 
dress  and  uncovered  hair,  while  she  sat  in  thought  out  of  which  Dauphin,  by  the 
application  of  a  cold  nose,  the  wagging  of  a  short  tail,  and  many  impatient 
barks,  vainly  tried  to  rouse  her. 

"  Deucedly  nice  she  looks,  don't  she  ? "  whispered  Villars.  "  Do  for  the 
Sleeping  Beauty,  if  her  eyes  were  shut.  Why  don't  Fitz  come  and  play  the 
Knight's  part?" 

He'd  scarcely  spoken  when  the  scent  of  a  Havana  came  to  us  on  the  evening 
wind,  and  along  the  shrubbery  path  came  Fitz  with  his  arms  folded  and  his 
eyes  on  the  ground.  Dauphin  ran  up  to  him  in  an  ecstatic  state  of  welcome. 
Valencia  started  up,  her  cheeks  flushing  as  bright-hued  as  the  sky,  and  said 
something  highly  unintelligible  about  its  going  to  rain,  which,  seeing  there 
wasn't  a  cloud  in  the  heavens,  seemed  looking  very  far  into  futurity  indeed. 
Fitz  did't  answer  her  with  regard  to  her  atmosphere  prophecies,  but,  throwing 
away  his  cigar  into  the  middle  of  an  oleander,  he  began  where  he  had  left  off  in 
the  morning,  caught  both  her  hands,  drew  her  to  him,  and  kissed  her,  sans 
ceremonie. 

"  By  Jove  !  that's  rather  too  much  for  a  man's  charity,"  growled  Villars. 
"  Master  Randolph  knows  how  to  do  the  thing,  don't  he  ? " 

"  Valencia,  my  love,  my  darling,"  murmured  Fitz,  too  earnestly  for  it  to  be 
a  flirtation  any  longer,  "  I  beseech  you  listen  to  me.  It  will  kill  me  to  see  you 
thrown  away  on  that  idiot.  I  would  do  him  some  mischief  before  I  let  him  win 
you,  or  saw  him  touch  your  very  hand  again.  I  seem  never  to  have  hated  or 
to  have  loved  till  now.  For  Heaven's  sake  free  yourself  from  those  accursed 
ties,  and  give  yourself  to  me " 

"The  deuce  !"  muttered  Jimmy,  when  Valencia  had  whispered  that  she  was 
free,  and  the  Radical  candidate  had  pledged  himself  with  every  vow  under  the 
sun  to  the  great  Blue's  daughter,  and  they  had  strolled  away  among  the  shrub- 
berries,  "  since  Fitz  has  got  up  the  steam  and  come  it  au  serieux  like  this,  a 


6o6  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

spavined  'bus  horse  may  enter  itself  for  the  Derby.  A  pretty  fellow  he  is  to 
come  canvassing;  but  one  might  have  been  sure  what  sort  of  an  election  he'd 
try  for  when  hazel  eyes  like  those  were  in  the  way." 

I  suppose  Fitz  found  this  style  of  canvassing  more  to  his  taste,  for  the  har- 
vest moon  was  high  in  the  heavens,  and  the  nightingale  was  jug-jugging  in  the 
cool  woodlands,  and  Edith  had  sung  two  or  three  songs  after  the  coffee,  be- 
fore he  and  Valencia  walked  in  through  the  bay-window,  he  looking  calmly  tri- 
umphant, and  she  excitedly  happy,  as  if  they  really  thought  a  fusion  of  Blue  and 
Yellow  the  easiest  thing  in  the  world. 


V. 

FITZ  WINS  ONE   ELECTION   AND   LOSES   ANOTHER. 

To  see  Beau's  face  when  Fitz  told  him  he  had  turned  out  Whitechurch,  and 
was  going  to  marry  Valencia  himself,  was  as  good  a  bit  of  fun  as  to  see 
Matthews's  "  Patter  versus  Clatter." 

"Well,  I  do  think  you're  gone  clean  mad,  Randolph,"  he  began,  when  he 
recovered  his  first  breathless  horror.     "To  fly  in  the  face  of  the  borough  like 
that — to  steal  their  pet  parson's  fiancee — to  outwit  their  most  influential  house- 
holder— to  get  yourself  called  every  name  they  can  lay  their  tongues  to, — how 
the  deuce  do  you  think  that's  likely  to  forward  your  election  ?  " 
Fitz  lay  back  and  laughed  without  stopping  for  five  minutes. 
"You  may  laugh,"  growled  Beau.     "You  won't  laugh  when  you  see  two 
thousand  five  hundred  pounds  six  shillings  and  eightpence  gone,  and  nothing 
to  show  for  it." 

"That's  your  fault,''  put  in  Fitz,  "  for  spending  such  a  lot  on  unholy  pur- 
poses. What  sort  of  face  would  you  show  in  the  Court  of  Inquiry  ?  " 

"  I  should  like  to  know,"  continued  Beau,  more  furious  every  word  he  ut- 
tered, "  what  a  bit  of  girl  is  worth  to  lose  an  election  for  ?  Girls  are  as  cheap  as 
green  peas,  but  you  won't  find  free  boroughs  as  easy  to  come  by.  A  pretty 
row  we  shall  have  in  the  town  !  Won't  the  Blues  print  placards  about  you  ! 
Won't  there  just  be  choice  epithets  chalked  after  your  name  on  the  walls  ! 
Won't  the  Cantitborough  Post  catch  hold  of  it,  and  rake  up  every  one  of  your 
love  affairs;  and  pretty  nice  ones  some  of  'em  are,  as  7  know,  since  I  was  called 
in  to  settle  'em  !  Won't  old  Blue  Bar  move  heaven  and  earth  to  keep  you  out ! 
Well  all  I  can  say  is,  that  you're  more  fit  for  a  private  asylum  than  a  rational 
hustings." 


BLUE    AND     YELLOW.  G27 

With  which  final  philippic  Beau  flung  out  of  the  room,  too  irate  to  hear  Fitz 
call  after  him: 

"  Take  my  compliments  to  the  editor  of  the  Cantitborough  Post,  and  ask 
him  to  be  so  kind  as  to  print,  next  week,  in  the  biggest  capitals  he  has,  that  I 
consider  a  touch  of  Valencia's  little  soft  lips  worth  the  premiership  !  Don't 
forget,  Beau  !  And,  I  say,  you  may  add,  too,  that  Blue  and  Yellow  are  two  of 
the  primary  colors,  and  intended  to  unite  from  earliest  memory." 

Beau  was  quite  right:  the  town,  /.  e.  the  ladies — for  Cantitborough  was 
petticoat-governed — were  mad  with  Valencia,  because  they  had  long  privately 
adored  Fitz,  and  Whitechurch  was  still  in  the  market,  and  therefore  to  be  sided 
with.  The  Blues  were  frantic  with  delight  at  being  able  to  damage  the  Yellow 
member,  who,  somehow,  had  been  making  ground  in  spite  of  them;  and  Bar- 
nardiston,  of  course,  was  furious,  not  because  Whitechurch  was  thrown  over, 
for  Whitechurch  had  turned  his  affections  towards  the  good  working  qualities 
of  Caroline,  but  because  the  man  he  hated  worst  in  the  whole  county — hand- 
some, reckless,  bold  republican  Fitz — had  cheated  him  out  of  the  chance  of  a 
coronet.  The  very  day  Valencia  accepted  Randolph  she  refused  little  Lord 
Verdant,  and  so  enraged  was  the  great  Tory,  that  he  told  Valencia  to  leave 
his  roof,  and  sent  Fitz's  letters  back  unopened.  Poor  Val,  who,  having  her 
mamma  on  her  side,  however,  did  not  mind  it  so  much,  took  refuge  with  Edith 
Levison,  Levison  himself  being  indignant  with  Barnardiston  for  his  folly  and 
ill-bred  opposition  to  a  match  so  much  better  than  the  one  first  looked  for; 
and  in  the  sultry  summer  days  and  long  summer  evenings  Fitz  and  Val  passed 
many  a  pleasant  hour  under  the  shady  trees  of  Elm  Court,  while  in  the  little 
bigoted,  quarrelling,  peppery  town  four  miles  off,  the  Cantitborough  men  were 
blackening  his  name  in  committee-rooms,  and  the  Cantitborough  women  were 
pulling  her  to  smithereens  at  their  tea-fights. 

The  day  that  beats  the  Derby  for  stirring  English  phlegm  into  mad  excite- 
ment— the  day  when  Blue  and  Yellov  rise  rampant  against  each  other — the  day 
when  the  demon  of  Party  breaks  loose,  when  the  Unwashed  smash  each  other's 
heads  to  their  full  satisfaction,  when  voters  are  locked  up  in  durance  vile  and 
plied  with  hocussed  grog,  and  torn  hither  and  thither  by  distracted  cabs — when 
men  work,  and  wear,  and  quarrel,  and  growl,  and  swear  by  a  bit  of  blue  rib- 
bon as  if  it  were  the  sole  stay  of  the  country,  and  grasp  at  a  yellow  banner  as 
though  it  were  the  mainstay  of  liberty — the  election-day  dawned  on  Can- 
titborough, the  sun  shining  extra  bright,  as  if  laughing  with  its  jolly  round 
face  at  the  baby  play  these  little  pigmies  below  fancied  of  such  universal 
importance. 

The  nomination- day  arrived,  and  each  separate  Cantitburgher  uprose  from 
his  bed  with  the  solemn  conviction  that  the  destinies  of  England  hung  on  his 
own  individual  hands.  Beau  splashed  through  his  bath  with  the  rapidity  of  a 


628  O  UIDAS     WORKS. 

water-dog,  brushed  his  whiskers  as  hastily  as  a  Cantab  too  late  for  chapel,  and 
dressed  himself  in  much  the  same  eager  excitement  as  a  Coronet  harnessing 
for  his  first  parade. 

"Seven  o'clock,  and  that  fellow  not  up!  "  growled  Beau,  performing  a  fan- 
faronade on  his  candidate's  door. 

"  What  the  devil  are  you  making  that  row  for  ? "  responded  Fitz.  "  Why 
can't  you  take  things  quietly  !  " 

"  If  I  had,  I  wonder  how  you'd  stand,"  swore  Beau,  "on  the  poll  to-day! 
Not  up!  when  Smith  and  Salter,  and  Verdant  will  be  in  the  down  by  nine  full 
fig,  and  all  your  committee  will  be  looking  out  for  you  at  half-past  at  the  Ten 
Bells!" 

Fitz  laughed. 

"  You  and  Fan  go  and  get  your  breakfast,  and  go  into  Cantitborough, 
whether  I'm  up  or  not.  And,  I  say,  Beau,  send  Soames  to  me,  and  order  some 
one  to  saddle  Rumpunch,  will  you  ? " 

"  Go  into  Cantitborough  without  him  !  He's  certainly  mad,"  muttered 
Beau,  in  soliloquy.  Being,  however,  of  a  philosophic  turn  of  mind,  he  and  I 
ate  a  good  breakfast,  though  ungraced  by  the  presence  of  our  host.  "  Why 
is  that  fellow  so  late  ?  "  said  Beau  fifty  times  to  each  cup  of  coffee.  "  Eight 
o'clock,  by  Jove  !  and  we  shall  be  a  mortal  hour  getting  into  procession  and 
going  to  the  town.  Do  ring  the  bell,  Fan — ring  it  loud.  Thank  you.  James, 
go  and  see  if  your  master  is  up." 

"  Can't  make  anybody  hear,  sir,"  said  James,  returning. 

"  Not  hear  ?  Bless,  my  soul,  it's  very  extraordinary  !  "  said  Beau,  looking 
the  picture  of  unutterable  worry  and  woe.  "  Fitz  must  have  taken  an 
overdose  of  opium.  Confound  him  !  what  did  he  get  in  love  for  ?  I'll  call  him 
myself."  Up  went  Beau  and  battered  at  the  door,  with  not  the  slightest  suc- 
cess. "  I  say,  Fitz  !  Fitz  !  are  you  deaf,  or  dead,  or  what  ?  "  shouted  Beau, 
forgetting  that  in  the  event  of  either  hypothesis  Fitz  would  be  the  last  person 
calculated  to  give  him  an  answer.  "  God  bless  me  ! "  cried  Beau,  bursting 
the  door  open,  "  where  are  you  ?  If  ever  there  was  a  wayward,  obstinate, 

provoking "    Beau    stopped  in  astonishment  too  great  for  speech.     The 

room  was  empty,  the  bed  empty,  Fitz,  Rover,  and  Soames  departed,  all  the 
drawers  open,  a  portmanteau  on  the  floor,  and  shirts,  and  coats,  and  brushes, 
and  boots  tossed  about  as  when  a  man  has  packed  in  a  hurry  and  left  behind 
all  the  things  he  did  not  want.  "  Bolted,  by  Heaven  !  "  cried  Beau.  "  Where's 
he  gone  ?  What's  he  done  ?  He  is  mad — he  must  be  mad  !  Send  the  ser- 
vants off  everywhere  !  Where,  in  the  devil's  name  can  he  be  flown  ?  Oh, 
curse  it,  Fan,  what  is  to  be  done  ?  " 

That  was  more  than  I  could  tell  him.  We  did  send  the  men  everywhere,  but 
they  could  not  find  their  master,  nor  Soames  either.  Beau  had  a  faint  idea  of 


BLUE    AND     YELLOW.  c,29 

dragging  the  pond,  in  case  Val  had  jilted  him,  and  Fitz  had  thrown  himself  into 
a  watery  grave;  but  then  it  was  not  probable  that  Soames  was  immolated  as  well. 
Nine  o'clock  struck;  there  were  the  Yellow  men  with  the  Yellow  banners,  and 
the  Yellow  ribbons,  and  the  Yellow  band,  and  yet  no  candidate.  My  father, 
who  would  have  been  there,  had  been  all  along  too  ill  to  take  any  part  in  the 
election,  and  this  very  nomination-day  was  chained  to  his  room  with  his  old  foe 
— gout.  In  that  half-hour  I  am  sure  poor  Beau  lost  as  much  flesh  as  a  jockey 
before  the  Derby.  "  Well,  we  must  go,"  said  he,  in  sheer  desperation.  "  Per- 
haps he'll  turn  up  in  the  town;  if  not,  we  must  tell  'em  he's  seriously  ill.  By 
George  !  I  wish  he'd  been  at  York  before  he  brought  me  on  such  a  fool's 
errand." 

Into  Cantitborough  we  rode,  with  many  shouts  and  enthusiastic  rushes  out 
from  the  cottages  we  passed;  and  into  the  market-place  we  went  with  great  row 
and  glory,  save  that  we  were  a  procession  without  a  head.  There  was  little 
Verdant,  meeker  than  ever  after  Valencia's  rejection,  looking  like  a  noodle,  with 
his  father  and  a  galaxy  of  titles  at  the  head  of  his  procession;  and  there  was  Le 
Hoop  Smith,  bland  and  smiling,  at  the  head  of  his;  and  fat,  yellow  old  Salter 
at  the  head  of  his.  And  where  was  Fitz — the  handsome,  dashing  Fitz,  whom 
the  women  were  crowded  to  admire  and  the  mob  to  cheer  ? — at  the  head  of  his, 
that  gorgeous  Yellow  display  which,  thanks  to  untiring  Beau,  was  grown  popular 
even  in  Blue  Cantitborough  ?  And  when  the  Blues  saw  not  Rumpunch  and  his 
rider,  were  they  not  frantic  with  triumph  ?  and  were  not  Fitz's  committee  in 
an  agony  of  wonder  and  dread,  and  the  women  in  a  state  of  bemoaning  agony 
and  woe,  and  the  mob  in  a  frantic  fit  of  excitement  and  indignation,  after  the 
custom  of  mobs  from  all  ages  downwards  ?  And  was  not  Beau — poor  Beau — 
distracted  in  his  own  mind,  and  worried  like  a  fox  with  fifty  packs  after  him — 
more  inimitably  cool,  and  confident,  and  matchless,  than  any  man  could  pos- 
sibly be  pictured,  when  he  set  the  mayor's  hair  straight  upon  end  with  an 
account  of  the  frightful  attack  of  cholera  that  had  seized  poor  Fitz  in  the 
morning;  distracted  the  committee  with  assurances  that  he  had  left  their  can- 
didates as  blue  as  the  lapis  lazuli  ring  on  his  finger,  and  in  mortal  danger  of 
his  life;  appealed  so  touchingly  to  the  enlightened  men  of  Cantitborough  not 
to  allow  the  unfortunate  invalid's  cause  to  be  injured;  and  conducted  himself 
altogether  so  brilliantly,  that  the  Blues  whispered  in  knots  in  dismay  ? 

Yes,  Beau  was  magnificent  that  day.  I  confess,  though,  he  did  push  me 
aside  as  a  thundering  muff  when  I  made  a  mistake,  and  told  one  of  the  com- 
mittee my  brother  had  broken  his  ankle  the  night  before — yes,  Beau  was  glori- 
ous, I  admit.  The  proceedings  began  with  the  crier's  bell  and  the  mayor's 
oration,  which  was  entirely  unheard  from  calls  from  the  crowd  of  "  Go  it,  old 
Baldhead  ! "  "Speak  up,  old  Malt-and  Hops  !  "  "  How  many  nine  gallons  did 
Salter  order  ? "  and  like  personal  allusions  to  his  occupation.  Then  uprose  old 


630 


OU IDA'S     WORKS. 


Barnardiston,  who  was  not  very  cordially  received,  for  the  simple  reason  that  he 
was  the  hardest  magistrate  on  the  bench;  however,  the  Blues  cheered  him  to 
the  skies  when  he  proposed  as  a  fitting  representative  for  the  free,  loyal,  honor- 
able, enlightened,  and  all  the  rest  of  it,  borough,  the  son  of  the  noble  and  gen- 
erous House  of  Cockadoodle,  the  benefactors  and  patrons  of  Cantitborough. 
After  his  seconder  came  two  out-and-out  Blues,  who  proposed  the  gentle  and 
intellectual  Le  Hoop  Smith,  of  Hooping  Hall,  Pottleshire;  and  two  more,  who 
put  forward  that  public-spirited,  benevolent,  and  large-hearted  gentleman, 
Curry  Salter,  late  of  the  Bengal  Infantry;  and  then  two  Liberals  arose,  in  a 
wild  storm  of  mad  cheers  and  savage  yells,  to  offer  to  the  borough,  as  a  mem- 
ber, Randolph  Fitzhardinge,  Esq.,  of  Hollywood  and  Evansdale,  who  had  been 
most  unhappily  stricken  down  by  illness  at  the  very  moment  he  was  mounting 
his  horse,  to  come  and  have  the  honor  of  addressing  them  in  person.  And 
now  up  got  little  Beau,  as  plucky  as  a  game  cock,  and  began  to  tell  them  how 
it  was  that  he  was  compelled  to  take  their  candidate's  place.  So  ingeniously 
did  he  apologize  for  Fitz;  so  delightfully  did  he  set  the  crowd  screaming  at  his 
witticisms;  so  mercilessly  did  he  show  up  his  opponent's  weak  points;  so  ad- 
mirably did  he  describe  Fitz's  opinions  much  better  than  Fitz  would  have 
done  himself,  who  would  have  talked  Plato  and  frightened  them  with  his  dar- 
ing; so  pathetically  did  he  implore  them  not  to  let  the  great  Liberal  cause  be 
prejudiced  by  an  unavoidable  accident,  that  the  mob  cheered  him,  as  if  he  had 
been  the  Queen  and  they  Etonians,  hurraed  for  Fitzhardinge  till  their  throats 
were  hoarse,  and  even  some  determined  Blues  were  caused  to  waver  in  their 
minds.  The  hands,  clad  in  French  kid,  doeskin,  silk,  cachemere,  or  dirt,  as  it 
might  chance,  that  lifted  themselves  out  from  the  tumultuous  sea  of  shouting, 
struggling,  fighting  Blues  and  Yellows,  were  declared  in  favor  of  Lord  Verdant 
and  Randolph  Fitzhardinge!  Beau's  triumph  was  magnificent,  it  smashed 
hollow  all  the  mural  crowns  that  ever  were  manufactured;  and  it  was  worth  a 
guinea  to  see  him  in  it,  mercurial  as  quicksilver,  rapid  as  a  champagne  cork, 
sharp  as  a  ferret  on  his  foes  and  winning  as  a  widow  bent  on  conquest  to  his 
friends,  haranguing  these,  arguing  with  those,  thanking  a  fat  councilman,  and 
pledging  a  thin  churchwarden,  talking  up  for  the  Queen  and  down  for  the  Pope, 
agreeing  with  everybody  and  offending  none,  telling  them  poor  Fitz  was 
Prussian  Blue  when  he  left  him,  and  rapidly  progressing  towards  Indigo,  but 
had  not  taken  a  favorable  turn,  as  he  had  just  heard  by  a  messenger,  thanks  be 
to,  etc.  etc. 

Yes,  Beau  was  grand  on  that  day,  and  never  more  effective  than  when,  at 
twelve  o'clock  at  night,  having  shaken  the  last  hand,  and  drunk  the  last  glass, 
and  talked  the  last  solemn  talk  with  the  solemn  committee,  he  sprang  on  his 
horse  in  the  Ten  Bells  yard  to  tear  over  to  Hollywood  to  see  how  his  poor  friend 
was.  He  had  just  his  foot  in  the  stirrup,  and  I  was  on  my  hack,  receiving  no 


BLUE    AND     YELLOW.  631 

end  of  condolences  for  my  brother's  most  ill-timed  attack  from  three  or  four 
of  the  principal  of  the  committee  when  a  hand  was  laid  on  my  knee,  and  an 
awful  voice,  which  I  knew  only  too  well,  said,  in  tones  the  fac-simile  of  the  first 
tragedian's  at  the  Royal  Grecian, 

"  Mr.  Francis  Fitzhardinge,  you  are  a  scoundrel  and  a  liar  ! " 

"  Hallo  !  "  said  I,  "  mild  language  !  I  am  used  to  gentlemen,  sir,  not  to 
Billingsgate.  What  the  devil  do  you  mean " 

"  What  do  you  mean,  sir,"  stormed  Mr.  Barnardiston,  "  by  daring  to  come 
before  an  assembly  of  upright,  loyal,  Godfearing  citizens  with  a  lie  on  your 
lips  ?  What  do  you  mean  by  joining  in- a  vile  plot  to  trick  a  whole  community, 
and  rob  a  parent  of  a  child " 

"Take  care,  old  gentleman;  you  are  talking  libel,"  interrupted  Beau,  pleas- 
antly. "  The  cognac's  too  much  for  you.  Go  home  and  sleep  it  off,  for 
it  don't  do  for  the  Romans  to  see  their  pet  Cincinnatus  a  little  the  worse 
for " 

"  Hold  your  tongue,  sir,"  screamed  Barnardiston,  purple  with  rage,  "  or,  by 
Heaven,  I'll  find  a  way  to  make  you.  How  dare  you  come  here — both  of 
you — and  tell  the  whole  borough  that  the  cursed  villain  you  call  friend  and 
brother " 

"Gently:  gently,  my  dear  sir;  remember  how  you  compromise  yourself," 
put  in  Beau,  with  most  solicitous  courtesy. 

"  The  consummate  rascal,"  pursued  Barnardiston,  fiercer  than  ever,  waxing 
into  sarcasm — "I  mean  the  honorable  gentleman,  the  noble-hearted,  high- 
spirited  Liberal  candidate,  who  has  sneaked  out  of  a  contest  in  which  he  knew 
he  could  not  win,  and  ordered  his  obliging  agent  and  his  boy-brother  to  chicane 
a  whole  town  with  some  garbled  folly  of  the  cholera  to  screen  his  private  mar- 
riage with  the  daughter  of  one  whom  her  father  would  sooner  see " 

«  Eh  ? what  ? — what  did  you  say  ?  Married  ! "  cried  Beau,  nonplussed  for 

once  in  his  life. 

"  Ay,  sir;  married.  And  you  know  it  as  well  as  I,  despite  your  admirable 
acting  which  would  do  credit  to  Macready  ?  "  sneered  the  Arch  Blue. 

"  By  Heavens,  if  I  had  known  !  "  swore  Beau,  furiously;  then  stopped  '  .u 
changed  his  tone.  '•Married,  you  say,  and  to  your  daughter  ?  We'  *  con- 
gratulate you.  You  must  feel  uncommonly  pleased;  it  is  a  much  higner  match 
than  you  could  have  looked  for." 

Barnardiston  was  perfectly  black  in  the  face.  He  turned  himself  with  his 
back  to  us,  and  began  to  harangue  the  committee-men,  who  looked  scared  out 
of  their  lives: 

"  Fellow  citizens  ! " 

"  Ah!  that's  the  correct  style,"  said  Beau:  "  It's  so  beautifully  patriotic." 

"  Men  of  Cantitborough,  I  appeal  to  you.     Judge  between  me  and  the 


,532  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

honorable  gentleman  you  have  chosen  to  represent  you.  We  have  been  separ- 
ated by  politics,  but  we  are  old  fellow-townsmen,  and  you  will  give  me  a  patient 
hearing.  Mr.  Fitzhardinge  comes  down  to  canvass  a  borough  which  has  only 
heard  of  him  before  through  wildness  and  follies  which  disgrace  his  name. 
He  meets  a  girl — a  young  girl,  an  innocent  girl— who  is  betrothed  of  her  own 
will  to  one  of  the  purest-minded,  sweetest-natured  men  that  ever  breathed — a 
man  whom  you  have  crowned  with  the  honor  of  your  reverence  and  esteem " 

"  And  Easter  offerings,  with  which  he  buys  the  whisky  that  makes  his  in- 
spiration," interpolated  Beau. 

"  A  man  whom  you  all  revere  and  love,  and  whose  heart  is  locked  up  in  this 
young  girl's  affections " 

"  Or  her  ten  thousand  pounds." 

"  What  does  this  villian — I  can  use  no  milder  term,  gentlemen — do,  but 
seduce  those  pure  and  fond  affections  from  the  holy  man  who  once  held  them — 
woo  her,  win  her,  persuade  her  to  break  off  the  ties  of  her  engagement,  and 
fetter  herself  anew  to  him.  I  refuse  my  consent  because  I  know  Mr.  Fitz- 
hardinge's  character  too  well  to  peril  my  child's  happiness  in  his  keeping " 

"Because  you  thought  Mr.  Verdant  was  hanging  after  her,"  interrupted 
Beau. 

"  I  reject  his  suit.  What  does  he  do  ?  He  induces  her  to  brave  me  with 
all  the  open  disobedience  which  cuts  so  keenly  to  a  father's  heart " 

"  Turn  on  Lear — a  quotation  will  save  you  no  end  of  trouble,"  said  Beau, 
kindly. 

"  He  persuades  her  to  go  and  reside " 

"  When  you'd  turned  her  out  of  your  house." 

"  To  reside  with  people  to  whom  I  have  the  most  marked  objection " 

"  Why  did  you  court  Levison  so  hard,  then,  to  take  your  pretty  niece  ? " 

"  The  most  marked  objection.  I  distinctly  forbid  her  marriage.  She 

wants  two  years  of  her  majority;  and  so  this  scoundrel Passion  gets  the 

better  of  me,  sirs  !  " 

"  Or  Cockadoodle's  comet  wine  does." 

"  When  I  tell  you  that  Mr.  Randolph  Fitzhardinge  takes  the  day  of  his 
nomination — the  day  he  knew  I  should  be  tied  to  town,  endeavoring  to  serve 
my  country's  interest — to  marry  my  poor  child  privately,  with  no  witnesses  but 
the  Levisons,  in  the  church  at  Elm  Court,  at  ten  o'clock  this  morning.  I  need 
comment  no  further  on  the  miserable  trick  by  which  you,  gentlemen,  and  all 
the  rest  of  Cantitborough,  have  been  duped  to-day.  I  only  ask  you,  as  fellow- 
townsmen,  once  private  friends,  and  always,  I  hope,  friends  in  the  common 
cause  of  truth  and  honor,  to  side  with  me,  and  never  allow  this  destroyer  of 
home  peace,  this  wild,  unprincipled  scoundrel,  to  represent  in  the  senate  of  our 
nation  this  free,  loyal,  and  Protestant  borough." 


BLUE    AND     YELLOW.  633 

"  Gentlemen,  hear  my  version,"  began  Beau. 

"  Will  you  listen  to  a  villain's  employe  ? "  pursued  Barnardiston. 

"  I  give  you  my  honor "  cried  Beau. 

"  What  is  his  honor  worth  ?  "  shouted  Barnardiston. 

"  Will  you  hear  me?" 

"  Will  you  believe  him  ?  " 

Tumultuous  was  the  scene,  frightful  the  commotion,  terrific  the  tempest  of 
Blue  and  Yellow  which  raged  over  devoted  Cantitborough.  Blues  and  Yellows 
swarmed  into  the  Ten  Bells  yard;  Blues  and  Yellows  surged  round  mine  and 
Beau's  horses;  Blues  and  Yellows  asked  franticly  what  was  the  row,  and  carry- 
ing off  but  an  unintelligible  version,  proceeded  as  the  next  best  plan  to  kick  up 
a  row  on  their  own  account.  They  screamed,  and  shouted,  and  pummelled 
each  others'  shoulders,  and  punched  each  others'  heads,  and  hissed,  and  yelled, 
and  swore,  and  cudgelled,  and 

Fought  as  only  men  can  fight  who  know  no  reason  why. 

In  vain  the  Yellow  agent  tried  to  speak.  Every  elegant  missile  that  the  dark 
night  could  allow  to  come  to  hand  was  pelted  at  him  and  me;  in  vain  the  Blue 
leaders  tried  to  turn  the  tumult  to  account;  the  mob,  who  being  in  a  mood  to 
pelt,  would  have  pelted  the  moon  could  they  have  got  at  her,  forced  them  to  re- 
treat, covered  with  much  obloquy  and  still  more  rotten  egg.  Smash,  crash, 
went  half  the  windows  in  the  place;  ladies  rushed  from  their  couches  in  night- 
caps and  hysteria;  policemen  turned  and  fled,  or  used  their  truncheons  in  some 
private  grudge;  not  a  Town  and  Gown  row,  even  with  Fighting  Bob  or  the  first 
of  the  fancy  in  surplice  and  mortarboard  to  help  us,  ever  beat  it;  and  at  last,  in 
sheer  desperation,  having  satiated  ourselves  with  enough  hard  hitting  to  last  a 
twelvemonth,  Beau  and  I  set  spurs  to  our  horses,  and  knocking  down,  at  a  low 
computation,  some  three  hundred  men  and  boys,  fought  our  way  out  of  the 
town,  and  galloped  on  to  Hollywood  in  silence. 

"  By  heaven  !  "  said  Beau,  through  his  set  teeth,  as  he  threw  himself  down 
at  last  in  the  arm-chair  of  the  dining-room,  thoroughly  done  up  for  the  first 
time  in  his  life — "by  Heaven  !  if  I'd  known  Fitz  was  such  a  cursed  fool,  I'd 
have  seen  him  at  the  devil  before  he'd  made  one  of  me  too.  The  election's 
lost,  smashed,  ruined.  I  may  as  well  withdraw  his  name  from  the  poll.  To  go 
and  disgrace  himself  before  all  the  county:  to  lose  a  free  borough  for  a  girl, 
when  girl's  are  as  plenty  as  blackberries  and  quite  as  worthless;  to  go  and  offend 
his  father,  and  his  constituents,  and  his  county,  and  everything  worth  consider- 
ing, from  a  ridiculous  fancy  for  a  little  flirt  whom  he'll  be  wishing  at  the  devil 
in  twelve  months'  time — two  thousand  pounds  fifteen  shillings  and  eightpence 
gone  for  nothing  !  I'm  a  cool  man — a  very  cool  man  generally — but  I  confess 


G34  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

this  does  get  the  better  of  me.  How  shall  I  ever  forget,  or  how  will  all  the 
Cantitborough  men  forget,  my  being  brought  down  here  only  tell  them  a  parcel 
of  lies,  and  not  succeeding  through  them  even  ?  By  Jupiter  !  "  and  Beau  sprang 
up  from  his  chair  and  dashed  his  hand  down  on  the  table  with  an  impetus  that 
made  the  bottles  and  glasses  on  it  leap  up  terrified  into  the  air—"  by  Jupiter  !  I 
swear  I'll  never  speak  to  your  madman  of  a  brother,  Frank,  or  to  his  con- 
founded wife,  as  long  as  I  live— never  !  I,  the  sharpest  dog  in  all  Lincoln's  Inn, 
to  be  done  green  like  this  ! " 

With  which  pathetic  summary  poor  Beau  fell  back  again  into  his  chair,  and 
opened  his  lips  no  more  that  night.  The  morrow  dawned;  the  poll  was  opened; 
Beau,  like  a  plucky  soldier  sticking  to  his  colors  as  long  as  there  was  a  rag  of 
them  left,  rode  into  Cantitborough  early,  and  I  with  him,  and  made  his  way  to 
the  polling-booth  in  the  midst  of  the  yells,  and  shouts,  and  fiendish  exclama- 
tions, and  laughter,  and  derision  of  the  mob,  who  swarmed  through  the  streets 
still  strewn  with  the  debris  of  the  midnight  conflict.  In  vain  did  Beau  seek  a 
hearing  from  his  chief  constituents;  in  vain  did  he  try  to  gather  round  him  the 
committee;  in  vain  did  he  try  to  rally  round  him  even  a  few  straggling 
troopers,  to  make  a  stand  with  him  in  this  Thermopylasan  fix.  In  vain  !  The 
Cantitburghers  had  been  duped,  and  when  did  ever  Christian  live  with  magna- 
nimity enough  to  pardon  that  ?  The  news  of  Fitz's  marriage  had  spread 
throughout  the  town;  the  ladies  were  furious  against  Valencia  for  having 
hooked  the  only  handsome  man  who  had  been  seen  in  Cantitborough  for  the 
last  ten  years.  They  made  their  husbands,  and  sons,  and  fathers  solemnly 
promise  to  withdraw  their  vote  from  such  a  wicked  fellow,  and  the  husbands, 
and  sons,  and  fathers,  some  of  them  being  in  love  with  Val,  others  liking  to 
buy  religious  reputation  cheap  by  siding  with  the  pet  parson,  and  others  having 
Fitz's  money  already  in  their  pockets,  determined  to  hold  virtuously  aloof  from 
the  contest,  vowed  the  required  vow,  and  the  tide  of  public  adoration  set 
steadily  in  for  Verdant  and  Le  Hoop  Smith. 

The  committees  sat  in  their  respective  rooms,  the  mob  round  the  booth 
danced,  and  shouted,  and  yelled,  in  utter  absence  of  police,  the  Peelers  being 
hors  de  combat  from  the  past  night's  fray;  Beau,  and  two  or  three  staunch  Lib- 
erals, stood  firm,  with  anxious  visage  and  hearts  sunk  to  zero.  The  tower 
clock  struck  four — the  poll  was  closed — the  votes  stood  thus: 

Verdant 550 

Le  Hoop  Smith 310 

Salter «. 2Oo 

Fitzhardinge 6 

Great  was  the  exultation,  great  the  clamor,  that  arose.  You  do  not  need 
to  be  told  how  the  Blue  banners  waved,  and  the  Blue  band,  inflamed  with 


BLUE    AND     YELLOW.  635 

triumph  and  purl,  began  to  play,  and  the  Blue  members  bowed  down  to  the 
ground,  and  thanked  the  noble,  intelligent,  and  generous  community  which  had 
returned  them  as  their  representatives,  how  the  Blues  insulted  the  Yellow,  with 
frightful  contumely,  and  how  the  Yellows,  few  in  flesh  but  strong  in  spirit,  re- 
turned the  compliment;  and  how  the  Yellow  banners  struck  up  the  Blue  ban- 
ners when  the  triumphal  procession  formed,  and  Blue  heads  went  down  under 
Yellow  fists,  and  Yellow  heroes  collapsed  beneath  Blue  boots,  and  the  remain- 
ing half  of  the  windows  were  smashed;  and  how  the  uproar  was  at  its  height, 
when  into  the  market-place,  spurring  on  Rumpunch,  flecked  with  foam,  came 
the  head  and  root  of  it,  by  brother  Fitz,  as  handsome,  as  devil-may-care,  and 
as  cool  as  ever. 

Louder  grew  the  yells,  wilder  the  shouts,  fiercer  the  row;  up  in  the  air  flew 
the  eggs  and  the  mud  and  the  sticks  and  the  stones,  and  all  the  popular  missiles 
of  the  Great  Unwashed;  but  steady  as  a  rock  stood  Rumpunch  under  Fitz's 
curb,  and  firm  as  a  rock  sat  Fitz  himself,  in  the  midst  of  it.  There's  nothing 
like  pluck  for  pleasing  or  awing  the  canaille;  it  is  the  one  thing  they  will  ap- 
preciate and  revere.  Their  shouts  hushed  for  a  second,  and  they  stopped  in 
their  onslaught  upon  him.  He  took  advantage  of  it,  and  held  up  his  hand: 
"  Men,  listen  to  me  for  a  minute  !  " 

They  did  listen  to  him  (Barnardiston  had  been  vigorously  assaulted  by  a 
potboy,  and  had  gone  home  to  the  Larches,)  and  Fitz  went  on:  "I  hear  I 
have  lost  my  election.  I  am  sorry  for  it,  but  I  could  scarcely  expect  otherwise; 
and  if  I  have  preferred  securing  an  election  of  another  kind,  I  hope  the  con- 
stituents of  Cantitborough  are  all  too  gallant  and  chivalric  gentlemen  to  dis- 
agree with  me."  Here  uprose  immense  cheering  from  a  few,  and  laughter  even 
from  the  enraged  community.  "  I  can't  alter  your  decision  now,  but  I'll  try  to 
merit  a  different  one  next  time  I  contend  for  the  honor  of  representing  you.  I 
have  no  right  to  ask  any  favor  at  your  hands;  but,  nevertheless,  I  am  going  to 
ask  two:  the  first,  that  you  will  clear  my  brother,  Mr.  Francis  Fitzhardinge,  and 
my  agent  and  friend,  Mr.  Beauclerc,  of  any  imputation  of  knowing  the  true 
cause  of  my  absence,  and  any  deliberate  intention  of  concealing  it  by  a  lie. 
The  other  is,  that  there  may  be  no  disunion  or  bloodshed  on  my  behalf,  and  no 
broken  heads  caused  through  my  fault.  Let  us  all  agree  to  differ;  let  the  vic- 
torious go  to  their  homes  without  insulting  the  vanquished,  and  the  vanquished 
without  quarrelling  with  the  conquerors  for  justly  earned  success.  Let  us  all 
part  in  good  will,  and  let  my  friends  go  to  the  Ten  Bells  and  drink  my  health 
and  that  of  my  bride,  if  they  will  be  so  kind,  with  three  times  three  ! " 

It  was  a  queer  election  speech,  and  without  precedent,  certainly,  but  in  the 
little  antiquated  borough  it  told  admirably.  Never  before  was  seen  such  an 
election,  without  doubt;  but,  somehow  or  other,  Fitz,  going  into  a  new  track, 
and  doing  such  a  thing  as  had  never  been  done  before,  got,  all  of  a  sudden, 


636  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

more  heartily  cheered,  applauded,  and  hurraed  than  the  successful  candidates 
themselves.  The  gentlemen  of  the  town  sneered,  and  ridiculed,  and  fumed 
about  his  speech  being  most  illegal,  most  unprecedented,  most  absurd,  but  the 
Unwashed,  only  looking  at  the  pluck,  and  the  manliness  of  tone,  and  the  flow- 
ing taps  of  the  Ten  Bells,  cheered  him  vociferously,  and  would  have  had  the  poll- 
ing done  over  again  if  they  could.  Beau  stood  looking  on,  with  his  brow  knit 
like  a  Jupiter  Tonans,  and  turned  into  the  Ten  Bells  with  a  grunt. 

"  That  fellow  should  have  lived  in  the  middle  ages,  with  all  his  confounded 
folly.  And  yet,  devil  take  him,  why  can't  one  hate  him  ?  " 

"  Will  you  forgive  me,  old  boy  ?  "  laughed  Fitz,  following  him  into  a  private 
room  twenty  minutes  after. 

"  Get  out  !  "  growled  Beau,  yet  looking  lovingly  on  him  nevertheless.  "A 
pretty  fellow  you«are  !  making  yourself  look  like  a  fool,  and  everybody  else. 
I  should  have  thought  you  more  a  man  of  sense  than  to  run  mad  after  a  mere 
pretty  face.  Two  thousand  five  hundred  pounds  fifteen  shillings  and  eight 
pence  gone  for  nothing  !  " 

"  Never  mind,  old  fellow,"  laughed  Fitz.  "  Barnardiston  would  have 
scented  the  ceremony,  and  forbidden  it,  on  any  other  day;  and  as  to  waiting  till 
she  was  of  age,  quite  out  of  the  question.  I  should  have  killed  myself  before 
half  the  time  was  out,  so  I  shouldn't  have  been  much  use  to  the  community  or 
the  Commons;  and  if  her  little  face  is  not  better  to  look  at  than  the  Speaker's 
why " 

"Spare  me  that,  spare  me!"  cried  Beau.  "I'll  forgive  you,  but  I  really 
can't  stand  her  praises." 

"  Come  and  look  at  her,  and  you'll  soon  forgive  her,"  said  Fitz,  taking  out 
his  watch.  "  I've  made  an  immense  sacrifice  to  you,  Beau,  in  leaving  her  at 
one  o'clock  to  ride  over  to  this  little  owl  of  a  town,  whose  animadversions  are 
much  more  honor  than  its  praise.  She's  at  Sandslope — you  know,  that  little 
place  by  the  sea,  ten  miles  from  here ;  I  took  her  there  yesterday,  and  now  I 
must  gallop  back  to  her,  poor  little  dear,  or  she'll  be  thinking  the  Blues  and 
Yellows  have  eaten  me  up.  Ring  the  bell,  Fanny,  and  ask  White  to  saddle  me 
the  best  horse  in  his  stables — Rumpunch  is  dead  beat;  and  I  say,  Beau,"  went 
on  Fitz,  "  don't  be  vexed,  dear  old  boy.  I  will  canvass  for  the  next  election 
in  earnest;  and  when  you  come  over  to  Sandslope  (we  don't  want  you  just  yet), 
if  you  don't  say  my  poor  pet  is  excuse  enough  for  anything,  why  you'll  be 
made  of  granite." 

"  Hum!  "  grunted  Beau,  "  I  shall  always  hate  her.  But  that  don't  matter; 
give  my  compliments  to  her  (not  my  congratulations,  for  she'll  find  out  that 
to  have  you  for  a  husband  is  no  matter  for  felicitation,)  and  tell  her  that  my 
sister  the  other  day  walked  down  Regeant  Street,  with  '  Chaste  and  Elegant, 
2/.  ioj.'  on  her  cloak,  and  that  I  hope  she'll  ticket  herself  the  same,  '  Mrs. 


BLUE    AND     YELLOW.  637 

Randolph  Fitzhardinge,  value  25007.  155.  8^.,'  for  she  has  cost  you  that  to  a 
certainty." 

Apparently  Fitz  still  thinks  Valencia  worth  it,  for  he  has  never  regretted  his 
hasty  step.  She  did  look  excuse  enough  for  anything  when  we  saw  her  a  week 
or  two  after,  when  they  quitted  Pottleshire  for  the  Lakes,  leaving  the  county  to 
pull  them  to  pieces  at  leisure;  and  she  asked  Beau's  pardon  so  prettily  and 
penitentially  for  the  mischief  she  had  done,  that  Beau,  being  the  very  reverse 
of  a  stoic,  forgave  her  her  sins,  only  made  her  solemnly  promise  to  leave  Fitz 
unmolested  when  next  he  stood  for  a  free  borough.  Beau  was  made  amiable, 
too,  that  morning,  by  hearing  that  Le  Hoop  Smith  had  been  unseated  for 
bribery,  and  that  Barnardiston  was  already  rumored  to  repent  having  treated 
so  cavalierly  such  a  high  match  for  his  daughter. 

Caroline  married  Whitechurch;  they  quarrel  night  and  day  at  home,  but 
abroad  administer,  in  amicable  concert  enough,  very  big  texts  and  very  small 
globules  to  their  unlucky  parishioners.  Beau  is  supremely  happy  just  at  pres- 
ent, Fitz  having  procured  for  him  a  recordership,  long  the  objects  of  his  desires. 
And  Fitz  ?  Well,  Fitz  writes  to  me  to-day  that  he  is  going  yachting  in  the 
Levant,  with  Valencia  and  "  three  or  four  other  pleasant  fellows,"  that  Val  is 
as  bright  as  a  sunbeam,  and  agrees  with  him  in  thinking  the  sherbet,  laughter, 
and  delicious  bags  of  the  Ionian  Isles  much  better  than  the  odors  of  the 
Thames  in  the  senatorial  halls  of  St  Stephen's. 

But  though  they  make  a  jest  of  it,  and  think  the  one  election  well  won  and 
the  other  well  lost,  I  doubt  if  Cantitborough  has  ever  forgotten,  or  will  ever 
forget,  the  strangest  contest  that  an  enlightened  borough  of  the  enlightened 
nineteenth  century  ever  beheld,  and  if  the  Cantitburghers  will  ever  cease  dis- 
cussing in  news,  and  drawing,  and  tap  room  the  memorable  strife  of  BLUE  AND 
YELLOW  WHEN  MY  BROTHER  FITZ  STOOD  FOR  CANTITBOROUGH!. 


638 


QUID  AS     WORKS. 


BELLES  AND  BLACKCOCK. 


OVER   THE    HILLS   AND    FAR    AWAY. 

AUGUST  had  come,  and  grouse  and  black  game,  wildfowl  and  snipe,  salmon 
and  deer,  became  the  prominent  ideas  in  my  mind,  and  I  longed  for  the 
advent  of  the  i2th  as  fervently  as  any  ^cornet  for  his  moustaches,  or  young 
lady  for  her  first  ball.  I  had  been  bored  to  death  by  the  season.  I  am  not  a 
marrying  man,  and  the  great  emporium  of  good  matches  is  of  no  use  to  me; 
so,  after  concerts  and  crushes,  dejeuners  and  dinners,  the  coulisses  and  the 
Commons,  I  was  thankful  enough  when,  after  having  eaten  my  customary 
whitebait,  I  was  free  to  turn  my  thoughts  to  the  bracken  and  the  mist,  the 
corries  and  the  glens  of  the  dear  far-away  Western  Highlands. 

I  was  impatient  to  be  off.  I  had  my  guns  browned,  bought  a  new  Enfield, 
overhauled  my  rods,  got  no  end  of  new  flies,  and  of  course  felt  discontented 
with  my  kennel,  though  some  of  my  pointers  and  setters  are  as  good  as  any  on 
the  hill-side,  and  Ascot,  Moustache,  and  Puseyite  cannot  be  beat  either  among 
the  turnips  or  the  heather.  My  cousin  Dyneley  (Graham  Cyril  Beauchamp 
Vavasour,  tenth  Baron  Dyneley,  according  to  that  gourmand  for  strawberry- 
leaves,  Mr.  Burke)  had  been  asked  to  shoot  over  Steinberg's  moor  with  him, 
but  at  the  eleventh  hour  the  poor  old  Viscount  had  a  fit  of  apoplexy;  some 
said  from  an  exces  in  truffles  and  Tokay  at  a  Star  and  Garter  dinner  he  gave 
the  Aquilina.  He  was  ordered  to  "  les  eaux,"  and  condemned  to  a  regimen, 
and,  bemoaning  his  bitter  fate,  despairingly  told  Dyneley  to  fill  the  box  as  he 
pleased.  So  Dyneley  asked  me  to  go  down  with  him  and  Willoughby  of  the 
i4th  (Light  Dragoons) — we  always  call  him  Claude,  because  there  are  no  end 
of  Willoughbys  in  the  army — and  one  or  two  other  fellows,  to  make  up  our 
party  to  bag  blackcock  and  stalk  deer  on  poor  Steinberg's  moor  at  Glenmist, 
in  Argyleshire. 

Dyneley  and  I  had  thrashed  Bargees,  beat  the  Westminster,  pounded  the 


BELLES    AND    BLACKCOCK.  639 

Harrow  boys,  and  pulled  to  Putney  together  years  ago  when  we  were  young 
bloods  at  Eton;  and  I  have  had  many  a  day's  sport  with  him  since,  here  and 
there,  among  the  stubble  at  home,  sticking  pigs  in  the  jungle,  buffalo-hunting 
in  the  prairies,  going  after  elephants  in  Ceylon,  and  camping  out  to  net  ortolans 
in  Scinde.  He  has  been  fond  of  vagabondizing  (so  have  I,  entre  nous,}  and  he 
is  known  all  over  the  world  as  well  as  Wortley  Montagu  was,  and  can  make 
himself  equally  at  home  in  an  Arab  tent  or  in  a  European  court;  sleeping  under 
his  horse's  legs  in  the  wilds  of  the  Pampas,  or  flirting  with  a  Spanish  dona  in 
some  luxurious  palace  in  Madrid. 

Dyneley  is  poor  for  a  peer,  though  rich  compared  to  such  fellows  as  Wil- 
loughby,  who  has  not  money  enough  to  keep  his  horses.  Dyneley's  governor 
went  deucedly  fast,  and  spent  every  shilling  the  entail  would  let  him  lay  his 
hand  upon.  To  be  a  rich  peer,  is  decidedly  a  very  jolly  birth- right;  but  a 
poor  one — I  would  as  soon  be  one  of  the  grooms  about  the  Yard.  Dyneley 
thought  so  too;  so,  after  he  had  gone  fast  also,  he  shut  up  his  place  in  Hamp- 
shire to  retrench  by  itself,  sold  the  town-house,  took  his  yacht  Aphrodite  and 
wandered  over  the  face  of  the  earth,  seeing  life  in  all  its  possible  phases,  firing 
a  book  or  two  now  and  then  at  the  world,  getting  a  reputation  for  cleverness 
and  eccentricity  (everything  is  called  eccentric  that  is  at  all  out  of  the  beaten 
track),  and  at  five-and-thirty  came  back  from  his  travels  to  be  admired  by  some, 
cavilled  at  by  others,  likened  by  young  ladies  to  Lara  and  Manfred,  and  to  be 
fete  as  a  singular  melange  of  Gordon  Gumming,  Lamartine,  and  Layard. 

He  was,  however,  utterly  unlike  any  of  the  three,  as  it  happened. 

"  Well,  Monti,  are  all  the  traps  ready  ?  "  said  he,  when  I  wtnt  to  see  him 
one  morning  at  Maurigy's,  where  he  had  been  staying  ever  since  he  and  the 
Aphrodite  had  come  home.  He  was  swinging  himself  in  a  rocking-chair,  smok- 
ing a  hookah  he  had  brought  from  Cairo,  his  staghound  Mousquetaire  lying  at 
his  feet.  Willoughby  chanced  to  be  breakfasting  with  him,  and  was  lying  full 
length  on  a  sofa.  He  used  to  be  nicknamed  Bella  in  his  troop,  for  he  has  all 
the  beauty  of  his  mother  who  made  a  great  row  when  she  came  out,  but  ended 
by  marrying  for  love  upon  nothing,  which  aerial  inheritance  she  bequeathed  to 
poor  Claude,  with  her  soft  almond  eyes  and  fair  hair.  He  is  a  tall,  broad- 
chested  fellow,  but  Dyneley,  swinging  there  in  his  rocking-chair,  though  not  so 
big,  beats  him  hollow  in  sinew  and  power;  and  his  face,  with  its  haughty,  pale, 
refined  features,  and  dark  eyes  that  can  soften  and  flash  wonderfully  when 
they  are  moved  has  a  greater  charm  for  women  than  even  Claude's,  though  he 
is  called  the  Crusher,  from  his  merciless  slaughter  of  the  pretty  game — game 
which  he  kills  as  I  have  shot  parrots  in  India  to  leave  where  they  fell.  "  If 
you  are  ready,"  continued  Dyneley,  "  I  think  we  may  as  well  start.  Vere  tells 
me  he  never  shot  over  better  ground.  There's  a  salmon  river,  plenty  of  snipe 
in  the  moss,  and  Fitzcorrie's  forest  joins  the  moor.  I  know  him  intimately; 


640  OUIDA'S     WORKS, 

he'll  let  us  kill  some  stags,  to  say  nothing  of  the  out-lying  ones.  Shall  we 
travel  all  night  ?  May  as  well." 

"  For  Heaven's  sake,  Dyneley,  no  !  "  cried  Willoughby,  with  more  energy 
than  he  often  threw  into  things.  "It's  all  very  well  for  you  fellows,  with  your 
muscles  of  iron,  that  that  clever  chap  in  "  Guy  Livingstone  "  writes  so  much 
about,  to  talk  in  that  barbarous  style.  You,  who've  worn  sheepskins  with 
Bedouins,  and  crossed  the  Fjord  with  Laps,  may  find  fun  in  such  monstrosi- 
ties, but  I  never  tire  myself  if  I  can  help  it;  and  as  to  cramping  my  legs  by 
travelling  all  night,  I'll  be  shot  if  I  do  it,  not  if  you  offer  me  half  a  million 
at  my  journey's  end." 

"  Haven't  half  a  million  to  offer,"  said  Dyneley,  setting  down  some  cold 
game  to  Mousquetaire.  "  It's  exactly  the  sum  I  want  myself,  and  when  I  find 
it  I'll  open  Vauxley,  and  take  my  seat  in  the  Lords.  But  I  shouldn't  have 
thought  you  such  a  lazy  dog,  Claude,  last  February  three  years,  when  you 
pegged  that  tiger  at  Darjeeling." 

"  That  ? "  said  Claude.  "  Oh  !  that  was  nothing.  I  wanted  amusement, 
and  the  brute  turned  up.  No  !  I'm  a  very  lazy  man.  As  I'm  a  poor  devil,  I 
must  stick  in  the  Cavalry  till  I'm  providentially  shot  in  some  scrimmage;  but 
if  I  were  rich,  I'd  live  among  roses  and  myrtles  in  Arabia  Felix,  with  a  harem 
and  a  hookah,  lots  of  sherbet,  and  some  Nautch  girls,  and  never  stir  all 
day." 

"I  tried  that  once  when  I  was  in  the  East,"  said  Dyneley,  "and  got  in- 
tensely bored  after  a  little  while;  and  so  would  you.  Sofa  cushions,  narghile, 
and  alme,  made  me  keenly  feel  the  truth  of  '  toujours  perdrix.'  I  thought  the 
girls  delightful  at  first,  but  for  a  continuance  one  wants  something  besides 
ankles  and  almond  eyes.  They  never  open  their  lips  for  any  better  purpose 
than  to  show  their  white  teeth,  and  you  know  I've  a  weakness  for  brains." 

"Do  you  find  yourself  any  better  served  in  that  crmmodity  by  English 
belles  than  by  Turkish  bayaderes  ?  I  don't." 

"  No!  "  said  Dyneley,  after  a  long  pull  at  his  hookah;  "  women  are  women 
all  the  world  over.  Whether  the  question  is  rouge  or  betel-nut,  rings  on  the 
fingers,  or  rings  through  the  nose,  women  are  born,  live,  and  die  solely  for  the 
'toilette.'  Last  March,  when  I  was  staying  down  at  Fairlie's,  I  noticed,  one 
wet  day,  that  his  wife  and  Fanny  Villiers,  being  thrown  on  their  own  resources, 
talked  on  for  five  consecutive  hours,  without  stopping,  of — DRESS;  how 
splendidly  somebody  was  got  up  on  her  presentation,  how  badly  somebody 
else  was  dressed  at  the  Handel  concert,  what  one  woman's  diamonds  possibly 
cost,  how  little,  they  knew  for  a  certainty,  another  had  given  for  her  Honiton, 
consoling  themselves  with  the  hope  that  '  Adelaide's'  pearls  were  paste,  pulling 
their  friends  to  pieces,  cheapening  this  and  envying  that,  till,  by  George!  it 
really  made  me  sad  to  think  with  what  bitter  truth  our  mothers,  and  sisters, 


BELLES    AND    BLACKCOCK.  G41 

and  wives,  and  daughters  might  write  on  their  lily-white  brows,  '  Rubbish  shot 
here  !  "' 

"  Their  heads  ain't  more  empty  than  their  hearts  are  icicles,"  muttered 
Claude  stroking  his  silky  chestnut  moustache.  "  I've  flirted,  I  daresay,  as  much 
as  most  men,  but,  as  Dick  Swiveller  says,  '  I  never  loved  a  dear  gazelle  but 
it  was  sure  to  marry  a  market-gardener.'  A  girl  who  was  mad  about  me  when 
she  was  skating  in  a  black  hat  and  a  red  petticoat  at  Christmas,  I  was  certain 
to  see  the  season  after  selling  herself  at  St  George's  in  Mechlin  and  orange- 
flowers." 

"  My  dear  fellow,  you're  not  singular,"  laughed  Dyneley.  "  I  remember 
having  very  tender  meetings  in  orange-groves  as  poetical,  as  you  could  wish 
with  a  handsome  Granadine,  who  vowed  her  heart  would  break  when  we  parted, 
there  not  being  room  for  her  in  the  yacht.  Twelve  months  after,  touching  at 
Frangerola,  I  went  to  see  after  my  doila,  feeling  a  friendly  interest  in  her;  lo  ! 
she'd  married  a  lean  old  alcade  a  fortnight  after  my  departure; — and  beautiful 
Venetians,  whom  I  left  inconsolable,  I  was  certain  to  find  provided  with  my  sub- 
stitute when  I  and  the  Aphrodite  called  there  again.  But  about  starting  to- 
morrow; we  may  as  well  go  at  once.  Curtis  and  Romer  won't  come  down  till 
the  2oth.  If  you  like  to  sleep  in  Glasgow,  Claude,  do.  I  shall  push  on;  I  hate 
dawdling  when  I'm  once  en  route.  What  of  that  new  dog  of  yours,  Monti,  do 
you  think  he'll  stand  the  heather?  Pointers  can't  often.  My  kennel's  in  first- 
rate  condition.  You've  never  seen  Mousquetaire  pull  down  a  stag.  Empress 
is  second  best,  and  Eros  and  Royal  are  good  working  dogs." 

We  talked  on,  as  hard  as  a  lot  of  girls  talking  over  a  wedding,  of  the  re- 
spective merits  of  Enfield  and  Purdey,  rifle  powders  and  cartridges,  spoons, 
governors,  and  flies,  and  all  the  thousand  necessaries  of  the  moors;  comparing 
notes  of  the  royals  we  had  stalked  and  the  salmon  we  had  played,  with  many  a 
reminiscence  of  a  good  day's  sport  wound  up  with  a  haunch  of  roe  or  grilled 
blackcock,  and  washed  down  with  steaming  tumblers  of  Farintosh  or  foaming 
pints  of  Prestonpans. 

Start  we  did  the  next  morning,  and  slept  at  Glasgow,  too,  for  Dyneley, 
though  he  is  given  to  making  out  that  he  is  a  profound  egotist,  generally  gives 
up  his  own  wishes  to  other  people's.  We  went  on  to  Greenock  early  the  next 
morning,  and  steamed  up  Loch  Fine  to  Inverary,  where  Steinberg's  head-keeper 
was  waiting  for  us  with  a  dog-cart  and  some  other  traps  to  take  us  on  the 
twenty  miles  to  Glenmist. 

"  Delicious  !  isn't  it  ? "  said  Dyneley,  looking  down  into  a  trout  stream  as 
he  drove  along  through  the  mist,  smoking  vigorously.  "  Don't  you  long  to  be 
flinging  a  fly  in  there?  " 

"  De — licious  !  well,  I  don't  know,"  murmured  Claude,  wringing  the  wet 
from  his  long  moustaches,  "  people's  tastes  differ.  I  can't  say  myself  that  I 

VOL.  III.— 21 


642  OUIDA'S     WORKS. 

ever  thought  being  as  moist  as  an  otter  or  a  Scarborough  boatman  was  any 
peculiar  state  of  blessedness,  but  it  may  be  one  lives  and  learns." 

"Ton  my  life,  Claude,  to  hear  you  talk,  if  I  hadn't  seen  you  pig-sticking 
up  in  Scinde,  I  should  think  you  deserved  the  name  of  '  Bella,'  you  indolent 
dog,"  said  Dyneley,  whipping  up  the  mare. 

"  So  I  do,"  drawled  Claude.  "  There's  not  a  handsomer  man  in  the  Service. 
All  the  women  will  tell  you  that." 

"  The  almond-paste  and  kalydor  are  all  you  think  about,  I  suppose  ? " 

"  My  dear  fellow,  I  don't  use  anything  so  common.  I've  a  private  recipe 
for  cosmetique  that  I  wouldn't  suffer  out  of  my  hands  for  half  Barclay's,  bad 
as  I  want  tin.  I  wouldn't  mind  letting  you  have  a  little;  it'll  keep  the  sun  from 
bronzing  you." 

"  Don't* be  such  a  fool,"  laughed  Dyneley.  "  Bah  !  if  I  thought  a  girl  used 
either  cosmetique  or  rouge,  I  wouldn't  kiss  her  now  if  she  were  as  beautiful  as 
Omphale.  Would  you  ? " 

"  Can't  say  what  I  mightn't  do  under  temptation,"  said  Claude,  piously. 
"  I'm  afraid  I  haven't  always  forsworn  actresses  and  danseuses.  Have  you  ? 
And,  as  my  sister  Julia  paints,  I've  had  to  kiss  rouge  through  a  sense  of  duty 
sometimes."  '••  • 

"Julia  must  be  over  thirty;  she's  only  a  year  younger  than  you,  if  I  re- 
member?" 

"  No,  poor  thing  !  She's  flirted  from  Dublin  to  Devonport,  and  from 
Canada  to  Calcutta,  all  to  no  purpose.  She  can't  even  hook  a  cornet." 

"  She  must  be  very  stupid,  then,"  said  Dyneley.  "  Between  the  ages  of 
eighteen  and  twenty-two  I  can  distinctly  remember  being  engaged  to  eight 
different  women — all  bond  fide  affairs,  too — rings,  and  hair,  and  all  the  rest  of 
it.  Boys  always  take  to  old  women,  too;  the  sort  of  women  from  whom,  in 
after  years,  they'd  flee  to  the  uttermost  ends  of  the  earth.  In  my  opinion, 
there  ought  to  be  a  law  to  prevent  young  fellows  committing  themselves.  The 
sylph  in  white  muslin  that  they  adore  when  they're  one-and-twenty,  they  find 
when  they're  one-and-thirty  to  be  a  common-place,  and,  alas  !  too  often  fat  or 
red-nosed  lady,  who  looks  old  enough  to  be  their  mother,  and  who,  if  they've 
the  misfortune  to  be  tied  to  her,  clings  round  their  neck  like  a  brickbat  round 
a  drowning  dog's." 

"  Bravo,  Dyneley  !  You're  positively  speaking  philosophy  and  truth,  two 
combinations  rarely  seen  on  this  earth,"  said  I.  "  Are  those  the  motives  that 
have  kept  you  from  matrimony  hitherto  ?  " 

"  I  ?  No.  I  shall  marry  for  money  if  ever  I  do — sell  myself  to  the  highest 
bidder,  to  keep  up  the  title.  That's  what  you'll  end  in,  too,  Claude,  eh  ?" 

u  No,"  answered  Willoughby,  sharply,  for  a  wonder,  "  I  shall  never  marry 
at  all." 


BELLES    AND    BLACKCOCK.  04:? 

"Quite  wise,  if  you  can  live  without  it.  Here's  the  lodge;  snug  little  place, 
isn't  it  ?  I  wish  poor  old  Steinberg  were  here  to  welcome  us.  I  daresay  we 
shall  find  some  grilled  grouse  waiting  for  us.  Steinberg  always  tells  Alister  to 
shoot  some  a  few  days  before  the  i2th." 

The  grilled  grouse  was  waiting  for  us,  and  a  good  fire,  too,  for  the  mist 
made  it  a  chilly  night.  Alister  (the  head  keeper)  gave  us  good  accounts  of 
the  moor.  The  broods  of  grouse  were  large;  there  were  plenty  of  home-bred 
snipe  in  the  moss,  and  fowl  in  the  pools,  and  salmon,  and  jack,  and  trout  in  the 
river.  Fitzcorrie  was  expected  daily  down  at  Glengrouse,  and  one  or  two  out- 
lying stags  had  been  seen  on  our  moor.  Altogether,  there  was  good  sport  in 
prospect;  and  when  we  had  done  dinner,  and  sat  round  the  fire  in  Steinberg's 
cozy  fauteuils,  smoking  Cavendish  and  drinking  toddy,  and  listening  to  the 
witty,  graphic,  satiric  sketches  with  which  Dyneley  can,  when  he  chooses,  delight 
a  mess-table,  charm  a  drawing-room,  and  even  amuse  a  club-room,  we  felt  as 
contented  and  comfortable  as  any  three  men  could,  and  rejoiced  exceedingly 
at  having  escaped  drums,  crushes,  concerts,  manoeuvring  chaperones,  and 
inveigling  belles,  to  enjoy  ourselves  on  the  moors,  in  the  dear,  free,  sans  gene 
bachelor  life. 


II. 

WE    BAG    BLACKCOCK    AND    MARK   BELLES. 

"  EXTRAORDINARY  what  a  deal  one  can  do  under  pressure,' '  said  Willoughby 
when  we  were  discussing  Loch  Fine  herrings  and  a  lot  of  other  Highland  deli- 
cacies at  six  o'clock  the  following  morning.  "I  never  in  my  life  breakfast 
before  twelve  up  in  town  or  in  barracks,  except  on  Derby  Day,  and  then  every 
one  makes  an  effort,  and  sacrifices  his  natural  term  of  rest.  My  cousin,  little 
Flo,  and  her  mother  came  to  see  me  the  other  day  at  Knightsbridge  at  two 
o'clock,  after  their  luncheon,  dear  primitive  things  !  I  wasn't  up;  and  I  wrote 
her  word  I  was  very  sorry  for  her  disappointment,  but  I  didn't  know  it  was  her 
habit  to  call  upon  people  in  the  middle  of  the  night." 

"  You're  keener  on  the  hills,  old  chap,  or  you  wouldn't  make  a  very  heavy 
bag,"  laughed  Dyneley.  "  Your  a  prize  specimen,  Claude,  of  the  militaire 
noble— all  dolce,  bouquet,  and  ennui  at  home,  all  pluck,  and  game,  and  true 
as  steel  when  you're  marking  birds  in  the  open,  or  Caffres  in  a  skirmish." 

Claude  bowed  down  to  his  plate  at  the  compliment.  "  Well,  you  know 
when  one's  blood  is  up  one  likes  to  polish  off  the  devils  handsomely;  if  I've 
any  very  great  impetus  I  don't  so  much  mind  tiring  myself." 

"  There's  an  impetus  strong  enough  for  any  man.     Come  along,"  said  Dyne- 


644  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

ley,  springing  up,  a/id  going  to  the  window,  through  which  we  saw  a  whole 
crowd  of  keepers,  gillies,  pointers,  retrievers,  terriers,  stag-hounds,  setters,  the 
old  white  pony  in  the  midst  of  them,  with  cold  black  game,  sandwiches,  Bass 
and  whisky  on  his  back,  for  our  luncheon  when  we'd  shot  up  to  the  falls.  By 
Jove,  such  sport  as  we  had  that  day  was  worth  twenty  guineas  an  hour!  I'm 
sure,  to  look  calmly  at  a  future  time,  when  one  will  get  out  of  condition,  and  the 
gun  will  begin  to  feel  heavy,  and  gout  will  make  one  hobble  over  the  heather, 
and  asthma  force  one  to  puff  and  blow,  requires  more  philosophy  than  all  the 
Greeks  put  together  could  have  mustered  if  they'd  ever  known  the  pleasures  of 
the  moors.  Talk  of  Socrates  smiling  at  the  hemlock,  and  Seneca  inspecting  the 
chopping  up  of  his  own  veins!  they  are  nothing  to  contemplating  the  days 
when,  tied  to  one's  arm-chair,  we  shall  recall  the  corries  and  the  glens  as  joys 
that  are  no  more  for  us.  We  had  splendid  sport  that  day;  there  was  a 
Highland  mist,  (that  in  Hyde  Park,  or  among  the  English  turnips,  we  should 
have  thought  a  heavy  shower;)  a  pull  up  a  hill  of  some  eight  hundred  feet; 
rocks  sharp  as  needles  to  scramble  over,  and  deep  burns  to  wade  through,  and 
underwood  as  thick  as  jhow  jungle,  but  we  never  had  primer  fun  in  our  lives; 
and  Claude — lazy  dog,  as  he'd  make  himself  out — enjoyed  himself  more,  wet, 
stiff,  and  dead-beat  in  the  moss,  and  marshes,  and  brushwood  of  Glenmist, 
than  he  would  have  been  in  the  most  luxurious  spot  you  could  put  him  in. 

He  and  I  made  very  good  use  of  our  time,  and  knocked  down  grouse  and 
the  black  game,  besides  snipe,  teal  and  a  few  hares,  right  and  left.  But  Dyne- 
ley  took  the  shine  off  us.  Alister  looked  on  at  him  with  as  much  delight  as  that 
canny  Scotsman  could  ever  be  stirred  into;  and,  'pon  my  honor,  he  does  handle 
a  gun  beautifully.  To  be  sure,  he's  had  such  practice  as  few  men  have,  and 
the  East  and  the  West  could  tell  you  many  a  tale  of  his  deeds,  camping  out  in 
the  Punjab  jungles  and  the  primeval  woods,  and  I  daresay  a  better  shot  than  he 
was  never  seen  on  the  moors;  he  does  it  all  so  coolly  and  yet  so  untiringly,  too, 
putting  no  end  of  energy  into  it,  yet  never  half  as  fagged  as  other  men  are. 

The  mist  had  cleared  off,  and  the  sun  came  out,  by  the  time  we  reached  the 
falls,  and  found  the  old  pony,  the  plaids,  and  the  Bass,  and  stretched  ourselves 
on  the  heather  to  have  a  pipe  and  enjoy  our  luncheon. 

"Well,  this  is  pleasant,  decidedly,  but  I  doubt  if  it's  philosophic,"  said 
Willoughby,  taking  a  pull  at  the  mountain  dew,  "  when  one  looks  upon  it  in  a 
serious  light.  I  doubt  if  three  sensible  men,  all  over  thirty,  coming  four  hun- 
dred miles  on  purpose  to  fatigue,  exhaust,  and  take  it  out  of  themselves  in  every 
possible  way,  for  the  express  purpose  of  putting  some  shot  into  unhappy  birds, 
or  crawling  through  bush  and  briar,  after  the  manner  of  the  serpent,  that  was 
more  subtle  than  any  beast  of  the  field — I  doubt,  if  taken  philosophically  there 
is  not  something " 

"  Hang  philosophy  !  "    laughed    Dyneley.      "  What's    in  Plato,   Lucullus, 


BELLES    AND    BLACKCOCK. 


645 


Swedenborg,  Kant,  Whewell,  Stuart  Mill,  that  will  do  a  man  half  the  good, 
body  and  mind,  that  a  good  day  on  the  hills  does  ?  You  know  I've  read  pretty 
well  as  much  as  most  fellows,  though  I  don't  go  in  for  a  classic,  and  when  I 
get  my  half  million,  one  of  the  first  things  I  look  after  at  Vauxley  will  be  the 
library;  but  I  do  say  that  a  man  who  knows  how  to  handle  his  rifle  and  his  rod 
is  worth  fifty  of  your  regular  bookworms.  I  remember,  when  I  was  at  Granta, 
fellows  who  used  to  sap  tremendously,  green  tea,  Greek  roots,  and  all  the  rest 
of  it.  Their  mathematics  were  something  wonderful;  their  whole  brain  was 
one  giant  Euclid;  they  were  a  walking  classical  dictionary,  and  spent  months 
debating  the  derivation  of  a  word.  What  were  they  worth  in  the  world  ? 
Babies  in  practical  knowledge;  natural  history  or  every-day  politics  a  dead 
letter  to  them.  Put  them  across  the  Channel,  they  could  not  muster  words 
to  ask  for  their  dinner;  and,  tried  in  any  manly  sport,  a  boy  from  Eton  would 
laugh  them  to  scorn.  Bah  !  what  are  such  men  worth  ? " 

"  Nothing,  most  noble  lord,  in  my  opinion,"  said  Claude.  "Pity  you're 
not  in  the  House,  Graham:  you'd  be  as  eloquent  as  Sheil  or  Bernal  Osborne." 

"On  the  uses  of  the  moors? — that  would  be  a  novel  debate,  certainly;  quite 
as  sensible  as  the  Maynooth  and  certain  others,  perhaps.  I  tell  you,  when  I 
find  my  half  million,  I  shall  take  my  proxy  out  of  Lord  John's  hands.  But  it's 
no  good  putting  on  a  peer's  robes  with  a  miserable  six  or  eight  thousand  a  year. 
I  prefer  absenting  myself  and  Bohemianizing  to  going  in  for  certain  expenses 
which  I  have  no  money  to  meet.  By  George  !  there's  Empress  pointing,"  said 
he,  jumping  up.  "  Good  old  thing  she  is.  Steady,  Empress,  steady.  There, 
we  shall  have  them  now  beauifully.  Whisky,  Whisky,  you  little  devil,  con- 
found you  ! " 

Whisky,  a  young  dog  of  Steinberg's  that  had  never  been  on  the  heather  be- 
fore, had  spoiled  the  chance  of  a  splendid  brood  of  birds.  Dyneley's  eyes 
flashed;  he's  impetuous  and  passionate  sometimes,  and  Whisky's  fault  was  very 
provoking  to  a  keen  sportsman,  remember;  he  raised  his  gun  to  the  dog,  and 
would  have  shot  him  in  the  heat  of  the  minute,  but  Alister  stopped  him. 
"  Whisky's  unco  young,  my  lord,  and  he  don't  know  no  better  yet,  poor  brute." 
Dyneley  shook  him  off  with  a  haughty  gesture — I  tell  you  he  can  be  fiery  on 
occasion — but  after  a  minute  or  two  he  cooled  down,  and,  turned  to  Alister 
with  his  frank,  sunny  smile.  "  You  were  right,  and  I  was  wrong.  I  am  glad 
you  stopped  me  in  a  cruelty  which  I  certainly  should  have  been  ashamed  of  and 
sorry  for  afterwards." 

I  heard  Alister  say  to  my  servant,  a  few  days  after,  that  "  the  laird  was  a  bit 
fiery,  but  he  was  a  true  gentleman  and  a  leal  heart,  God  bless  him  ! "  to  which 
my  man  heartily  agreed,  tossing  down  some  usquebaugh  in  his  honor. 

We  had  first-rate  sport  for  the  next  few  days;  the  weather  was  not  the  finest, 
but  the  rain  kept  the  streams  up,  there  was  a  good  speat  in  the  river,  and 


646  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

Dyneley,  who  is  never  happier  than  when  whipping  the  water,  hooked  and 
landed  a  thirty-pound  salmon.  We  bagged  plenty  of  ducks  and  snipe  and  some 
few  ptarmigan.  We  had  a  battue  of  mountain  hares  when  Curtis  and  Romer 
joined  us,  and  we  killed  a  hare  and  a  two-year-old  buck,  and  found  the  slot  of 
another,  which  we  lost  by  his  heading  to  the  forest. 

"  Fitzcorrie'll  come  down  to-morrow,"  said  Dyneley  one  morning,  when  the 
letter-bag  came  in.  "  Poor  old  fellow,  he's  been  kept  up  in  town,  chained  to 
his  gout-stool  through  this  splendid  August.  He'll  fill  the  Castle,  of  course, 
and  he  hopes  we  shall  have  a  good  many  days  with  him  in  his  forest.  I  shan't 
go  and  stay  up  there,  though;  will  you?  There'll  be  his  wife  and  several  other 
women,  and  when  one  is  dead-beat  it's  pleasanter  to  throw  oneself  on  a  sofa 
and  have  a  pipe  than  to  dress  for  a  nine-o'clock  dinner,  and  waltz  and  talk  non- 
sense to  the  girls.  You  don't  do  justice  either  to  the  moors  or  the  flirtations. 
Fitzcorrie  takes  a  most  paternal  interest  in  my  affairs;  he's  always  wanting  me 
to  marry — pour  cause,  he'd  like  to  have  me  in  the  House  to  support  his  meas- 
ures— and  he  keeps  a  look-out  for  heiresses  on  my  behalf.  He  will  bring  one 
down  with  him  to  Glengrouse.  Hark  what  he  says:  '  I  have  found  exactly  what 
you  want,  my  dear  fellow.  You  have  been  so  little  in  England,  that  probably 
you  may  not  know  her.  She  is  a  belle,  very  accomplished,  and  worth  twenty 
thousand  a  year.  Her  father  was  a  Brummagem  peer  created  by  Peel;  but  we 
anciens  pauvres  cannot  afford  to  be  fastidious.  You  can  have  her  for  the  ask- 
ing, I  don't  doubt.  Douglas  Jerrold's  tillocracy  will  give  anything  for  your 
quarterings.  She's  coming  to  stay  with  Florence,  so  you  must  mind  and  mark 
something  besides  blackcock,  for  I  really  think  either  Adeliza  or  Constance 

Vandeleur  would  be  an  admirable  match  for  you Hallo,  Claude,  what's 

the  matter  ?  don't  you  feel  well  ? " 

"  Yes,  thank  you,"  said  Claude,  hastily  taking  a  draught  out  of  one  of  the 
great  silver  tankards  filled  with  XXX.  "  It's  this  confounded  arm  of  mine 
that  the  ball  broke  at  Mejeerut;  I  daresay  the  gun  strained  it  a  little." 

"  Ah!  broken  limbs  are  the  very  deuce.  I  could  almost  blow  my  brains  out 
when  the  neuralgia  comes  on  in  the  leg  that  got  the  grape  into  it  when  you  and 
I  charged  together,  old  boy,  on  those  miserable  little  Caff  re  wretches,"  said 
Charlie  Curtis. 

"  Let  Sandy  carry  your  gun,  Claude,  up  to  the  pass,  for  it's  a  good  five 
miles  to  the  spot  where  they  have  seen  the  deer,"  said  Dyneley.  "  Romer,  do 
you  know  this  prize  young  lady?" 

"  Yes,  I've  seen  her;  everybody,  except  nomades  like  you,  who  forsake 
Christian  lands  to  stalk  to  and  fro  in  the  deserts.  Her  grandfather  was  a  Bir- 
mingham man — it's  disgusting  what  a  set  of  snobs  the  peerage  is  getting — 
there's  no  end  of  tin  in  the  family,  produce  of  Japan  tea-trays  or  electro-plate, 
I  forget  which;  and  she  is  a  good  coup— perhaps  the  best,  as  far  as  money 


BELLES    AND    BLACKCOCK.  G47 

goes,  of  the  season— so  give  her  your  coronet,  pray,  and  ask  us  all  down  to 
Vauxley  for  Christmas.  By  the  way,  you  know  her,  don't  you,  Claude  ?  You 
can  tell  us  all  about  her.  Isn't  there  a  sister  a  co-heiress  ? " 

"  I  believe  so." 

"  Believe  so  ?  when  you  stayed  in  the  same  house  with  'em  at  Somerleyton 
three  weeks  last  February  ?  " 

"Well  done,  old  fellow!"  cried  Curtis,  laughing.  "The  XXX  is  too 
strong  for  you,  pauvre  garcon,  or  have  you  met  some  Highland  Mary  here, 
who's  turned  your  brain  ?  Which  is  it  ? 

"  Neither,"  said  Claude,  in  his  old  lazy  tone.  "But  my  dear  Charlie,  how 
can  you  possibly  expect  me  to  remember  two  girls  I  met  full  six  months  ago  ? 
I  should  want  scores  of  memorandum-books  merely  to  enter  all  the  women 
that  make  love  to  me.  Sufficient  for  the  day  is  the  flirtation  thereof,  and  to  be 
called  on  to  recollect  mere  acquaintances  is  too  great  a  run  upon  any  man's 
memory." 

"  Well,"  said  I,  "  you  can  tell  us,  at  any  rate,  what  Fitzcorrie's  find  is  like. 
Never  pretend,  Claude,  that  the  color  of  a  woman's  eyes,  or  the  size  of  her 
ankle,  ever  goes  out  of  your  mind." 

"  Can't  indeed,"  answered  Claude.  "  Blue  eyes  chase  black,  hazel  succeed 
gray,  in  very  quick  succession  in  my  memory.  We  poor  soldiers,  you  know, 
learn  to  be  inconstant  in  our  own  defence.  If  we  couldn't  leave  London  belles 
for  bright  eyes  at  Exeter,  Exeter  eyes  for  Devonport  waltzers,  and  Devonport 
waltzers,  in  their  turn,  for  Yorkshire  Die  Vernons,  with  a  proper  amount  of 
philosophy,  our  hearts  would  be  broken  in  as  many  pieces  as  a  coquette  has 
different  locks  of  hair.  I  say,  Dyneley,  we  must  be  off  if  we  want  to  stalk  that 
buck.  Mousquetaire  will  pull  him  down  if  any  hound  can.  I  envy  you  that  dog. 

Fitzcorrie  came  down  the  day  after  to  Glengrouse,  one  of  the  finest  estates 
in  Scotland,  with  his  Viscountess,  a  haughty  young  beauty,  Constance  and 
Adeliza  Vandeleur,  and  several  men,  some  of  them  the  best  shots  in  the  three 
kingdoms.  Fitzcorrie,  one  of  the  keenest  debaters  in  the  House,  is  as  fresh  as 
a  boy  again  when  he  gets  upon  the  moors.  He  is  very  fond  of  Dyneley,  too, 
and  gave  us  all  carte  blanche  to  his  forests,  and  a  general  invitation  to  go  when- 
ever we  liked  to  the  Castle,  where  dinner  was  on  the  table  every  night  at  nine, 
when  we  were  not  too  done  up  to  consider  ladies'  smiles  too  dearly  bought  by 
the  trouble  of  a  toilette,  and  to  prefer  a  haunch  and  some  Farintosh  in  bachelor 
freedom  at  our  snug  little  lodge. 

The  first  day  Dyneley  and  I  went  up  alone.  Glengrouse  lay  just  across  the 
river,  and  we  rode  there  in  twenty  minutes  by  a  short  cut.  Claude  was  too 
fagged,  he  said,  to  endure  the  exertion  of  putting  himself  en  grande  tenue,  and 
Curtis  and  Romer  followed  his  example.  We  found  a  good  sized  party. 
Dyneley  took  Constance  Vandeleur  in  to  dinner,  and  talked  to  her  a  good  deal, 


64g  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

studying  her  with  a  keen,  critical  glance.  She  quite  deserved  her  character  of 
a  belle:  she  had  the  Irish  beauty,  dark  hair  and  blue  eyes;  she  was  just  middle 
height,  graceful  and  natural,  with  nothing  of  the  parvenue  about  her.  Adeliza 
was  handsome  too,  but  much  more  haughty  and  self-conscious;  she  came  down, 
however,  to  Dyneley,  whom  she  tried  to  charm  away  from  her  sister,  for  Gra- 
ham (I  like  to  call  him  sometimes  by  the  old  boyish  name)  has  a  very  soft, 
gentle  way  with  women,  and  very  amusing  conversation ;  besides,  his  wandering 
life,  his  known  talents,  and  the  originality  and  daring  of  what  he  had  written, 
threw  a  sort  of  aroma  of  interest  round  him. 

"  Well,  what  do  you  think  of  your  proposed  wife  ?  "  said  I,  as  we  trotted 
slowly  home,  smoking,  in  the  warm  August  night. 

"Do  as  well  as  another,  don't  you  think?" 

"Probably;  but  that  is  not  very  enthusiastic." 

"  Enthusiasm  is  gone  by  for  me.  I've  done  with  it,  and  I  don't  expect  ever 
to  be  roused  into  it;  indeed,  I  don't  wish  it." 

I  laughed.  "  You  make  yourself  out  very  philosophic,  Gra,  but  it  seems  to 
me  that  when  you  have  your  mind  set  upon  anything,  you're  much  as  impatient 
and  energetic  as  you  were  at  Eton." 

"In  sport,  very  likely;  and  if  I  resolve  upon  any  step,  I  do  it  at  once.  But 
I  assure  you,  Monti,  life  has  trampled  out  all  my  romance — and  so  best.  I  am 
a  practical  man  now.  I  expect  nothing  from  people,  so  I  shall  never  be  dis- 
appointed, as  I  was  in  my  green  youth,  when  I  indulged  myself,  like  a  simple- 
ton, in  illusions  and  ideals,  and  such  unprofitable  ware.  I  think  I  shall  marry 
one  of  these  Vandeleurs;  the  bargain  will  be  even.  I  have  the  good  blood, 
they  the  money.  Of  the  two,  I  prefer  the  blue-eyed  one.  Constance,  isn't 
she  called  ?  She  is  more  lively  and  less  dignified;  I  hate  a  dignified  woman. 
She  will  be  a  graceful  mistress  for  Vauxely.  What  do  I  want  more  ?  " 

"  '  Love,'  poets  and  women  would  tell  you." 

"  Love,  my  dear  fellow  ?  I  never  expect  to  love  my  wife,  do  you  ?  We 
none  of  us  do  in  these  prudent  days.  I  have  never  seen  any  one  worth  loving, 
as  perhaps  I  could  love  a  woman;  nor  do  I  wish  to  be  roused  into  anything  so 
stromy.  This  day  ten  years  I  shall  care  no  more  for  Constance  or  her  sister, 
if  I  marry  either,  than  I  do  now;  but  either  of  them  will  keep  up  my  title, 
head  my  table,  make  me  an  accomplished  wife,  and,  as  I  am  tired  of  vagabond- 
izing, I  shall  absorb  myself  in  political  life,  dashed  with  some  good  sporting, 
and  shall  be  a  very  happy  man,  as  the  world's  happiness  goes.  Here  we  are. 
I'm  very  tired,  and  shall  be  glad  to  turn  in.  We  don't  want  any  opiates  to- 
night. Bonne  nuit,  old  fellow.  How  grave  you  look,  Montague;  one  would 
fancy  you  were  thinking  of  marriage  yourself  !  " 

I  did  not  like,  somehow  or  other,  the  idea  of  Dyneley's  selling  himself.  I 
knew  his  nature,  and  I  thought — But,  however,  I  remembered  this  is  a  barter 


BELLES    AND    BLACKCOCK.  649 

that  our  rigid  moralist  society  sanctions,  so  I  troubled  my  head  about  it  no 
more,  but  put  the  light  out  and  turned  in. 

During  the  next  few  days,  Dyneley,  Curtis,  and  I  dined  once  or  twice  at  the 
Castle.  Constance  was  very  accomplished,  and  sang  splendidly,  and  would 
have  been  charming  but  for  a  distrait  manner  at  times  that  made  her  spirits  as 
variable  as  English  weather.  We  could  not  get  Claude  up  to  Glengrouse;  one 
day  he  was  dead-beat;  another,  his  arm  had  the  tic  in  it;  another,  he  went  up 
in  the  evening  to  the  Upper  Water  to  fish;  and  two  others,  he  separated  him- 
self from  us  about  noon,  and  we  never  saw  any  more  of  him  till  nine  or  ten, 
when  he  came  in  after  a  stalk  or  a  hunt  for  ptarmigan  that  would  have  shut  up 
any  fellow  with  less  iron  nerves  than  this  disciple  of  the  dolce. 

"  I  wish  I  could  get  Claude  up  here,"  Dyneley  was  saying  to  Lady  Fitzcorrie 
one  night.  "  He  has  a  beautiful  voice,  and  would  help  you  with  those  duets. 
He  is  a  dear  old  fellow,  but  he  is  such  an  incorrigibly  lazy  dog,  and  really, 
after  the  day's  hard  work,  his  arm  that  was  broken  by  a  spent  shot  pains  him  a 
good  deal,  and  prevents  his  enjoying  society." 

Constance,  standing  close  by  playing  with  a  spaniel,  looked  up.  "  What 
did  you  say,  Lord  Dyneley  ?  Did  you  speak  to  me  ?  " 

"  I  was  saying  that  my  friend  Willoughby  would  make  you  a  good  tenor. 
But  you  know  him,  I  think.  Claude  Willoughby  of  the  i4th  ?  " 

Constance  started  like  a  young  fawn — I  thought  of  it  long  afterwards — and 
bent  over  the  spaniel,  while  her  voice  trembled:  "Captain  Willoughby? 
Where  is  he  ?  Is  he  here  ? " 

"  He  is  staying  with  us  at  Glenmist,"  said  Dyneley,  without  noticing  her 
particularly.  "  I  will  drag  him  here  somehow,  to-morrow,  if  his  arm  will  give 
him  any  peace." 

The  young  lady  flushed  up  and  said,  rapidly  crossing  the  room  to  the  con- 
servatory before  she  could  have  an  answer,  "  If  we  are  such  betes  noires  to 
him,  pray  do  not  try  to  force  him  here  against  his  will.  Do  you  encourage 
such  cavalier  treatment,  Florence  ?  " 

"  Oh  !  "  said  Lady  Fitzcorrie,  shrugging  her  snowy  shoulders,  "  with  the 
vieille  cour  of  the  Trianon  all  courtesy  died  out  in  Europe.  That  rude  fop, 
Brummel,  mistook  impertinence  for  wit,  and  his  disciples  out-Herod  Herod." 
Constance  had  disappeared  in  the  labyrinths  of  the  conservatory,  and  left 
Dyneley  to  conduct  the  defence,  which  that  witty  conversationalist  sustained 
very  ably. 

The  next  day  we  were  to  have  a  grand  drive,  and  Fitzcorrie,  ready  to  like 
Willoughby  as  Dyneley  liked  him,  would  not  let  him  off.  The  day  was  fine, 
the  wind  just  right,  and  there  was  a  magnificent  herd  of  fifty  or  more  stags  and 
hinds.  We  killed  five  of  them.  Dyneley's  was  a  royal;  he  had  wounded  him 
mortally  before  Mousquetaire  pulled  him  down.  Claude's  and  Fiztcorrie's  had 


650  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

nine  points  each;  and  altogether,  I  should  say  five  finer  stags  were  never  killed 
in  the  same  drive.  We  all  went  to  the  Castle  to  dinner;  Fitzcorrie,  as  I  said, 
would  not  let  Claude  off,  spite  of  the  tic;  he  told  him  Lafitte  and  Rudesheimer 
were  the  best  cures  for  neuralgia,  and  Claude  had  to  accede.  I  could  not  imagine 
why  he  shunned  the  Castle;  for  no  sport  was  generally  so  agreeable  to  the 
"  Crusher  "  as  a  new  flirtation,  and  he  would  leave  any  quarry  to  go  after  the 
beaux  yeux.  As  we  crossed  the  park  in  front  of  the  house,  we  saw  the  Vis- 
countess and  the  Vandeleurs  taking  a  stroll  before  dinner  on  the  terrace,  with 
two  or  three  other  ladies  staying  there. 

"  There,"  said  Fitzcorrie,  lifting  his  bonnet  to  them,  "  don't  you  think, 
Willoughby,  that  I've  chosen  well  for  our  friend  ?  That's  the  future  Lady 
Dyneley;  the  one  in  white  silk  walking  with  Florence.  Is  she  not  really  very 
pretty  ? " 

The  Light  Dragoon's  soft  black  eyes  flashed,  and  he  answered  rather  inco- 
herently, stroking  his  chestnut  moustache,  something  to  the  effect  that  near 
Lady  Fitzcorrie  no  one  could  hope  to  shine. 

The  old  Viscount  smiled.  He  was  proud  of  his  handsome  wife,  who,  like 
Themistocles's  lady,  ruled  the  ruler  of  Athens. 

The  Viscountess  came  down  the  steps  laughing  at  some  flowery  speech  of 
Romer's  to  her;  Adeliza  smiled  most  generously  at  Dyneley,  and  began  to  in- 
quire about  our  sport.  Constance  stood  still,  playing  with  the  fuchsia  in  a  vase; 
all  the  color  was  out  of  her  cheeks,  but  that  might  be  the  heat.  It  came  back 
in  a  rush,  though,  as  Claude  lifted  his  cap  to  her,  spoke  a  few  words  to  Adeliza, 
and  then  leant  on  his  gun  in  a  silence  and  indifference  very  unlike  the  tender- 
ness and  empressment  of  his  general  manner  with  the  sex.  Dyneley  put  his 
arm  through  his  and  pulled  him  up  the  steps  toward  her. 

"  Lady  Constance,  here  is  your  Giuglini.  You've  heard  him,  I  daresay,  so 
I  needn't  advertise  his  vocal  powers;  but  I  wish  I  had  them,  for  when  I  am 
hard  up,  as  I  too  often  am,  I  would  have  a  concert  at  the  Crystal  Palace  and 
replenish  my  exchequer." 

Claude's  eyes  were  fixed  on  the  girl  with  a  look  I  could  not  exactly  trans- 
late. He  laughed  lightly,  however. 

"  My  dear  fellow,  you'd  make  me  out  a  second  Sim  Reeves;  but  Lady  Con- 
stance knows  better  than  to  believe  you — that  is,  if  her  memory  does  Somerley- 
ton  the  honor  of  remembering  any  of  the  evenings  there." 

This  simple  remark  had  great  effect  on  Constance.  Though  she  was  a 
belle,  and  had  just  run  the  gauntlet  of  her  first  season,  and  should,  therefore, 
have  been  self-possessed  and  impassive,  her  face  glowed  very  couleur  de  rose, 
she  pulled  the  poor  fuchsia  mercilessly. 

"  You  appear  to  regard  Somerleyton  as  a  very  dim  era  of  the  past,"  she 
said,  quickly.  "  I  have  a  sufficiently  good  memory  to  be  able  to  go  back  as 


BELLES    AND    BLACKCOCK,  651 

far  as  last  March.  You,  however,  have  probably  things  of  newer  interest  to 
chase  it  out  of  your  mind." 

"  I  am  a  poor  cavalry  man,  Lady  Constance,  with  nothing  but  my  holster 
pistols  and  charger;  and  as  I  am  sure  of  being  forgotten,  I  am  glad  enough  to 
teach  myself  to  forget,"  answered  Claude,  smiling,  as  he  calmly  stroked  his 
moustaches,  and  played  with  a  setter's  ears. 

"You  would  throw  Hermoine's  name,  then,  into  the  fountain  of  oblivion 
without  mercy?"  said  the  young  beauty  through  her  white  teeth,  but  laughing 
carelessly  too. 

"Why  not?     Hermione  would  throw  mine." 

"  Constance,"  cried  Lady  Fitzcorrie,  "  come  and  look  at  Dyneley's  dog. 
This  is  the  famous  Mousquetaire;  isn't  he  a  fine  fellow  ?" 

Constance  bent  over  Mousquetaire,  praising  and  caressing  him  most  sedu- 
lously; and  her  sister  joined  us,  glancing  at  Mousquetaire's  master,  who,  lean- 
ing on  his  rifle,  with  his  cap  drawn  down  on  his  white  forehead,  looked,  as  I 
heard  a  young  lady  with  light  eyes  whisper,  "just  like  the  dear  Corsair."  As 
we  looked  at  the  Vandeleurs  and  Mousquetaire,  I  daresay  we  all  thought  of 
"Love  me,  love  my  dog." 

Dyneley  took  Constance  in  to  dinner,  and  made  himself  charming,  as  he 
could  when  he  liked,  better  than  any  man  I  know.  Claude  sat  opposite  to 
them,  and  talked  ceaselessly  to  the  young  lady  with  light  eyes,  whose  intellect, 
being  of  narrowed  limits,  took  his  random  wit  literally,  and,  I  daresay,  put  a 
mem.  of  him  in  her  Diary  with  the  green  velvet  cover  and  patent  embossed  lock, 
interlining  all  her  adjectives:  "  Sat  next  Captain  Willoughby.  He  has  beautiful 
black  eyes  and  fair  hair,  but  is  rather  peculiar.  I  have  heard  of  officers  so 
shocked  by  the  scene  of  the  battle-field,  that  they  have  never  quite  recovered 
their  senses.  He  tells  me  that  he  has  so  bad  a  memory,  that  the  day  after 
Balaklava  he  was  obliged  to  ask  his  servant  how  he  got  the  cut  on  his  sword 
arm,  I  cannot  believe  it.  I  noticed  Constance  look  at  him  very  oddly  while  he 
was  talking  to  me.  I  hope  he  is  not  mad,  he  is  so  handsome." 


III. 

THE   LITTLE   DIAMOND    IN    THE   DESERT. 

A  MORNING  or  two  after,  Dyneley  and  I  went  out  by  ourselves.  Alister  was 
gone  with  Curtis  and  Romer  to  the  head  of  the  loch  to  drag  for  pike;  Claude 
had  taken  his  gun,  and  said  he  should  walk  up  to  the  pools,  and  have  a  shot  at 
the  ducks;  and  Dyneley  and  I,  with  Mousquetaire  and  a  brace  of  setters,  had 


G52  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

a  fancy  to  try  the  glen  for  black  game,  and,  if  we  found  a  roe,  so  much  the 
better.  We  had  good  sport  till  two  o'clock,  when  the  pony  met  us,  as  usual, 
by  the  falls,  and  we  threw  ourselves  down  by  the  river-side  under  some  willows 
to  cool  our  throats  with  Prestonpans,  and  perfume  the  woods  and  hills  with  our 
after-luncheon  pipe.  The  pipes  and  beer  made  us  fresh  again,  and,  after  a  talk 
of  old  Eton  days  and  fun  we  had  together  in  the  Aphrodite,  of  wild  things  we 
had  done  together  and  of  dark  days  in  his  life,  in  which  I  only  knew  how  he 
had  suffered  or  sinned,  we  got  up  to  blaze  away  anew  at  the  blackcock.  "  Let 
bygones  be  bygones.  They  give  me  the  blue  devils  to  recall  them!  "  said  he, 
springing  up.  "  My  life  has  never  been  very  bright,  and  never  will  be.  I 
laughed  the  other  day,  when  I  read  in  the  Literary  Lorgnon,  speaking  of  me 
and  my  works — '  This  brilliant  and  wayward  peer  has  been  singularly  favored 
by  fortune.  With  descent  as  pure  as  any  in  the  peerage,  and  talents  daring 
and  original,  all  the  fairies,  as  Macaulay  writes  of  Bryon,  have  surely  blessed 
his  birth.'  Good,  wasn't  it  ?  If  the  fairies  were  at  my  birth,  there  must  have 
been  a  devil  or  two  among  them  who  marred  it  all.  Those  double-distilled 
donkeys  should  know  more  of  a  man's  life  before  they  venture  to  relate  it.  I 
was  made  to  be  a  happy  man,  I  think,  but,  somehow,  I've  missed  it.  To  ho! 
Steady,  Bluebell!  Two  brace.  Nice  birds,  are  they  not?  Wait  a  moment! 
By  Jove,  Monti,  look  here!  this  is  the  slot  of  a  deer,  and  a  fresh  one,  too." 

"  That  it  is,"  said  I.  "  What  glorious  luck  !  And  it's  a  good  large  one. 
Let's  go  over  the  hill,  and  look  down  the  other  side." 

"All  right,"  said  Dyneley,  taking  his  rifle;  and  sending  the  little  gillie,  with 
the  pony,  guns,  and  setters,  round  to  the  pass  to  which  it  was  most  likely  the  deer 
would  head,  we  began  the  stalk.  We  did  the  two  miles  over  the  hill  quickly, 
and,  looking  through'  the  glass,  we  spied  the  stag's  horn  far  away  crouching 
among  the  heather.  There  was  but  one  way  of  stalking  him — a  very  stiff  pull, 
and  a  good  part  of  it  in  full  view  of  the  stag;  but  we  would  have  gone  through 
Avernus  to  have  a  shot  at  him.  Away  went  Dyneley  at  the  swinging  pace  that 
had  taken  him  across  the  Cordilleras  and  Himalayas,  and  I  after  him,  though 
when  it  came  to  the  serpentine  crawl  I  confess  he  outdid  me,  and  swore  a  trifle 
at  me  for  being  such  a  slow  coach.  Over  the  slippery  rocks,  up  to  our  knees 
in  a  burn,  pushing  through  the  tangled  brushwood,  we  went  on  and  for  miles, 
and  when  Dyneley  climbed  to  the  top  of  the  glen,  and  looked  through  his  glass, 
he  found  the  stag  had  used  his  legs  as  well  as  we,  and  he  could  just  make  out 
his  antlers  as  he  had  lain  down  to  rest  again  among  the  heather.  A  long  dance 
that  unhappy  beast  led  us;  but  had  we  been  ten  times  worse  beat,  wasn't  it 
worth  it  all  to  hear  the  ping  of  Dyneley's  bullet  as  it  bedded  itself  in  the  stag's 
shoulder,  and  see  Mousquetaire,  after  a  short  chase,  spring  at  his  throat,  and 
pull  him  down,  covered  with  the  reeking  blood  of  his  gallant  captive  ?  Bravo  ! 
my  veins  tingle  when  I  think  of  it.  Oh  !  your  rose  wreaths,  and  your  Falernian 


BELLES    AND    BLACKCOCK. 


G53 


and  Epicurean  joys,  what  are  they  all  to  a  long  day  among  the  corries  and  glens 
with  No.  4  and  dear  old  Purdey,  and  a  royal  hart  in  sight ! 

But  all  pleasures  are  bought  with  a  price— at  least,  so  those  prosy  old 
gentlemen  the  moralists  say;  and  to  punish  us  for  our  pride  and  exaltation  in 
having  stalked  and  shot  one  of  the  finest  stags  of  the  season,  lo!  Dyneley  and 
I  found  ourselves — lost!  Lost,  as  if  we  were  the  two  babes  in  the  woods  of 
time-honored  celebrity,  only,  as  Gra  remarked,  there  were,  unhappily,  no  dead 
leaves  and  robins  to  finish  us  pathetically,  there  being  nothing  on  the  moors 
but  heather  and  black  game.  Lost  we  were:  two  men  who  had  been  over 
almost  every  inch  of  ground  in  the  Old  World  and  the  New!  It  was  too 
ridiculous,  but  it  was  getting  late;  we  had  come  out  into  a  distant  part  of  the 
moor  we  had  never  shot  over;  a  mist  had  enveloped  everything  in  density,  and 
in  the  opaque  atmosphere  neither  he  nor  I  could  have  told  our  way  back  to  the 
lodge,  to  save  our  lives. 

"  It's  pitch  dark,  Monti,"  laughed  he,  drawing  his  plaid  tighter.  "  We're  in 
for  it,  I  expect.  Do  you  mind  camping  out  ?  We've  done  it  many  a 
time.  It  makes  one  rather  stiff  in  the  morning,  though,  that's  the  worst  of 
it;  but  with  plaids  and  flasks  one  oughtn't  to  complain.  I've  been  worse 
off  before  now.  Have  you  any  fusees  there  ?  " 

"  I  had  not,  nor  had  he.  He  tried  to  get  a  light  with  two  sticks  but  the 
wood  would  not  catch,  it  was  too  damp. 

"  Hang  it !  "  cried  Dyneley,  throwing  them  away  impatiently — patience  is 
not  in  his  composition — "  to  stay  till  morning,  without  a  pipe! — impossible! 
Never  suffered  such  a  deprivation  since  I  was  seven,  and  smoked  my  first  Queen! 
And  besides,  the  stag!  Devil  take  it,  Monti,  I  willg&t  home!  Come  along." 

Easier  said  than  done.  After  we  had  bled  and  grallocked  the  deer,  and 
tied  a  handkerchief  to  his  horns,  we  blundered  on  through  the  dark,  he  push- 
ing his  way  with  his  usual  reckless  impetuosity.  Till  it  was  a  mercy  he  didn't 
pitch  himself  down  some  precipice,  or  brain  himself  against  a  rock,  till  we  were 
on  the  top  of  the  hill  on  whose  side  we  had  killed  the  stag.  We  looked  round; 
there  was  plenty  of  dense  fog  and  inky  sky;  nothing  more  perceptible  till 
Dyneley,  who  has  the  quick  eye  and  ear  of  the  Indians,  with  whom  he  has 
hunted,  caught  sight  of  a.  little  light  flashing  in  and  out  of  the  mist 

"Look  there!"  said  he;  " that's  a  homestead  of  some  sort.  If  it's  only 
a  hut,  it's  better  than  nothing.  The  shepherd  can  put  us  right.  Hie,  Mous- 
quetaire!  show  us  the  way,  old  boy." 

Mousquetaire — certainly  the  cleverest  dog  I  ever  knew — looked  in  his  face 
with  his  wise,  clear,  brown  eyes,  sniffed,  paused,  and  set  off  at  a  trot  down  the  hill. 

"  He'll  take  us  right,"  said  Dyneley,  who,  skeptic  though  he  is  in  human 
flesh,  has  unbounded  faith  in  Mousquetaire. 

He  did  take  us  right.     After  groping  our  way,  many  times  within  an  inch 


654  QUID  AS     WORKS 

of  our  lives,  with  many  headlong  descents  that  would  have  seemed  perils  gigan- 
tic to  Brown,  Jones,  and  Robinson  touring  for  a  fortnight  on  leave  from 
Twining's  or  Barclay's,  we  found  Mousquetaire  heading  us  to  a  gate  before 
the  garden  of  a  house,  in  one  of  whose  windows  the  blessed  light  was  still 
twinkling. 

"  Quite  romantic.  What  a  pity  we  are  not  eighteen,  to  magnify  it  into  an 
adventure,"  whispered  Dyneley,  "  whose  house  is  it,  I  wonder  ?  Do  you  see  a 
bell  or  a  knocker  anywhere  about  ?  I  thought  nothing  but  black  game  keepers 
and  shepherds  dwelt  in  these  parts.  The  deuce,  Monti,  look  up  there.  What 
a  pretty  face  !  quite  Rembrandtesque." 

I  looked  up  to  where  he  pointed.  It  was  a  bedroom  window — the  identical 
one  that  had  our  light  in  it;  there  were  no  blinds,  or  at  least  they  were  not 
drawn  down,  and  before  the  glass  stood  a  young  girl  putting  fuchsia  sprays  into 
her  hair.  She  was  very  picturesque  even  to  our  tired  eyes — at  least,  in  this 
dismal  night  she  seemed  so.  At  a  concert,  or  an  opera,  or  a  crush,  we  might 
never  have  thought  of  her.  She  was  smiling  at  herself  as  she  twisted  the  flowers 
in  her  shining  gold  hair;  there  was  no  self-consciousness  or  art  of  the  toilette 
about  her,  and  it  was  pretty  to  see  her  put  them  in  and  pull  them  out,  and  laugh 
at  herself  all  the  while.  At  last  she  threw  some  of  the  rejected  flowers  down 
and  glanced  up  at  the  night,  a  sad  expression  stealing  over  her  face,  so  full  of 
fun  a  moment  ago.  Then  she  left  the  window,  and  Dyneley,  finding  the  knocker, 
performed  on  it  as  loudly  as  a  Belgravian  flunkey,  only  with  much  more  im- 
patience of  entrance.  There  was  considerable  delay,  and  an  amount  of  talk  on 
the  other  side  of  the  door,  such  as  it  is  customary  in  small  households  when  an 
unexpected  inroad  is  made  upon  their  domestic  peace.  The  bolt  was  then 
drawn  back,  and  the  door  cautiously  opened  by  a  Scotch  housemaid,  prim  and 
plain,  no  very  inviting  soubrette,  with  "  Avaunt  thee  !  thou  art  an  Ishmaelite," 
written  on  her  brow,  as  Dyneley  briefly  stated  the  case,  and  asked  if  he  could 
see  her  master  for  a  moment. 

"  Ye  canna;  he's  gane  oot,"  was  the  grim  reply. 

"  Can  I  see  any  one,  then,  who  will  direct  me  my  way  back  to  Glenmist  ?  " 

"  I  douna  say,  sirs;  ye'd  best  gang  off  as  ye  came,"  she  answered,  almost 
closing  the  door. 

"My  good  woman,  is  this  your  Highland  hospitality  ?"  said  Dyneley,  im- 
patiently. "  I  tell  you,  we  have  lost  our  road.  Can't  you  tell  us,  at  least, 
which  way  we  ought  to  take  ?  " 

"What  do  those  gentlemen  want  Elsie  ?  "  said  a  young,  clear  voice. 

By  George  !  it  was  the  little  bedroom  beauty  herself,  coming  out  of  a  room 
into  the  hall,  with  the  identical  fuchsias  round  her  head. 

"  Gentlemen  '  I  ken  they're  some  lying  loons,"  muttered  the  female  Cerberus. 
"  Keep  awa',  Miss  Lilla,  the  wind's  cauld." 


BELLES    AND     BLACKCOCK.  G55 

She  was  closing  the  door  in  our  faces,  but  Dyneley  pushed  it  back  with  one 
arm,  entered,  and,  raising  his  cap,  apologized  to  Miss  Lilla  for  the  intrusion, 
and  explained  to  her  how  we  stood  lost  on  the  moors,  we  knew  not  how  many 
miles  from  Glenmist. 

She  looked  up  at  him  earnestly  as  he  spoke— I  daresay  such  a  specimen  as 
Dyneley  wasn't  often  seen  up  there — and  answered  him  unhesitatingly. 

"  You  have  lost  your  way  ?  Pray  come  in  and  rest  till  my  uncle  returns. 
He  will  be  back  soon;  he's  only  just  gone  round  the  farm,  and  will  be  most 
happy  to  put  you  en  route  again." 

She  spoke  as  naturally  as  a  child,  but  with  as  much  good  breeding  as  Lady 
Constance  at  a  levee.  We  thought  our  lines  had  fallen  in  pleasant  places,  so 
accepted  the  invitation  joyfully.  Not  so  did  Elsie  hear  it  given. 

"  Miss  Lilla,"  she  muttered,  angrily,  "  are  ye  daft  to  daur  let  in  these 
laddies,  and  yer  uncle  awa',  too  !  " 

"  Silence  !  "  said  Lilla,  with  an  impatient  gesture;  "  show  these  gentlemen 
into  the  drawing-room,  and  send  Robbie  to  seek  for  my  uncle." 

"  By  Jove  !  Monti,"  whispered  Dyneley,  as  he  took  off  his  wet  plaid,  "  this 
high-bred  little  beauty  and  her  drawing-room,  with  this  antiquated  portress, 
and  an  uncle  who's  out  on  his  farm,  is  an  odd  anomaly.  I  say,  drop  the  title 
here;  let  me  be  Graham  Vavasour,  as  I  was  at  Eton,  will  you  !  " 

"  If  you  choose,  but  I  don't  see  why." 

"  I  do,  and  that's  enough,"  said  my  lord,  shortly,  as  we  entered  the  draw- 
ing-room aforesaid,  a  long,  low  room,  simply  but  tastefully  arranged,  with  no 
consoles,  mirrors,  statuettes,  or  Buhl  cabinets  about  it,  but  still  with  a  nameless 
something  of  refinement,  and  in  it  the  diamond  of  the  desert,  our  wild  gowan 
of  the  moors.  Dyneley  introduced  himself  and  me  with  a  certain  charm  of 
manner  he  possesses,  which  takes  with  every  woman  living,  when  he  chooses  to 
exert  it,  and  would,  a  witty  Rosiere  once  told  him,  have  won  that  chill  bit  of 
propriety,  Penelope  herself,  into  forgetfulness  of  her  wandering  lord.  The 
little  Highland  chatelaine  was  easy  to  talk  to.  She  was  lively,  unaffected,  and 
not  shy;  indeed,  her  manners  would  have  done  credit  to  a  debutante  of  the  best 
ton,  so  young  and  natural  was  she.  She  told  us  her  uncle  was  a  tenant  of  Lord 
Fitzcorrie;  her  own  name  Lillian  Cardonnel;  she  did  not  like  Scotland,  she  said, 
it  was  so  cold,  so  dull. 

"  You  have  not  lived  here  always,  then  ?  "  said  Dyneley. 

"  Oh  no,"  she  said,  with  a  look  of  horror  at  the  idea.  "  Till  the  last  six 
months  I  have  lived  in  Italy— dear,  dear  Italy.  You  cannot  tell  how  I  love  it 
The  skies  are  so  blue,  the  sun  so  bright  there." 

"  From  Italy  to  the  Highlands  !  "  cried  Dyneley.  "  What  a  change  !  You 
must  feel  your  exile  as  much  as  Mary  Stuart  did." 

Her  eyes  looked  pitifully  sad  as  she  said,  with  a  laugh, 


656  GUI  DA'S     WORKS. 

"Yes,  like  Rachel,  I  shall  die  with  Camille's  words  on  my  lips: 
Albe,  mon  cher  pays  et  mon  premier  amour." 

This  was  growing  very  amusing,  and  we  could  have  cursed  her  uncle's  ad- 
vent cheerfully,  when  shortly  afterwards  he  came  in  and  interrupted  us. 

Duncairn  was  a  tall,  stern-looking  fellow  of  fifty  or  so,  with  a  keen,  honest 
physiognomy,  his  manners  rather  formal  and  stiff,  but  heartily  hospitable.  He 
was  a  curious  contrast  to  his  niece — He  could  have  acted  Virginius,  on  occasion 
I  should  say,  if  he  had  chanced  to  live  in  those  severe  ages — but  he  was  a  very 
good  host  to  us,  pressed  us  to  supper,  offered  us  beds,  would  not  hear  of  our 
stirring  out  in  the  storm  that  had  now  set  in,  and  said  he  was  delighted  to  show 
any  attention  to  friends  of  Lord  Fitzcorrie's.  So  to  supper  we  went,  to  a  table 
full  of  Highland  dainties,  whisky,  and  XXX,  as  good  as  we  should  have  had 
up  at  Glengrouse,  and  little  Lilla  did  the  honors  with  as  much  grace  and  self- 
possession  as  anyone  of  the  Castle  belles.  Dyneley  is  reckoned  very  proud: 
so  he  is  to  pretentious  snobs.  He  has  made  many  enemies  for  life  by  declin- 
ing to  know  nouveaux  riches,  and  by  putting  that  detestable,  stuck  up,  yet  al- 
ways servile,  noblesse  of  money.  But  he  will  be  courteous  to  a  sweep  where 
he  would  snub  a  duke,  and  to  Duncairn,  whom  he  found  to  be  a  sensible  man, 
who  tried  to  make  himself  out  no  more  than  he  was,  Dyneley  was  cordial  and 
charming.  To  be  sure,  looking  on  him  were  a  pair  of  very  bright  eyes,  and 
the  beaux  yeux  level  rank  while  their  spell  is  on  us,  though  he,  the  well-known 
Eastern  traveller,  wayward  author,  and  blase  peer,  was  probably  above  such 
weaknesses.  Duncairn  was  a  man  of  few  words — guano  is  apt  to  sodden 
brains — but  Lilla  made  up  for  the  deficiency;  her  tongue  ran  on  about  fifty 
topics,  and  she  really  talked  well,  too. 

"  Isn't  there  a  Lord  Dyneley  staying  somewhere  in  the  neighborhood  ? " 
asked  Lilla,  at  length. 

"Yes,"  said  Graham.     "  Do  you  know  him?" 

"No;  but  I  know  his  books,  and  I  love  them.  Don't  you?  Besides,  I 
have  read  in  the  reviews  of  his  restless  wanderings,  his  great  talents,  his  wild 
adventures,  till  I  have  an  intense  curiosity  to  see  him.  Is  it  all  true  ?  " 

"  That  he  has  led  a  strange  wild  life  ?  "  said  Dyneley  with  grave  tranquillity. 
"  I  believe  so,  and  of  course,  having  run  over  the  whole  globe,  he  has  met  with 
some  few  adventures.  But  as  to  the  reviews,  you  mustn't  credit  them.  Some 
paint  him  in  much  too  glowing,  others  in  too  satanical  colors,  though  most 
likely  he  has  more  of  the  demon  than  the  angel  about  him,  like  all  the  rest  of 
us  men." 

"  And  is  he  handsome  ?  "  asked  Lilla. 

"  Some  women  tell  him  he  is.     I  don't  think  him  so  myself." 


BELLES    AND     BLACKCOCK.  657 

"  But  gentlemen  can  never  judge  one  another,"  she  said,  laughing.  "  I 
want  dreadfully  to  see  him.  I  wish  they  would  put  his  portrait  in  the  Illus- 
trated. Do  you  think  they  will  ?  " 

"  I'm  afraid  he's  not  celebre  enough  for  that  questionable  honor,"  said 
Graham,  smiling.  "  He'll  never  be  a  lord  mayor,  you  see,  or  a  pet  preacher. 
Perhaps,  if  they  want  to  fill  up  a  corner,  they  may  stick  in  an  imaginary  pic- 
ture, and  put  his  name  under  it.  But  if  you  really  care  for  his  portrait,  Miss 
Cardonnel,  I  will  ask  him  to  sit  to  me.  I  know  him  very  well,  and  he  will  in  a 
moment,  if  he  knows  the  honor  you  do  him." 

"  Will  you  ?  "  cried  Lilla.  "  Oh  !  thank  you,  Mr.  Vavasour.  How  charm- 
ing that  would  be  !  I  have  engravings  of  Bulwer,  and  Thackeray,  and  all  my 
darlings  up  in  my  room,  and  I  should  so  love  to  have  Lord  Dyneley,  too.  What 
an  incessant  traveller  he  has  been  !  Meeting  him  on  the  high  road,  one  might 
say  to  him,  as  they  said  to  the  Chevalier  de  Boufflers,  '  I  am  happy  to  meet 
you  at  home'  " 

"  What  a  little  wonder  that  is,  to  be  found  in  a  Highland  farm-house,"  said 
Dyneley,  when,  shown  up  to  our  rooms,  he  came  into  mine  to  have  a  last  pipe. 
Lilla  had  not  in  the  least  objected  to  tobacco,  but  stayed  in  the  fumes  of  the 
Cavendish,  laughing  and  talking,  though  Dyneley  would  have  gone  without  his 
darling  nicotine  rather  than  offend  her  olfactory  nerves,  if  she  had  not  threat- 
ened to  leave  the  room  if  he  did  not  follow  Duncairn's  example,  and  take  his 
meerschaum — a  threat  which  soon  induced  Graham  to  light  it.  "  Ton  my  life, 
Monti,  she's  very  entertaining,  and  her  manners  are  so  graceful,  exactly  the 
juste-milieu,  neither  shy  nor  bold,  though  I  daresay  some  fools  might  miscon- 
strue her  frankness  and  vivacity.  She  must  have  been  brought  up  in  good 
society.  How  on  earth  does  she  come  to  be  buried  here,  poor  little  thing  ?  " 

"  She  seems  to  interest  you,"  said  I. 

"  Yes,  she  does.  She  puts  me  in  mind  of  finding  a  flower  up  among  the 
snow  on  the  Aigre." 

"  Quite  poetic  !  " 

"  Don't  be  sarcastic,  Monti;  that's  my  line.  I  haven't  much  poetry  left  in 
me,  thank  Heaven;  it's  an  unprofitable  commodity  that  the  world  estimates 
very  low  indeed.  Before  I  knew  the  world  I  wrote  sonnets;  now  I  know  it,  I 
write  satires." 

"  Nevertheless,  you  seem  so  struck  with  this  little  wild  gowan,  that  we  may 
live  to  see  you  writing  '  Glenmist  braes  are  bonny,'  a  la  Douglas  of  Finland,  yet." 

"  And  keeping  faithful  to  "  Annie  Laurie,"  who  jilts  me  and  marries  Craig- 
darroch  ?  Thank  you;  I  don't  think  that  is  much  like  my  role.  I'm  afraid  I 
have  been  more  sinner  than  victim  in  the  matter  of  faithlessness." 

"  So  the  poor  gowan  will  find,  I'll  bet.  With  such  a  romantic  beginning, 
you  can't  reject  the  goods  the  gods  have  sent  you." 


658  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

Dyneley  laughed.  Then  he  said  with  his  pipe  between  his  teeth,  "  No  !  I'll 
be  merciful  for  once.  I  won't  brush  the  dew  off  your  gowan,  as  you  call  her. 
Who's  poetical  now,  I  wonder  ?  Neither  you  nor  I  would  do  the  poor  flower 
much  good." 

"Very  possibly;  but  neither  you  nor  I  are  much  given  to  pausing  for  that 
consideration." 

Fresh  and  fair  "  the  gowan  "  looked  when  she  came  down  to  breakfast,  un- 
conscious of  our  remarks  concerning  her,  and  beamed  on  "  Mr.  Vavasour  "  a 
bright  good  morning  smile.  With  Lillian  Cardonnel  it  was  not  her  face,  though 
that  was  pretty  enough,  nor  her  brain,  though  that  was  clever  enough,  but,  as 
we  say  of  Piccolomini,  it  was  her  ways  that  had  such  a  charm  for  us.  I  have 
heard  ladies  very  spiteful  on  the  little  Italian  because  we  say  so,  and  so  I  dare- 
say they  would  have  been  on  Lilla,  had  any  known  her,  ladies  being  generally 
addicted  to  those  "  nice  quiet  girls,"  whom  they  like  because  we  don't  (I  never 
heard  one  woman  praise  another  unless  she  could  damn  her  with  that  detest- 
able little  epithet  "quiet");  but,  as  it  was,  fortunately  Lilla  had  more  lenient 
judges,  and  Dyneley's  and  my  verdict,  when  we  bade  her  good-by,  was  "  charm- 
ing," and  infinitely  too  good  to  be  buried  away  in  the  solitude  of  the  moors. 

After  breakfast  I  went  with  Duncairn  to  see  some  prize  heifers  of  his. 
Dyneley,  who  never  cared  a  straw  for  cattle  and  corn,  preferred  the  entertain- 
ment indoors,  where  they  got  on  very  well,  I  daresay,  for  when  we  came  back 
she  was  sitting  on  a  low  stool,  with  Mousquetaire  at  her  feet,  and  he  was  lean- 
ing over  her,  looking  at  her  drawings.  She  had  never  been  taught,  but  had 
real  talent,  as  became  a  native  of  Rome,  and  they  were  as  good  friends  as  if 
they  had  known  each  other  twelve  months.  When  we  started  homewards,  Lilla 
offered  to  guide  us  to  the  top  of  the  hill  about  a  couple  of  miles'  distance, 
whence  we  could  find  our  way  to  the  glen,  and  a  very  pleasant  walk  we  had 
with  our  lively  little  cicerone.  We  were  quite  loth  to  part  with  her  when  we 
came  to  the  hill.  Dyneley  stood  still,  and  watched  her  run  down  the  slope 
homewards  as  fast  as  a  greyhound.  When  she  reached  the  bottom,  she  turned 
too,  to  see  if  he  was  gone.  He  took  off  his  cap  to  her,  waved  his  hand,  and 
came  on  with  a  smile  on  his  lips. 

A  couple  of  nights  after  we  dined  at  the  Castle,  and  plenty  of  chaffing  we 
got  for  having  lost  our  way  on  the  moors. 

"  So  a  tenant  of  mine  gave  you  house  room  !  "  said  Fitzcorrie.  "  Did  you 
see  little  Lilla  ?  Of  course  you  did,  though.  Trust  you  to  be  in  the  same 
house  with  a  pretty  woman  and  not  ferret  her  out ! " 

"  Oh  yes,"  said  Dyneley.  "  I  saw  her,  and  a  pretty,  dear  little  thing  she  is. 
But,  by  Jove  !  Fitzcorrie,  she's  utterly  out  of  place  there.  How  does  she  come 
to  belong  to  a  farmer,  of  all  horrible  things  ?  She  must  have  some  gentle  blood 
in  her  veins." 


BELLES    AND    BLACKCOCK.  659 

"  You're  right,  old  fellow,"  said  the  Viscount.  "  Though  it's  certainly  a 
good  idea  to  ask  me  for  the  genealogies  of  my  tenants,  I  can  tell  you  something 
about  that.  You've  heard  me  talk  of  poor  Charlie  Cardonnel;  he  was  a  great 
chum  of  mine  in  the  old  college  days,  and  there  couldn't  have  been  a  better 
fellow  if  he  hadn't  been  so  miserably  romantic.  Well,  one  luckless  Long, 
Charlie  came  to  shoot  with  me  up  here,  and  became  dreadfully  spoony  over 
Duncairn's  sister  Lillian.  She  was  the  beauty  of  Argyleshire,  and  Charlie,  poor 
dear  fellow  ! — you'll  hardly  credit  it,  I  daresay — was  actually  fool  enough  to 
marry  her — marry  her— a  yoeman's  daughter  !  To  marry  young,  we  all  know, 
is  one  of  the  greatest  evils  that  can  betide  a  man,  and  to  marry  beneath  him 
damages  him  still  worse;  but  do  it  he  did;  why,  I  couldn't  say,  nor  he  either. 
Six  months  after,  of  course,  he  was  sick  of  her;  six  years  after,  naturally  he 
met  somebody  else,  and  wanted  to  break  his  chains.  Break  them  he  couldn't, 
so  he  ran  away  with  his  new  love,  and  her  brother  shot  him  through  the  heart. 
Poor  dear  Charlie  !  a  man  had  better  take  to  drinking,  racing,  gambling,  rather 
than  take  to  romance.  Lillian  had  nothing  to  live  on,  and  herself  and  her 
daughter  to  keep.  Served  her  right  for  entangling  poor  Charlie  !  So  she  took 
a  tumble-down  palace  in  Rome,  and  let  rooms  to  English  visitors,  till  she  died 
five  years  ago,  when  an  old  Italian  Comtessa  took  a  fancy  to  the  child,  and 
brought  her  up  till  she  died  too,  and  Lilla  came  over  to  Duncairn.  She's  very 
like  poor  Charlie  in  look,  and  manners,  and  mind.  The  Cardonnels,  of  course, 
never  notice  her.  I  have  got  Florence  to  ask  her  here  occasionally  for  her 
father's  sake;  but  it's  difficult  to  take  up  one's  friend's  child,  who  is  one's  ten- 
ant's niece,  too,  and  I  don't  think  my  lady  likes  her." 

"  I  daresay  not,"  said  Dyneley,  sotto  voce.  "  Well,  she's  a  nice  little  thing. 
I  wish  her  a  better  fate  than  her  mother's." 

"Yes,  she  is  certainly  chic,"  said  Fitzcorrie,  "  notwithstanding  the  plebeian 
blood  of  the  distaff  side.  I  should  be  sorry  you'd  seen  her  if  I  didn't  know  you 
were  too  old  a  hand  to  commit  yourself  a  la  pauvre,  Charlie." 

"  I  should  say  so.  Romance  has  been  beaten  out  of  me  long  ago;  and  a 
good  thing  too,  for  I  couldn't  afford  such  an  expensive  luxury." 

Soon  after  we  went  into  the  drawing-room  Lillian  came  on  the  tapis  again. 
Lady  Fitzcorrie  and  Adeliza  Vandeleur  raised  their  eyebrows,  and  smiled  the 
smile  with  which  woman  sneer  down  an  enemy  of  their  own  sex. 

"  What,  are  you  talking  of  the  farmer's  little  niece  ?  Do  you  admire  her  ? 
Really  !  She  was  here  at  the  tenants'  ball  last  Christmas;  I  remember  noticing 
her.  She  is  not  so  gauche  as  one  might  expect,  is  she  ?  " 

"  Gauche  ! "  repeated  Dyneley,  with  a  peculiar  smile.  "  I  think  I  never 
saw  manners  more  graceful." 

Adeliza's  haughty  under-lip  protruded.  "  Indeed  !  I  had  fancied  I  had 
once  heard  you  were  fastidious,  Lord  Dyneley." 


660  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

"  So  I  am,"  said  Graham  sipping  his  coffee.    "  I  should  say  no  man  more  so." 

"  Do  you  mean  that  girl  with  golden  hair,  that  Lord  Fitzcorrie  called  Lilla 
when  she  came  here  last  Christmas  ? "  interrupted  Constance.  "  I  thought 
her  lovely;  she  played  so  brilliantly,  too." 

Dyneley  leant  down  over  her  chair.  "  Lady  Constance,  you  show  me  a 
miracle:  one  Helen  has  the  generosity  to  toss  the  golden  apple  to  another." 

"  You  bitter  satirist !     Why  should  not  women  praise  each  other  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know  why  they  shouldn't,  but  I  know  they  never  do.  At  least, 
never  without  some  qualifying  rider,"  laughed  Dyneley.  "  Will  you  give  us 
some  music  ?  Sing  me  my  favorite,  '  lo  son  ricco.'  Willoughby  there  will  be 
charmed  to  accompany  you." 

"No,  pray  don't  trouble  him.  I  beg  you  won't,"  said  Constance,  hastily; 
but  Dyneley  had  already  crossed  over  to  where  Claude  stood  leaning  against 
a  console,  talking  to  nobody,  with  a  look  of  dignified  ennui,  as  if  he  was  long- 
ing for  a  "  new  sensation,"  and  couldn't  for  his  life  find  one,  and,  taking  him  by 
the  shoulder,  brought  him  up  to  Constance,  very  much  against  his  will,  I  fancied. 

"  I  am  very  sorry  Lord  Dyneley  disturbed  your  dolce,"  she  said,  not  look- 
ing at  him,  and  playing  listlessly  with  her  fan.  "  I  suppose,  Captain  AVilloughby, 
when  there  is  no  sunshine  in  society  brilliant  enough  to  attact  you,  you  retire 
like  the  moles,  into  a  state  of  quiescence;  they  call  it  sleep,  you  call  it  ennui, 
but  it  appears  to  me  much  the  same  thing." 

"But  the  moles  are  better  off,"  said  Claude,  in  his  most  languid  voice. 
"You  know  they  have  holes  to  go  into,  and  we  haven't;  we're  constantly  being 
bored  by  being  woke  up  and  asked  to  do  something  fatiguing.  But  if  you 
want  me  to  sing,  I  don't  mind." 

The  tone,  lazy  as  that  in  which  was  uttered  the  memorable  words  "  the 
Tenth  don't  dance  ! "  the  air  tranquilly  rude,  which  Lady  Fitzcorrie  justly 
stigmatized  as  "  out-Brummeling-Brummel " — which  no  man  in  the  Service 
knew  better  how  to  assume,  when  he  chose,  than  did  Claude — made  Constance's 
eyes  flash,  and  her  color  flush  deep. 

"  Wish  you  to  sing  !  "  she  said,  carelessly.  "  What  could  make  you  dream 
that  I  did  ?  I  wouldn't  inflict  the  exertion  upon  you.  Pray  go  back  to  the 
dolce;  there  is  a  remarkable  comfortable  chair  in  the  inner  drawing-room,  and 
you  need  have  no  pangs  of  conscience,  for  when  the  moles  abjure  society, 
nobody  misses  them,  you  know." 

"  Thank  you,"  said  Claude,  stroking  his  long  moustache.  "  You  were  very 
kind  to  think  of  that  chair;  I'll  go  to  it  at  once." 

Go  to  it  he  did;  and  he  sank  down  among  its  cushions,  but  enjoy  the  dolce 
he  didn't,  for  Lady  Fitzcorrie  was  there,  who  has  no  objection  to  a  flirtation 
with  a  handsome  cavalry  man;  and  they  flirted  away,  till  the  Viscount,  who 
was  a  bit  of  a  George  Dandin  in  his  old  age,  would  have  been  bitterly  wrath- 


BELLES    AND    BLACKCOCK.  GGl 

ful  if  he  hadn't  happily  been  deep  in  whist  in  the  card-room,  where  Dyneley 
sooned  joined  him,  while  Adeliza  looked  very  chagrined  at  his  desertion,  and 
her  sister  sang  duets  with  Curtis  and  with  me  as  if  she  were  aspiring  to  the 
role  of  prima  donna.  I  was  standing  by  her  at  the  piano  when  Claude  came  up 
to  bid  her  good-night.  As  she  turned,  he  knocked  down  a  song:  he  picked  it 
up,  and  a  bitter  smile  came  on  his  face  as  he  laid  it  on  the  piano.  Constance 
turned  pale,  too,  as  he  put  it  down,  and  said,  with  a  laugh,  "  That  used  to  be  a 
favorite  of  yours,  Lady  Constance,  but  newer  music  has  come  up  since,  and  we 
are  not  so  cruel  as  to  expect  fidelity  from  ladies." 

I  glanced  at  the  title  of  the  song:  it  was  "  Wert  thou  but  mine  own,  love;  " 
and  on  it  was  written,  in  Claude's  writing, 

"  L'amour  sait  rendre  tout  possible, 

Au  coeur  qui  suit  ses  6tendards. 
"  Somerleyton  Feb.  \6th." 

I  thought  I  began  to  see  into  Master  Claude's  hand,  carefully  as  he  held  his 
cards. 


IV. 

THE  GOWAN  OF  THE  MOORS  GROWS  MORE  ATTRACTIVE  THAN  THE  GAME. 

"  WHERE'S  Dyneley  ?  "  said  Curtis  one  afternoon,  some  three  weeks  after, 
when  he  and  I  were  out  after  ducks  at  the  pools;  "  gone  to  see  that  gold-haired 
Highland  belle  of  his  again,  I  suppose.  Poaching  on  one  manor  spoils  shoot- 
ing on  another;  but  there  never  was  such  a  fellow  for  '  large  blue  eyes  and 
fair  white  hands.'  " 

I  laughed.  "  I  daresay  he's  up  there.  Shall  we  go  and  see  ?  It's  getting 
dusk." 

"  Do,"  said  Curtis,  "  I  want  to  see  her.  Romer  and  Ashington  have  found 
her  out,  and  they  say  she's  pretty  enough  to  make  Adeliza  strychnine  her.  Do 
you  think  that  will  be  a  match  between  Dy  and  the  Vandeleur  ?  There's 
plenty  of  tin  for  Dyneley." 

"Can't  say.  She's  willing,  no  doubt,  and  he's  no  money  to  speak  of;  it 
may  come  off,  though  I  doubt  if  Graham  will  ever  put  on  the  handcuffs  mat- 
trimonial.  We're  not  very  far  off  Duncairn's  now.  Come  along,  and  give  the 
guns  to  Ronald." 

An  hour's  walk  brought  us  to  the  farm,  a  long,  low,  rather  picturesque 
house.  Elsie,  looking  upon  us  with  much  suspicion,  showed  us  into  Lilla's 
little  drawing-room,  where  we  found  Dyneley  sitting  in  the  broad  window-seat, 


662  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

and  Lilla  by  him,  in  her  customary  low  chair,  looking  up  in  his  face  while  he 
talked  earnestly  to  her.  For  the  first  time,  I  think  I  may  say  in  my  life,  he 
looked  anything  but  pleased  to  see  me.  He  was  expatiating  on  one  of  his 
favorite  topics,  the  great  fault  of  the  day,  Intolerance — not  of  anything  warmer 
— but  with  her  speaking  ey.es  fixed  on  him,  and  her  quick  intelligence  answer- 
ing him,  I  daresay  he  was  wrathful  at  being  interrupted.  She  looked  sorry, 
too,  and  showed  it,  which  he  didn't,  he  having  had  twenty  years'  icing  in 
society,  and  she  none.  She  received  us,  however,  in  her  graceful,  lively  style, 
and  Curtis  studied  her  with  more  admiration  than  ever  I  saw  in  him  for  the 
belles  of  the  "  Ride  and  the  Ring."  Dyneley  leaned  back  against  the  window, 
and  didn't  vouchsafe  much  conversation,  save  when  Lilla  appealed  to  him,  which 
was  certainly  about  once  every  three  minutes;  and  Curtis  did  his  best  to  amuse 
her:  he's  a  very  pleasant  fellow,  too,  when  he  likes.  It  was  quite  a  levee  for 
her;  and  I  daresay  the  little  Queen  of  our  Argyleshire  Balmoral  enjoyed  it. 

"  Won't  you  come  to-morrow  ?  "  she  said  to  Dyneley,  when  he  shook  hands 
with  her;  looking  very  earnest  about  her  request. 

He  smiled.     "  We'll  see." 

"Ah!  then  I  know  you  will;  and  when  will  you  do  Lord  Dyneley's 
picture  ? " 

"  He  hasn't  sat  to  me  yet,"  said  Graham,  "  but  I  certainly  will  not  forget 
it.  However,  you'll  be  disappointed  in  him.  You  fancy  him  a  demigod,  and 
you'll  find  him  a  very  mortal  indeed." 

"I  do  not  care;  I  know  him  in  his  writings,"  said  Lilla,  decidedly.  "I 
never  judge  a  man  by  his  life,  but  by  his  heart;  circumstances  may  make  the 
one,  but  nature  has  formed  the  other,  and  if  it  be  the  right  metal  it  will  always 
ring  true." 

We  laughed  involuntarily,  but  Dyneley  looked  grave;  perhaps  he  was  think- 
ing his  had  not  always  rung  as  true  as  it  might  have  done  to  his  boyish  dreams 
of  hope  and  energy,  ambition  and  success. 

"  Miss  Cardonnel,"  said  Curtis,  bidding  her  good-by,  "  I  wish  very  earnestly 
that  you  would  make  me  the  same  request  you  did  Vavasour  here,  /'d  come 
at  your  call." 

"  What  a  paladin  !  "  laughed  Lilla.  "  It  is  quite  a  pity  you  didn't  live  in  the 
days  of  the  Round  Table,  and  Elaine  and  Morgue  la  Faye." 

"One  does  not  need  to  go  back  so  far  for  fairies,"  said  Curtis,  with  an  elo- 
quent glance. 

Dyneley  made  an  impatient  movement.  He  never  compliments  by  any 
chance. 

"  But  really,"  Charley  went  on,  "  may  I,  too,  '  come  to-morrow  ? '  " 

Lilla  looked  vexed,  and  hesitated.  "  If  you  wish,  certainly,  but  it  is  a  very 
long  walk." 


BELLES    AND    BLACKCOCK. 


663 


_  "My  legs  are  as  good  as  Vavasour's,"  said  Curtis,  laughing  to  hide  the 
pique  he  felt;  but  if  you  honor  him  with  the  monopoly " 

Dyneley  silenced  him  with  a  flash  of  his  dark  eyes. 

Lillian  looked  haughty  and  dignified.  "  If  Mr.  Vavasour,"  she  said  quickly 
"is  so  kind  as  to  walk  eight  miles  that  I  may  have  the  pleasure  of  talking  my 
dear  Italian  once  more,  I  am  not  so  vain  as  to  suppose  that  all  his  friends 
would  take  the  same  trouble." 

"  Nor  do  you  care  that  they  should,"  thought  I. 

"  Well,  Dy,  I  congratulate  you  on  your  game,"  said  Curtis,  as  he  went  home; 
"  it's  better  than  the  blackcock,  and  more  easily  knocked  over,  I  guess.  Take 
care  I  don't  poach  on  your  manor,  old  fellow." 

"  If  I  had,  to  adopt  your  elegant  parable,  marked  the  game,  I  should  know 
perfectly  well  how  to  secure  it,"  said  my  lord,  with  a  contemptuous  twist  of  his 
moustaches.  "  But  I  consider  Miss  Cardonnel  "a  lady,  if  you  don't,  and  I  do 
not  speak  of  her  as  a  grisette  of  the  Quartier  Latin." 

"Lady  ?  So  she  is  in  manner,  but  a  yoeman's  niece  !  The  devil  !  if  one 
mayn't  have  a  little  fun  with  her,  with  whom  on  earth  may  one  ? " 

"Try  it,  Charley,"  said  Dyneley,  dryly. 

"Well,  why  not?  By  George!  this  is  the  first  time  I  ever  knew  you  so 
scrupulous." 

"Possibly.  You  are  young  yet,  and  boys  do  not  know  that  there  are 
'femmes  et  femmes.'  When  you  have  lived  as  long  as  I,  you  will  know  that  a 
young  girl,  too  frank  and  guileless  to  be  a  prude,  too  warm-hearted  to  be  a 
coquette,  is  not  to  be  confounded  with  the  Aspasias  and  Phrynes  of  our 
experience." 

"I  say,  Gra,"  said  I,  as  Curtis  went  on  in  front,  "I  thought  you  were  go- 
ing to  be  merciful  and  spare  the  gowan.  Making  love  to  her  and  marrying 
Adeliza  won't " 

"  Pooh  !  I  never  make  love  to  her,"  said*  he,  shortly.  "  She  is  clever,  and 
amuses  me  to  talk  to;  but  anything  beyond  that  would  answer  neither  of  us,  for 
I  certainly  can't  marry  her,  and  I'd  never  abuse  Duncairn's  hospitality.  I  tell 
you  she's  a  fair  flower,  and  I'll  leave  her  untouched." 

"  Then  I  wouldn't  advise  you  to  go  after  her  quite  so  much." 

"  Keep  your  counsel  till  you're  asked  for  it,  Monti.  Poor  child  !  she's  no 
idea  of  love  in  her  head  for  me  yet,  and  I  shall  not  teach  her." 

I  laughed  outright.  "  My  dear  fellow  !  I  never  thought  I  should  like  to 
hear  a  man  of  the  world  like  you  talk  such  bosh.  The  poor  gowan,  I  pity 
her  !  she's  doomed  !  " 

Dyneley  blazed  away  at  a  hare  that  crossed  the  path,  and,  I  suppose,  didn't 
hear  my  remark. 

Next  morning  he  left  the  blackcock  after  luncheon,  and  spent  his  afternoon 


664  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

in  the  wide  window-seat  in  Lilla's  drawing-room,  talking  Italian  and  reading 
Leopardi.  And  many  afternoons  went  in  the  same  manner,  till  Fitzcorrie  and 
all  of  us  laughed  about  the  game  Dyneley  had  found  on  the  moors.  Curtis, 
Romer,  Ashington,  and  I  often  found  occasion  to  shoot  up  in  the  direction  of 
the  farm,  and  would  drop  in  for  some  of  Duncairn's  Prestonpans,  to  which  the 
hospitable  Highlander  told  us  we  were  always  heartily  welcome.  I  fancy  they 
all  thought  that  Chaumiere  love  and  coulisses  flattery  would  do  very  well  for  a 
farmer's  neice,  but  they  soon  found  that  little  Lilla,  frank  and  gay  as  she  was, 
required  as  refined  a  style  as  even  Lady  Constance,  and  consoled  themselves 
for  their  disappointment  by  jests  at  her  and  Dyneley. 

"  I  wish  those  confounded  fellows  wouldn't  keep  hanging  about  here,"  said 
he,  savagely,  one  day.  "  There  are  women  enough  at  the  Castle,  if  they  want 
them." 

"  Hallo  !  are  we  jealous  ?  " 

"  Jealous  !  "  repeated  he,  with  scorn.     "  Of  what,  pray  ?  " 

"  Well,  if  you  repudiate  the  sentiment,  what  do  you  care  if  fifty  men  came 
round  her  ? " 

"Because  I  don't  want  her  spoiled.  She  has  no  art,  or  concealment,  or 
manoeuvres  now,  and  it  is  a  pity  she  should  be  taught  them." 

"  I  don't  see  why  Romer,  or  Ashington,  or  Curtis  is  more  likely  to  teach 
her  them  than  yourself;  and  if  you  won't  have  her  either  at  Cupid's  or  Hymen's 
hands,  and  will  bid  her  good-by  in  a  few  weeks'  time,  and  will  find  her,  if  ever 
you  come  here  again,  the  wife  of  some  rich,  thriving,  hard-featured  yeoman,  it 
can't  matter  much  whether  or  no  she  is  spoilt  a  little." 

Dyneley  held  his  head  in  the  air,  playing  impatiently  with  his  whiskers. 
"  Lilla  marry  a  clod  of  the  valley!  Poor  little  thing,  she'd  better  die  first." 

"  Why  do  you  never  come  up  to  the  Castle  ? "  I  asked  her,  a  few  days 
after. 

"  Can't  you  guess  ?  You  can  ?  "  she  said,  turning  to  Dyneley,  who  bent 
his  head  in  acquiescence.  "  To  begin  with,  I  am  very  rarely  asked ;  secondly,  I 
know  Lady  Fitzcorrie  dislikes  to  see  me  there;  and  thirdly,  and  chiefly,  I  am 
too  proud  to  be  treated  as  they  treat  me.  I  will  go  nowhere  on  sufferance,  to 
be  subjected  to  a  condescension  which  is  insult,  to  be  scarcely  spoken  to,  or,  if 
addressed,  addressed  with  that  supercilious  smile,  which  says  as  plainly  as  any 
words,  '  Petite,  how  come  you  near  us  ?  go  back  to  your  proper  sphere.  My 
father  was  a  gentleman,  and  I  will  never  go  anywhere  where  I  am  not  received 
as  a  lady." 

"  Quite  right,"  said  Dyneley,  looking  admirably  at  her  animated  eyes  and 
gestures.  "  If  they  cannot  appreciate  you,  do  not  honor  them." 

Lilla  colored  with  pleasure.  Poor  child!  it  was  his  first  praise.  I  daresay 
he  thought  it  was  quite  right  for  her  not  to  go  to  the  Castle,  since  it  kept  his 


BELLES    AND    BLACKCOCK.  G65 

star  in  obscurity,  to  shine  only  for  himself.     Othello's  form  of  selfishness  is  an 
exceedingly  natural  and  common  one. 

Nevertheless,  he  took  Lady  Fitzcorrie  to  task  for  not  inviting  her.  She 
only  answered  him  with  a  smile  and  a  sneer,  being  afraid  of  his  witty  tongue; 
but  I  heard  her  say  to  Adeliza,  "  What  do  you  think  ?  Dyneley  actually  dared 
to  ask  me  to  invite  that  young  person,  as  if  we  were  to  countenance  and 
receive  his  Scotch  grisettes  ! " 

(N.  B.— My  lady  had  tried  to  hook  Dy,  and  failing,  out  of  pique  had  taken 
up  with  poor  Fitzcorrie.) 

Meanwhile,  Claude  and  Constance  either  hated  or  loved  each  other  very 
warmly.  They  were  as  distant  as  they  could  be  not  to  be  remarked,  and  he 
seemed,  before  her,  to  affect  all  the  languor,  indifference,  and  nil  admirari-ism 
that  he  could. 

"  What  ts  it  between  you  two  ?  "  said  I  one  night,  when  we  came  back  from 
the  Castle  (he  said  he  was  not  well  enough  to  go,)  and  found  him  sitting  by 
the  fire,  looking  a  most  gloomy  contrast  to  the  dashing,  flirting,  light-hearted 
Dragoon  I  had  always  known  him.  "  Come,  tell  me,  old  boy,  what's  Constance 
done  to  you  ?  " 

He  looked  very  fierce  at  me. 

"  You've  found  it  out,  have  you  ?  I  hoped  I'd  concealed  my  folly  too  well 
for  fools  to  have  it  to  mock  at." 

"  Fools  !  Bien  oblige.  My  dear  fellow,  what's  the  matter  ?  what's  it  all 
about  ?  You  know 

L'amour  sait  rendre  tout  possible, 
Au  coeur  qui  suit  ses  Standards." 

Claude,  the  sweetest  temper  possible,  glared  at  me  as  if  I  were  going  posi- 
tively to  take  his  life. 

"  Did  she  tell  you  that  ?     Did  she  make  a  jest  of  it  to  you  ? " 

"What  are  you  talking  about,  Claude?  Who's  'she?'  I  merely  read 
Moliere's  lines  on  a  song  the  other  night  in  your  handwriting." 

"I  wrote  that  when  I  was  mad,"  said  Claude  beneath  his  teeth,  poking  the 
fire  recklessly.  "You  know  I  stayed  in  the  same  house  with  that  girl  down  at 
Somerleyton  for  six  weeks.  I  admired  her,  and  God  knows  whether  she 
meant  it  or  not,  but  she  waltzed,  and  sung,  and  rode  almost  solely  with  me, 
and  7  thought  preferred  me  to  the  other  men.  She  never  discouraged  me. 
The  night  I  wrote  those  very  words  on  the  song,  she  smiled  and  look  up  in  my 
face  as  only  the  most  fond  or  the  most  artful  woman  can.  I  said  nothing  decisive 
to  her,  for  I  knew  she  was  a  great  heiress,  and  I  had  nothing,  and  my  pride  re- 
volted from  owing  my  money  to  my  wife,  or  seeming  mercenary  in  her  eyes. 
So  we  parted.  I  went  to  join  Ours  at  Aldershot,  knowing  we  should  meet  in 


666  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

the  season.  I  did  meet  her  ! — how  do  you  think  ?  I  was  leaning  on  the  rails 
looking  out  for  her;  she  passed  me  on  her  hack,  riding  with  that  idiot  Cro- 
marty,  who's  dangling  after  her  now.  She  gave  a  bow  without  a  smile — 
after  the  hours  we  had  spent  together  ! — and  cantered  on." 

His  voice  shook,  and  he  leaned  his  head  on  his  arms  on  the  mantel-piece.  I 
was  going  to  speak  but  he  stopped  me. 

"Hush!  it's  idle  talking.  I  was  mad  to  suppose  she  would  fling  herself 
away  on  a  poor  cavalry  man.  You  know  my  secret — keep  it.  I  must  get  over 
it  somehow,  and  end  my  days  as  soon  as  I  can  in  some  skirmish." 

With  a  dreary  laugh,  he  bid  me  good  night,  and,  taking  my  pipe,  I 
mourned  over  the  loss  of  one  of  the  best  fellows  in  the  Service;  caught  and 
bound  in  those  tight  rose-chains  from  which  the  blind  god  so  seldom  remem- 
bers to  take  out  the  thorns. 

"  Monti,"  said  Dyneley,  coming  in  out  of  the  hall,  "  I  wish  you'd  give  me 
back  that  daguerreotype  Claudet  took  of  me  when  you  were  romantic  enough 
to  wish  to  have  one  when  I  was  going  into  Arabia  Deserta,  and  you  fancied 
I  might  never  come  back.  Will  you  ? " 

"  Well,  it  isn't  over-generous  of  you,  but  I'll  send  to  town  for  it  if  you 
wish." 

"  That's  a  good  fellow.  I  want  it  for  little  Lilla,  and  I'll  have  another 
done  for  you." 

"  So  you're  going  to  make  the  child  waste  her  years  crying  over  your 
daguerreotype  ?  That's  being  '  merciful,'  is  it  ?  " 

"I  promised  her,"  he  said,  shortly,  "and  she  shall  have  it." 

"  Very  well,  Gra,"  said  I.  "  Don't  take  my  head  quite  off.  You've  taken 
care  to  photograph  youself  in  her  memory  pretty  indelibly,  so  she  may  as 
well  have  the  picture." 

The  picture  came  down.  Dy's  clear-cut  features,  his  black  hair  and 
whiskers,  and  eyes,  came  out  strong  in  the  photograph;  he  might  pardonably 
feel  vain  when  he  looked  at  it,  but  he  put  it  in  his  pocket  immediately  it  ap- 
peared, and  set  off  to  Duncairn's.  Lilla  was  looking  for  him,  and  let  him  in, 
kissed  Mousquetaire  most  warmly,  and  smiled  upon  Mousquetaire's  master. 
Without  speaking,  he  held  out  the  picture.  She  looked  at  the  case  in  dismay. 

"What!  Lord  Dyneley  at  last?  How  kind  you  are!  But  this  is  Claudet's 
name,  it  is  not  your  painting  ?  " 

"  Open  it,"  said  Dy,  smiling. 

She  did  as  he  told  her;  gave  the  picture  one  glance,  and  turned  round  to 
him,  her  face  flushed  and  agitated. 

"  It  is  you  !— you  !  And  may  I  have  it  ?  May  I  keep  it  ?  Oh  !  why  did 
you  never  tell  me  '  To  think  that  it  is  your  thoughts  I  have  so  long  read  in 
your  books  !  You,  whom  I  have " 


BELLES    AND    BLACKCOCK.  (JUT 

"  Lilla  !  Good  Heavens  !  what  is  the  matter  ?  "  said  Dyneley,  seeing,  to  his 
consternation,  that  she  trembled  excessively,  and  tears  stood  in  her  eyes. 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  the  girl;  "only— you  seem  so  much  farther  off  me.  I 
feel  as  if  some  one  had  taken  you  away." 

Dyneley  was  more  touched  than  he  knew  was  prudent,  and  thought  he  had 
better  end  the  scene. 

"  You  feel  too  deeply,  Lilla,"  he  said  hastily.  "  You  will  never  be  happy. 
I  cannot  stay  now,  for  Montague  is  waiting  for  me  at  the  falls.  Keep  the 
daguerreotype  if — if  it  interests  you;  and,  though  I  bear  another  name  than 
you  fancied,  never  think  of  me  as  other  than — your  friend." 

"  Monti,"  said  he  that  night,  "  I  shall  leave  this  in  a  day  or  two.  It's  the 
middle  of  November,  and  I  shall  go  down  and  look  at  Vauxley." 

"  By  Jove  !  "  said  I,  "  a  new  move.  I  thought  you'd  have  spent  Christmas 
at  the  Castle." 

"  My  dear  fellow,  I've  stayed  four  months  in  the  place.  That's  an  unprec- 
edented halt  for  me.  Of  course  you  can  all  stop,  if  you  like." 

"  Not  I,"  said  Claude.     "  My  leave's  up  on  the  25th." 

"  Confound  Cupid,"  thought  I,  "  for  breaking  up  a  nice  set  of  braves  gar- 
cons  just  as  they  are  comfortable." 

Two  days  after  Dyneley  lighted  a  cheroot,  put  on  his  waterproof,  drew  his 
cap  over  his  eyes,  and  started  off — you  can  guess  where  as  easily  as  I  did.  As 
he  opened  the  gate  to  the  garden,  Curtis  came  out  of  it.  Graham  looked  fierce 
at  him,  for  the  young  fellow  had  grown  very  spoony  about  Lilla,  and,  despite 
his  opinions  at  starting,  was  just  as  likely,  being  a  young  hand,  to  have  com- 
mitted himself,  as  Cardonnel  had  done  before  him.  Curtis  looked  gloomy,  and 
brushed  quickly  past  him,  and  Dyneley  drew  his  own  conclusions. 

"  I  met  Curtis,"  he  said  to  Lilla,  when  he  had  been  there  about  ten  min- 
utes, and  their  talk  had  not  flowed  quite  so  fluently  as  usual.  "  Has  he  been 
with  you  ?  Yes  ?  Then  what  has  he  said  to  vex  you  ?  " 

"  To  vex  me  ?     Nothing." 

"  Yes  he  has,  and  to  vex  himself,  too.  I  can  guess  what,"  said  Dyneley, 
impatiently;  <:and  you  refused  him?" 

"  Of  course  !  "  said  Lilla,  in  surprise. 

"  You  were  not  wise,"  said  Graham,  speaking  hard  through  his  teeth.  "  He 
is  a  boy,  to  be  sure,  but  he  is  worth  ten  thousand  a  year.  He  has  a  very  good 
position.  Many  women  would  sell  their  souls  to  be  mistress  of  his  wide  acres; 
yet  you  refuse  him  without  a  thought." 

"  Hush  !  hush  !  "  cried  Lilla,  vehemently.  "  You  know  well  enough  that  I 
would  reject  him,  and  twenty  such  as  he.  You  are  cruel — unjust — ungenerous!" 

"Nay,  I  spoke  only  for  your  good,"  said  he,  in  a  cold,  forced  tone.  "  For- 
give me  if  I  offended  you." 


668  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

"  Offended  me  ?   You  !  " 

He  took  her  outstretched  hands,  and  pressed  them  fiercely;  then  dropped 
them,  and  traced  the  carpet  pattern  gloomily  with  his  stick.  There  was  a  dead 
silence.  He  tried  to  talk  of  a  few  trivialities,  but  could  not  get  on  well  with 
them;  in  desperation  rose,  and  said,  without  looking  at  her, 

"  I  came  to  bid  you  good-by.     I  leave  to-morrow." 

She  caught  hold  of  his  arm,  and  looked  up  in  his  face  with  the  look  of  a 
stricken  stag. 

"  You  are  not  going  away  ? — not  for  long  ?  You  will  come  back  soon  ? — I 
shall  see  you  again  ?  " 

Dyneley  did  not  look  at  her  face,  or,  even  with  his  iron  will,  he  would  have 
found  it  difficult  to  answer  as  he  did. 

"  I  cannot  say.     I  shall  leave  England — possibly  for  years." 

Lilla  uttered  a  cry  like  a  hunted  hare's;  she  would  have  fallen  to  the 
ground  but  for  Dy's  arm.  He  never  wanted  his  self-control  more,  and  he  knew 
he  dared  not  try  it  long.  Before  she  could  speak  a  word  to  him,  or  a  look  of 
her  eyes  shake  him,  he  pressed  her  against  his  heart,  kissed  her  passionately, 
and,  whispering  in  her  ear  "  Forget  me  and  forgive  me,  if  you  can,"  rushed  out 
of  the  house,  and  through  the  garden,  like  a  madman. 

We  saw  nothing  of  him  that  day.  When  he  came  home  he  said  he  was  tired, 
and  went  straight  up  to  his  room.  The  next  day  he  made  his  adieus  at  the 
Castle,  foiling  all  Lady  Adeliza's  hopes,  and,  in  a  pelting  storm,  bade  us  good- 
by,  and  steamed  away  down  Loch  Fine.  The  next  thing  I  heard  of  him  were 
a  few  lines  to  say  that  he  was  starting  in  the  Aphrodite,  and  had  not  determined 
the  route.  Poor  old  fellow!  his  pride  would  not  let  him  marry  the  girl;  his 
feeling  of  honor  prevented  him  returning  Duncairn's  hospitality  by  running 
away  with  his  niece.  He  thought  that  in  conquering  himself,  and  leaving  her, 
he  was  doing  what  was  kindest  and  best  for  her.  I  doubt  if  to  poor  little  Lilla 
the  kindness  was  quite  so  apparent. 


V. 

THE   LIGHT   ON    THE    MOORS   SHINES   AGAIN    FOR   DYNELEY. 

Claude  was  not,  meanwhile,  much  better  off.  He,  the  dashing  Dragoon, 
who  had  lost  his  heart  and  found  it  again  a  thousand  times  in  water  parties  and 
archery  fetes  in  Woolwich  luncheons,  Chatham  balls,  Exeter  deux  temps  and 
Portsmouth  galops,  had  fallen  headlong  in  love  during  the  long  days  and 
evenings  at  Somerleyton;  and  Constance's  manner,  sometimes  distant  or  sar- 


BELLES    AND    BLACKCOCK. 


669 


castic  to  him,  sometimes,  when  she  thought  he  did  not  see  her,  silent  and 
subdued;  the  constant  sight  of  her  beauty,  and  the  attention  the  other  men 
paid  her,  were  not  altogether  calculated  to  cure  him.  I  thought  he  mi^ht  have 
been  happier  if  he  had  sought  an  explanation;  but  nothing  would  induce  him; 
he  was  too  proud  to  risk  a  repulse.  I  thought  I  might  as  well  act  his  Deus  ex 
machina. 

"  I  think  you're  very  mistaken  in  not  giving  Constance  some  chance  of  an 
explanation,"  said  I  to  him,  as  we  went  up  to  the  Castle  the  evening  before  we 
left.  "  If  the  girl  does  like  you,  and  there  has  been  any  misconception,  so 
haughty  and  all  but  rude  as  you  are  to  her,  she  must  think  you  don't  care  any 
more  for  her  than  you  do  for  this  mare." 

"  She  knows  better  than  that,"  said  Claude,  biting  the  end  off  his  cigar 
fiercely.  "  How  can  I  speak  ?  If  I  were  a  rich  man  I  would  let  my  pride  go 

hang,  and  speak  to  her  at  once;  but  what  would  she  and  everybody  think  ? 

that  I  was  hunting  her  for  her  money,  and  pretending  love,  that  I  might  build 
up  the  broken  fortunes  of  my  family  with  the  wealth  she  would  bring  me. 
Where  she  penniless  and  I  a  Duke,  I  would  risk  her  rejection  to-morrow;  as 
it  is " 

He  stopped,  and  blew  a  cloud  of  smoke  into  the  frosty  air. 

"  Oh  the  contradictions  of  human  nature!  "  thought  I.  "  Dyneley  and  his 
love  are  in  the  very  relative  position  that  Claude  thinks  would  make  it  all 
square  for  him;  and  yet  they  are  not  one  whit  better  off  than  these  two." 

At  dinner,  Claude  had  the  length  of  the  table  between  him  and  Constance, 
so  there  did  not  seem  much  prospect  of  his  following  my  advice.  I,  however, 
took  her  in  and  turned  the  conversation  upon  him. 

"  So  Lord  Dyneley  is  gone,"  she  said  to  me.  "  What  an  agreeable  man  ! 
He  is  so  amusing  when  he  likes." 

"  I'm  glad  you  like  him.  There  isn't  a  better  fellow  upon  earth,"  I  answered. 
"  Yes,  our  party  is  breaking  up.  You  leave  next  week,  do  you  not  ?  I  must  be 
down  at  my  father's  for  Christmas,  and  Claude  yonder  joins  the  i4th  at  Dublin 
to-morrow." 

Her  hand  shook  as  she  set  down  her  wine-glass.  She  evaded  a  reply. 
"  Where  is  your  place  ?  Fawnham,  isn't  it  called  ?  " 

"Yes,  it's  in  Hants.  I  often  hunt  with  Assheton  Smith's  hounds;  and  I 
have  often  heard  how  you  have  followed  a  fox  in  the  next  county,  Lady  Con- 
stance. I  wanted  Willoughby  to  spend  Christmas  with  me,  but  his  leave  is  up. 
You  knew  him  before,  did  you  not  ?  Don't  you  think  him  much  altered  in 
eight  months  ?  " 

She  hesitated.     "  He  seems  as  indolent  as  ever." 

"  Pardon  me,"  I  said.  "  I  don't  mean  that,  but  his  spirits  are  so  gone  down. 
He  was  one  of  the  lightest-hearted,  sunniest-tempered  men  possible,  for  all  his 


670  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

pretended  laziness;  but  now,  I  only  hope  he  mayn't  go  off  into  consumption,  as 
his  father  did  before  him." 

For  all  her  high  breeding,  the  young  lady  was  as  white  as  her  lace  dress. 
Now  I  lowered  my  voice  confidentially,  like  a  schoolgirl  telling  another  of  a 
Valentine: 

"  Can  you  tell  me,  Lady  Constance — excuse  my  asking  you,  but  I've  known 
Claude  so  long,  and  esteem  him  so  highly — but  do  you  know  whether  there 
was  any  one  at  Somerleyton  who  didn't  treat  him  well,  or  of  whom  he  seemed 
at  all  epris?  for  ever  since  that  luckless  visit  he  hasn't  been  the  same  fellow." 

Her  color  varied — the  bracelets  on  her  arm  trembled.  Just  then  Lady 
Fitzcorrie  gave  the  move:  she  rose  hastily,  dropping  her  handkerchief  in  her 
agitation.  As  I  gave  it  to  her  she  smiled  and  blushed  (I  wished  Claude  had 
seen  that  smile  and  that  blush),  and  said,  quickly: 

"  He  is  to  be  married  to  Miss  Melbourne,  is  he  not  ?  " 

"He?  No;  who  can  have  told  you  so  ?  What,  to  Miss  Melbourne,  that 
fat  Australian  heiress  !  My  dear  Lady  Constance,  he'd  as  soon  marry  a  Red 
Indian;  he  is  only  too  fastidious  about  poor  militaires  aspiring  to  any  one  with 
riches." 

Her  eyes  danced,  and  she  gave  a. quick  sigh  of  relief;  her  glance  dwelt  on 
Claude  a  moment  as  she  passed  out  of  the  room;  he  did  not  deserve  the  glance, 
for  he  had  been  flirting  shamefully  with  Lady  Fitzcorrie,  but  he  caught  it  and 
his  eyes  flashed  out  of  their  tired  languor. 

"  If  you  don't  win  the  game  it  will  be  your  own  fault,"  I  whispered  to  him 
as  we  went  into  the  drawing-room.  Constance  was  not  there;  the  Viscountess 
challenged  him  to  chess;  Claude  let  her  checkmate  him  in  no  time;  and  when 
it  was  over,  regardless  of  my  lady's  annoyance,  he  lounged  into  the  music- 
room.  Adeliza  and  another  lady,  with  Romer  and  Ashington,  were  singing 
glees.  Constance  was  standing  by  the  piano  turning  over  some  music,  without 
thinking  of  what  she  was  doing. 

Claude  went  up  and  looked  over  her:  her  hand  lay  on  the  memorable  song. 
He  took  out  his  pencil  and  wrote  underneath  his  former  lines  two  others: 

"  Apprenez-moi  ma  destin6e: 
Faut-il  vivre  ?  faut-il  mourir  ?  " 

She  looked  up  at  him — that  was  enough  for  them  both.  The  glees  went  on 
a  little  longer,  then  we  went  back  to  the  drawing-room.  They  lingered  behind 
us,  putting  up  the  music.  I  glanced  round  as  I  left  the  room;  her  head  was 
resting  on  his  shoulder,  and  his  moustache  touched  her  hair,  so  I  suppose  they 
had  managed  their  explanations  in  a  satisfactory  style. 

"  Well."  said  I,  as  we  drove  back  to  the  lodge,  "  I  expect  to  be  groomsman, 
mon  garcon,  for  certainly  I've  made  your  marriage  for  you.  Is  it  all  right, 
pray,  at  last  ?  " 


BELLES    AND    BLACKCOCK.  071 

"Thank  God,  yes;  and  you're  a  brick,  Monti,"  said  the  gallant  Captain, 
fervently.  «  You  put  it  all  square  capitally,  and  I'm  eternally  obliged  to  you. 
Poor  darling  !  she  said  she  was  just  as  miserable  as  ever  I  was  when  I  left  her 
at  Somerleyton  without  a  word.  The  idea  of  her  money  making  me  hesitate 
had  never  entered  her  head;  and  I  can't  make  her  see  that  it  causes  the  slight- 
est barrier.  When  I  went  away,  that  confounded  Adeliza— I  always  did  detest 
that  woman— told  her  I  was  engaged  to  Emily  Melbourne  (you  know  that 
dreadful  girl  with  large  feet  and  unheard-of  tin,  who  dresses,  too,  in  such  awful 
taste  ?)  and  when  they  were  a  month  in  Lowndes  Square  I  never  went  near 
them — you  know  I  couldn't,  I  was  tied  down  at  Aldershot — she  began  to  think 
I'd  only  flirted  with  her,  and  in  a  momentary  pique,  that  she's  regretted  ever 
since,  she  bowed  coldly  to  me  in  the  Ring." 

"  That's  the  tale,  is  it  ?  A  very  good  lesson  to  people  not  to  ride  off  on  an 
idea  without  seeking  an  explanation.  She's  just  of  age,  isn't  she?"  I  asked, 
having  the  practical  side  of  the  thing  in  view,  and  not  being  in  love  myself. 
"  So  all  the  money  must  come  to  yo.u  ?  " 

"  The  money,  yes,"  said  Claude,  in  disgust.  "  Her  mother's  her  only 
relative  living,  and  she'd  let  her  do  anything  she  liked.  I  wish  the  money  were 
at  the  devil  myself." 

"  You'd  soon  ask  Satan  for  it  back  again." 

"  But  the  tin  never  crosses  her  mind,"  Claude  went  on,  disdaining  my  inter- 
ruption. "  She  said  so  prettily  to  me  '  Never  let  us  speak  of  it.  What  is  mine 
is  yours.  I  know  you  would  give  me  anything,  and  I  would  take  anything 
from  you.  Surely  you  love  me  sufficiently  to  do  the  same  by  me."  " 

I  saw  he  wasn't  likely  to  talk  anything  sensible  that  night,  so  I  left  him  to 
his  delicious  thoughts,  and  was  only  profoundly  thankful  that  he  did  not  turn  the 
dog-cart  over  with  his  headlong  driving  of  the  poor  mare.  Claude  had  to  go 
to  Dublin  the  next  day,  to  his  own  intense  disgust.  He  always  used  to  bemoan 
early  parade,  and  yet  enjoyed  a  rough  campaign.  But  Constance  wrote  to  her 
mamma,  begging  her  to  accept  an  invitation  they  had  from  the  Viceroy,  to 
which  her  mamma,  being  wildly  idolatrous  of  her,  and  exceedingly  curious  to 
see  Claude,  immediately  accepted.  When  she  did  see  him,  she  fell  decidedly 
in  love  with  him  herself,  and  being  of  good  birth,  though  allied  to  Brumma- 
gem aristocracy,  was  better  pleased  with  his  gentle  blood  than  she  would  have 
been  with  a  long  rent-roll.  I  went  over  to  his  marriage,  which  was  on  New- 
Year's  day,  and  for  the  first  time  in  his  life  he  got  up  early  without  thinking  it 
a  hardship.  We  all  told  him  he  was  the  luckiest  dog  in  the  Service,  to  have 
won  her  love  and  twenty  thousand  a  year  by  the  same  coup,  and  really  on  his 
wedding-day  he  was  too  happy  to  be  indolent;  he  only  swore  at  the  breakfast  as  a 
horrid  bore  and  a  most  cruel  probation.  Dyneley,  dear  old  fellow,  who  ought 
to  have  been  there  to  season  the  affair  with  his  sparkling  sarcasms,  was  away 


072  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

yachting,  Heaven  alone  knew  where.  An  uncle  of  his  had  died,  leaving  him 
considerable  property,  but  his  lawyers  could  not  tell  where  to  address  him.  He 
was  six  months  away.  I  began  to  get  uneasy  about  it,  for  I  thought  he  might 
be  gone  shooting  to  Norway,  and  would  be  very  likely  to  go  on  exploring  north- 
ward till  he  went  a  trifle  too  far  into  the  ice-plains.  At  last,  one  night  late, 
when  I  was  sitting  smoking  in  the  Albany,  to  my  delight  in  stalked  Dyneley 
looking  very  ill  and  worn,  restless  and  impatient  in  his  manner — quite  unlike 
himself. 

"Where  have  I  been  ?  "  he  said.  "  To  Barbadoes.  I  set  myself  so  many 
miles  to  do,  and,  for  fear  I  should  break  my  resolution,  I  took  out  little  Dal- 
maine,  who  wanted  to  join  his  troop.  " 

"  And  have  you  heard  your  good  news  ?  " 

He  looked  up  quickly. 

" Good  news  for  me?     That  would  be  a  miracle  indeed." 

"  The  miracle  has  happened,  then.  Old  Chesney  has  kicked  off,  and  made 
you  his  heir." 

"  Are  you  certain  ?  "  he  cried  vehemently. 

"  To  be  sure.     It  would  be  nothing  extraordinary." 

He  stood  silent,  leaning  his  head  on  the  mantel-piece.  At  last,  he  looked 
up.  I  was  astonished  to  see  how  happy  he  seemed,  for  he  was  generally  very 
careless  of  money. 

"  Monti,  I  have  farther  to  go  to-night,"  he  said,  hastily.  I  can't  stop  with 
you  now.  Good-by,  dear  old  boy,  and  thanks  for  your  news.  I  shall  see  you 
soon  again."  And,  before  I  could  stop  him,  he  was  gone  again  as  suddenly  as 
he  had  come. 

As  I  heard  afterwards,  Dyneley,  as  soon  as  he  left  little  Lilla,  found  out 
that  he  had  not  been  with  her  four  months  without  finding  her  winning  ways 
and  frank  affection  grow  necessary  to  him.  But  having  the  strongest  will  of 
any  man  I  know,  he  set  sail,  and  compelled  himself  to  be  away  six  months, 
taking  Dalmaine  to  Barbadoes,  that  in  case  his  resolution  failed  him  he  should 
still  be  obliged  to  go  on.  All  that  six  months  his  fiery  and  unwelcome  passion 
grew  and  grew,  as  it  does  in  strong  natures,  with  absence  or  difficulty.  Night 
after  night  he  paced  the  deck  of  the  Aphrodite,  trying,  to  no  purpose,  to  stifle 
it.  It  was  not  the  slightest  use.  Love,  in  men  like  Dyneley,  is  not  put  away 
at  a  word,  and  he  came  back  to  England  worse  than  he  was  before,  with  only 
one  thought  in  his  mind — to  see  Lilla.  Farther  he  did  not  look,  for  though 
his  pride  now  would  have  yielded,  his  want  of  money  prevented  his  ever  making 
her  his  wife.  It  was  a  fair,  fresh  May  morning  when  he  steamed  up  Loch 
Fine  again,  and  saw  once  more  the  lovely  woods  and  bays  of  Lilla's  Argyleshire. 
His  love,  fiery  as  Bucephalus  unbroken,  made  his  heart  beat  quick,  with  a  thou- 
sand anxieties  and  vague  fears,  and  his  veins  thrill  with  a  longing  to  see  her 


BELLES    AND    BLACKCOCK.  07:; 

face  and  hear  her  soft  fond  voice.  At  a  slashing  stride  he  walked  the  ten  miles 
from  the  shore  to  Duncairn's  farm;  the  bodily  exertion  was  a  relief  to  him. 
He  came  to  the  very  glen  where  we  lost  our  way;  he  saw  the  chimneys  of  the 
house  far  off  down  the  hill-side.  His  heart  stood  still  in  an  anguish  of  dread. 

She  might  be  gone,  she  might  be The  last  thought  he  shut  out  as  too 

hideous  to  be  endured.  He  drew  near  the  gate,  and  thanked  God  when  he 
saw  her.  He  stood  for  a  time  behind  a  tree  and-  watching  her  sitting  on  the 
steps  of  the  window,  her  little  thin  hands  and  pale  cheeks,  with  the  total 
absence  of  all  the  rayonnant  brightness  of  expression  once  her  peculiar  charm, 
were  a  mute  reproach  to  him.  Poor  child!  she  was  looking  at  his  picture. 
He  pushed  the  gate  open,  and  uttered  her  name.  She  glanced  up,  sprang 
towards  him  with  a  wild  cry,  and  threw  herself  on  a  his  breast,  laughing 
and  weeping  in  an  agony  of  joy.  She  looked  up  in  his  face,  tears  raining  down 
her  cheeks. 

"  You  are  come  back  at  last.  I  knew  you  would.  I  have  watched  for  you 
every  day.  Ah,  you  will  never  leave  me  again — promise  me  you  never  will  ! " 

Exhausted  with  the  intensity  of  her  joy,  she  turned  sick  and  faint,  and  her 
head  drooped  on  his  arm.  He  began  to  fear  the  shock  might  harm  her;  but 
joy  never  hurts  any  one  permanently,  and  Dyneley's  words  and  caresses  after  a 
time  brought  her  to  consciousness,  though  not  for  a  very  long  time  to  calm- 
ness. But,  in  truth,  I  daresay,  though  he  sets  up  for  a  philosopher,  my  lord 
was  not  so  very  much  calmer  himself,  being,  for  all  he  may  say  to  the  contrary, 
of  an  enthusiastic,  vehement,  impulsive  nature  when  he  is  roused. 

"Ah!  it  was  cruel  to  leave  me,"  murmured  Lilla,  when  they  had  grown  a 
little  more  tranquil.  "  If  you  knew  all  the  agonies  of  suspense,  all  I  have  felt 
when  I  knew  not  where  you  were,  whom  you  were  with,  whether  you  were  well 
or  ill,  happy  or  unhappy — if  you  could  guess  how  the  days  dragged  on  from 
sunrise  to  sunset,  and  I  watched  for  you,  always  in  vain,  and  my  brain  whirled 
and  my  heart  sickened  with  the  longing  to  look  upon  your  face — oh!  if  you 
had  known  air  I  suffered,  I  do  not  think  you  would  have  gone." 

Dyneley  thanked  her — selon  les  regies:  "  Dear  child,  do  you  think  I,  too, 
did  not  suffer  ?  I  did  what  I  thought  best  for  you.  Honor  alone  forced  me 
from  you  then.  Had  I  stayed  another  day  in  Scotland  I  could  never  have  left 
you.  But  when  I  was  away  from  you,  I  felt  to  the  uttermost  how  dear  you  had 
grown  to  me.  I  knew  that  as  soon  as  I  came  to  England,  I  should  come  to 
you.  Last  night  I  heard  of  my  inheritance  of  money,  which  enables  me  to 
marry;  and  to  you,  who  loved  me  when  you  knew  not  that  I  loved  you,  you,  who 
would  have  loved  me  through  every  trial  and  sacrifice— to  you  I  can  now  offer 
both  my  name  and  my  home.  Make  me  happy,  Lilla,  as,  since  my  boyhood, 
T  have  never  yet  been." 

They  were  married  in  Argyleshire  very  soon  after,  for  if  Dyneley  sets  his 

VOL.  III.— 33 


074  O  UIDA '  S     WORKS. 

mind  upon  a  thing  he  never  waits  for  it.  She  does  make  him  happy.  Her  ca- 
ressing, demonstrative,  passionate  devotion  to  him  just  suits  him.  He  wants 
something  strong  and  out  of  the  common.  One  of  your  "  quiet  "  retiring  girls 
with  their  calm,  domestic  affection,  would  have  bored  him  eternally — never 
understood,  and  never  satisfied  him.  Anything  cold,  conventional,  or  inani- 
mate in  a  wife  would  have  distracted  him,  and  driven  him  away  from  her  in  no 
time. 

Vauxley  is  thrown  open,  and  little  Lilla  shines  brilliantly  in  her  new  life, 
which  must  be  a  curious  contrast  to  that  in  Argyleshire.  Women  take  her  to 
task  for  her  enthusiasm,  her  impulsiveness,  and  for  a  hundred  thousand  things, 
of  course,  because  she  is  so  delightful  to  us.  The  Cardonnels  would  now  be  very 
happy  to  notice  her,  and  make  many  advances  towards  it,  but  he  does  not  choose 
his  little  diamond  of  the  Desert  should  be  so  taken  up,  and  keeps  them  all  at 
arm's  length.  Dyneley's  chums  admire  her  immensely — an  admiration  which, 
though  she  likes  it,  as  it  does  credit  to  Dyneley's  taste,  her  exclusive  worship 
of  him  prevents  her  appreciating  and  cultivating  as  much  as  Lady  Fitzcorrie,  no 
doubt,  would  do.  Dyneley  says  he  has  but  one  fault  to  find  with  her — she  will 
pet  Mousquetaire,  and  give  him  cream,  and  such-like  injurious  condiments; 
but  the  old  dog  is  as  game  as  ever,  though  he  likes  to  follow  her  over  the  house 
as  well  as  to  follow  the  slot  of  a  deer.  Claude  and  his  wife,  Romer  and  I,  and 
two  or  three  other  men,  were  down  at  Vauxley  last  September  for  the  ist,  and 
very  good  fun  we  had.  Altogether,  my  two  friends  have  made  a  good  thing  of 
that  autumn  at  Glenmist,  when  they  bagged  en  mime  temps  BELLES  AND  BLACK- 
COCK. I  often  think,  when  I  hear  his  clear  ringing  voice  in  the  Lords,  or  his 
musical  laugh  in  the  hunting-fields — and  he  often  says,  when  we  sit  in  the 
smoking-room  at  Vauxley  (into  which  sanctuary  of  Cavendish,  Lilla,  too,  some- 
times penetrates) — thai  he  has  good  cause  to  mark  with  a  white  stone  that  mem- 
orable night  when  we  lost  ourselves  in  the  mist,  and — A  LITTLE  CANDLE  ON  THE 

MOORS  LIGHTED  HlM  TO  HIS  DESTINY. 


A     LINE    IN    THE    "DAILY." 


A  LINE  IN  THE  "DAILY." 

WHO    DID   IT,   AND   WHO   WAS   DONE   BY   IT. 


"  LIEUTENANT-COLONEL  FAIRLIE'S  troop  of  Horse  artillery  is  ordered  to 
Norwich  to  replace  the  i2th  Lancers,  en  route  to  Bombay." — Those  three  lines 
in  the  papers  spread  dismay  into  the  souls  of  Norfolk  young  ladies,  and  no  less 
horror  into  ours,  for  we  were  very  jolly  at  Woolwich,  could  run  up  to  the  Clubs 
and  down  to  Epsom,  and  were  far  too  material  not  to  prefer  ball-room  belles  to 
bluebells,  strawberry-ice  to  fresh  hautboys,  the  sparkle  of  champagne-cups  to 
all  the  murmurs  of  the  brooks,  and  the  flutter  of  ballet-girls'  wings  to  the  rustle 
of  forest-leaves.  But,  unhappily,  the  Ordnance  Office  is  no  more  given  to  con- 
sidering the  feelings  of  their  Royal  Gunners  than  the  House  Guards  the 
individual  desires  of  the  two  other  Arms;  and  off  we  went  to  Norwich,  repining 
bitterly,  or,  in  modern  English,  swearing  hard  at  our  destinies,  creating  an 
immense  sensation  with  our  6-pounders,  as  we  flatter  ourselves  the  Royals 
always  contrive  to  do,  whether  on  fair  friends  or  fierce  foes,  and  were  looked 
upon  spitefully  by  the  one  or  too  young  ladies  whose  hearts  were  gone  east- 
wards with  the  Twelfth,  smilingly  by  the  one  or  two  hundred  who,  having 
fruitlessly  laid  out  a  great  deal  of  tackle  on  the  Twelfth,  proceeded  to  manu- 
facture fresh  flies  to  catch  us. 

We  soon  made  up,  I  think,  to  the  Norwich  girls  for  the  loss  of  the  Twelfth. 
They  set  dead  upon  Fairlie,  our  captain,  a  Brevet  Lieutenant-Colonel,  and 
a  C.B.  for  "  service  in  India,"  where  he  had  rivalled  Norman  Ramsay 
at  Fuentes  d'Onor,  had  had  a  ball  put  in  his  hip,  and  had  come  home  again  to 
be  worshipped  by  the  women  for  his  romantic  reputation.  They  made  an 
immense  deal,  too,  of  Levison  Courtenay,  the  beauty  of  the  troop,  and  called 
Belle  in  consequence;  who  did  not  want  any  flummery  or  flirtation  to  increase 
his  opinion  of  himself,  being  as  vain  of  his  almond  eyes  as  any  girl  just  entered 
as  the  favorite  for  the  season.  There  were  Tom  Gower,  too,  a  capital  fellow, 
with  no  nonsense  about  him,  who  made  no  end  of  chaff  of  Belle  Courtenay; 
and  Little  Nell,  otherwise  Harcourt  Poulteney  Nelson,  who  had  by  some  mir- 
acle escaped  expulsion  both  from  Carshalton  and  the  College;  and  votre  humble 


676  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

serviteur  Phil  Hardinge,  first  lieutenant;  and  one  or  two  other  fellows,  who 
having  cut  dashing  figures  at  our  Woolwich  reviews,  cantering  across  Black- 
heath  Common,  or  waltzing  with  dainty  beauties  down  our  mess-room,  made 
the  Artillery  welcome  in  that  city  of  shawls  and  oratorios,  where  according  to 
the  Gazetteer,  no  virtuous  person  ought  to  dwell,  that  volume,  with  character- 
istic lucidity,  pronouncing  its  streets  "ill-disposed." 

The  Clergy  asked  us  to  their  rectories — a  temptation  we  were  often  proof 
against,  there  being  three  noticeable  facts  in  rectories,  that  the  talk  is  always 
slow,  "  the  Church  "  being  present,  and  having  much  the  same  chilling  effect  as 
the  presence  of  a  chaperone  at  a  tete-a-tete;  the  daughters  generally  ugly,  and, 
from  leading  the  choir  at  morning  services,  perfectly  convinced  that  they  sing 
like  Clara  Novello,  and  that  the  harmonium  is  a  most  delightful  instrument; 
and,  last  and  worst,  the  wines  are  almost  always  poor,  except  the  port  which 
the  reverend  host  drinks  himself,  but  which,  Dieu  merci  !  we  rarely  or  never 
touch. 

The  County  asked  us,  too;  and  there  we  went  for  good  hock,  tolerable- 
looking  women,  and  first-rate  billiard-tables.  For  the  first  month  we  were  in 
Norfolk  we  voted  it  unanimously  the  most  infernally  slow  and  hideous  county 
going;  and  I  daresay  we  made  ourselves  uncommonly  disagreeable,  as  people, 
if  they  are  not  pleased,  be  they  ever  so  well  bred,  have  a  knack  of  doing. 

Things  were  thus  quiescent  and  stagnant,  when  Fairlie  one  night  at  mess 
told  us  a  bit  of  news. 

"  Old  fellows,  whom  do  you  think  I  met  to-day  ?  " 

"  How  should  we  know  ?     Cut  along." 

"The  Swan  and  her  Cygnets." 

"The  Vanes?  Oh,  bravo!  "  was  shouted  at  a  chorus,  for  the  dame  and 
demoiselles  in  question  we  had  known  in  town  that  winter,  and  a  nicer, 
pleasanter,  faster  set  of  women  I  never  came  across.  "  What's  bringing  them 
down  here,  and  how's  Geraldine  ?  " 

"Vane's  come  into  his  baronetcy,  and  his  place  is  close  by  Norwich,"  said 
Fairlie;  "  his  wife's  health  has  been  bad,  and  so  they  left  town  early;  and 
Geraldine  is  quite  well,  and  counting  on  haymaking,. she  informed  me." 

"  Come,  that  is  good  news,"  said  Belle,  yawning.  "  There'll  be  one  pretty 
woman  in  the  county,  thank  Heaven!  Poor  little  Geraldine!  I  must  go  and 
call  on  her  to-morrow." 

"  She  has  existed  without  your  calls,  Belle,"  said  Fairlie,  dryly,  "  and  don't 
look  as  if  she'd  pined  after  you." 

"  My  dear  fellow,  how  should  you  know  ? "  said  Belle,  in  no  wise  discon- 
certed. "  A  little  rouge  soon  makes  'em  look  well,  and  as  for  smiles,  they'll 
smile  while  they're  dying  for  you.  Little  Vane  and  I  were  always  good  friends, 
and  shall  be  again — if  I  care." 


A     LINE    IN     THE     "DAILY."  677 

"  Conceited  owl!  "  said  Fairlie,  under  his  moustaches.  "  I'm  sorry  to  hurt 
your  feelings,  then,  but  your  pretty  «  friend '  never  asked  after  you." 

"I  daresay  not,"  said  Belle,  complacently.  "Where  a  woman's  most 
interested  she's  always  quietest,  and  Geraldine " 

"  Lady  Vane  begged  me  to  tell  you  you  will  always  be  welcome  over  there, 
old  fellow,"  said  Fairlie,  remorselessly  cutting  him  short.  "  Perhaps  we  shall 
find  something  to  amuse  us  better  than  these  stiltified  Chapter  dinners." 

The  Vanes  of  whom  we  talked  were  an  uncommonly  pleasant  set  of  people 
whom  we  had  known  at  Lee,  where  Vane,  a  Q.C.,  then  resided,  his  prospective 
baronetcy  being  at  that  time  held  by  a  third  or  fourth  cousin.  Fairlie  had 
known  the  family  since  his  boyhood;  there  were  four  daughters,  tall  graceful 
women,  who  had  gained  themselves  the  nickname  of  The  Swan  and  her  Cygnets; 
and  then  there  were  twins,  a  boy  of  eighteen,  who'd  just  left  Eton;  and  the  girl 
Geraldine,  a  charming  young  lady,  whom  Belle  admired  more  warmly  than  that 
dandy  often  admired  anybody  besides  himself,  and  whom  Fairlie  liked  cord- 
ially, having  had  many  a  familiar  bit  of  fun  with  her,  as  he  had  known  her  ever 
since  he  was  a  dashing  cadet,  and  she  made  her  deT>ut  in  life  in  the  first  column 
of  the  Times.  Her  sisters  were  handsome  women;  but  Geraldine  was  bewitch- 
ing. A  very  pleasant  family  they  were,  and  a  vast  acquisition  to  us.  Miss 
Geraldine  flirted  to  a  certain  extent  with  us  all,  but  chiefly  with  the  Colonel, 
whenever  he  was  to  be  had,  those  two  having  a  very  free-and-easy,  familiar, 
pleasant  style  of  intercourse,  owing  to  old  acquaintance;  and  Belle  spent  two 
hours  every  evening  on  his  toilette  when  we  were  going  to  dine  there,  and 
vowed  she  was  a  "  deuced  pretty  little  puss.  Perhaps  she  might — he  wasn't 
sure,  but  perhaps  (it  would  be  a  horrid  sacrifice),  if  we  were  with  her  much 
longer,  he  wasn't  sure  she  mightn't  persuade  him  to  take  compassion  upon  her, 
he  was  so  weak  where  women  were  concerned  ! " 

u  What  a  conceit ! "  said  Fairlie  thereat,  with  a  contemptuous  twist  of  his 
moustaches  and  a  shrug  of  his  shoulders  to  me.  "  I  must  say,  if  I  were  a  woman, 
I  shouldn't  feel  over-flattered  by  a  lover  who  admired  his  own  beauty  first,  and 
mine  afterwards.  Not  that  I  pretend  to  understand  women." 

By  which  speech  I  argued  that  his  old  playmate  Geraldine  hadn't  thrown 
hay  over  the  Colonel,  and  been  taught  billiards  by  him,  and  ridden  his  bay 
mare  over  the  park  in  her  evening  dress,  without  interesting  him  slightly;  and 
that— though  I  don't  think  he  knew  it— he  was  deigning  to  be  a  trifle  jealous  of 
his  Second  Captain,  the  all -mighty  conqueror  Belle. 

"  What  fools  they  must  be  that  put  in  these  things  !  "  yawned  Belle  one 
morning,  reading  over  his  breakfast  coffee  in  the  Daily  Fryer  one  of  those 
"advertisements  for  a  wife"  that  one  comes  across  sometimes  in  the 
papers,  and  that  make  us,  like  a  good  many  other  things,  agree  with 
Goldsmith: 


678  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

Reason,  they  say,  belongs  to  man, 

But  let  them  prove  it  if  they  can; 

Wise  Aristotle  and  Smiglicious, 

By  ratiocinations  specious, 

Have  strove  to  prove  with  great  precision, 

With  definition  and  division, 

Homo  est  ratione  praeditum, 

But  for  my  soul  I  cannot  credit  'em. 

"  What  fools  they  must  be  !  "  yawned  Belle,  wrapping  his  dressing-gown  round 
him,  and  coaxing  his  perfumy  whiskers  under  his  velvet  smoking-cap.  Belle 
was  always  inundated  by  smoking-caps  in  cloth  and  velvet,  silk  and  beads,  with 
blue  tassels,  and  red  tassels,  and  gold  tassels,  embroidered  and  filigreed, 
rounded  and  pointed;  he  had  them  sent  to  him  by  the  dozen,  and  pretty  good 
chaff  he  made  of  the  donors.  "  Awful  fools  !  The  idea  of  advertising  for  a 
wife,  when  the  only  difficulty  a  man  has  is  to  keep  from  being  tricked  into 
taking  one.  I  bet  you,  if  I  did  like  this  owl  here,  I  should  have  a  hundred 
answers;  and  if  it  was  known  it  was  I " 

"  Little  Geraldine's  self  for  a  candidate,  eh  ?  "  asked  Tom  Gower. 

"Very  possibly,"  said  Belle,  with  a  self-complacent  smile.  "  She's  a  fast 
little  thing,  don't  check  at  much,  and  she's  deucedly  in  love  with  me,  poor  little 
dear — almost  as  much  trouble  to  me  as  Julia  Sedley  was  last  season.  That 
girl  all  but  proposed  to  me;  she  did,  indeed.  Never  was  nearer  coming  to 
grief  in  my  life.  What  will  you  bet  me  that,  if  I  advertise  for  a  wife,  I  don't 
hoax  lots  of  women  ?  " 

"I'll  bet  you  ten  pounds,"  said  I,  "  that  you  don't  hoax  one! " 

"  Done! "  said  Belle  stretching  out  his  hand  for  a  dainty  memorandum-book, 
gift  of  the  identical  Julia  Sedley  aforesaid,  and  entering  the  bet  in  it — "  done! 
If  I'm  not  asked  to  walk  in  the  Close  at  noon  and  look  out  for  a  pink  bonnet 
and  a  black  lace  cloak,  and  to  loiter  up  the  market-place  till  I  come  across  a 
black  hat  and  blue  muslin  dress;  if  I'm  not  requested  to  call  at  No.  20,  and  to 
grant  an  interview  at  No.  84;  if  I'm  not  written  to  by  Agatha  A.  with  hazel, 
and  Belinda  B.  with  black,  eyes — all  coming  after  me  like  flies  after  sugar-cask, 
why  you  shall  have  your  ten  guineas,  my  boy,  and  my  colt  into  the  bargain. 
Come,  write  out  the  advertisement,  Tom — I  can't,  it's  too  much  trouble;  draw 
it  mild,  that's  all,  or  the  letters  we  shall  get  will  necessitate  an  additional  Nor- 
wich postman.  By  George,  what  fun  it  will  be  to  the  girls!  Cut  along,  Tom, 
can't  you  ? " 

"  All  right,"  said  Gower,  pushing  away  his  coffee-cup,  and  drawing  the  ink 
to  him.  "  Head  it  '  MARRIAGE,'  of  course  ?  " 

"  Of  course.  That  word's  as  attractive  to  a  woman  as  the  belt  to  a  prize- 
fighter, or  a  pipe  of  port  to  a  college  fellow." 

"  '  MARRIAGE. — A  Bachelor '  " 


A     LINE    IN     THE     "DAILY."  G?9 

"  Tell  'em  a  military  man;  all  girls  have  the  scarlet  fever." 

"  Very  well—'  an  Officer  in  the  Queen's,  of  considerable  personal  attrac- 
tions  '  " 

«  My  dear  fellow,  pray  don't  !  "  expostulated  Belle,  in  extreme  alarm;  "we 
shall  have  such  swarms  of  'em  !  " 

"  No,  no  !  we  must  say  that,"  persisted  Gower — "  <  personal  attractions, 
aged  eight-and-twenty — 

"Can't  you  put  it,  <  in  the  flower  of  his  age,'  or  his  '  sixth  lustre'  ?  It's  so 
much  more  poetic." 

"  ' — the  flower  of  his  age,'  then  (that'll  leave  'em  a  wide  range  from  twenty 
to  fifty,  according  to  their  taste),  '  is  desirous  of  meeting  a  young  lady  of 
beauty,  talent  and  good  family,' — eh  ?  " 

"  Yes.  All  women  think  themselves  beauties,  if  they're  as  ugly  as  sin. 
Milliners  and  confectioner  girls  talk  Anglo-French,  and  rattle  a  tin-kettle  piano 
after  a  fashion,  and  anybody  buys  a  '  family '  for  half-a-crown  at  the  Heralds' 
Office — so  fire  away." 

"  ' — who,  feeling  as  he  does  the  want  of  a  kindred  heart  and  sympathetic  soul, 
will  accord  him  the  favor  of  a  letter  or  an  interview,  as  a  preliminary  to  the 
greatest  step  in  life.'  " 

"  A  step — like  one  on  thin  ice — very  sure  to  bring  a  man  to  grief,"  interpo- 
lated Belle.  "  Say  something  about  property;  those  soul  and  spirit  young 
ladies  generally  keep  a  look-out  for  tin,  and  only  feel  an  elective  affinity  for  a 
lot  of  debentures  and  consols." 

" '  The  advertiser  being  a  man  of  some  present  and  still  more  prospective 
wealth,  requires  no  fortune,  the  sole  objects  of  his  search  being  love  and 
domestic  felicity.'  Domestic  felicity — how  horrible  !  Don't  it  sound  exactly 
like  the  end  of  a  lady's  novel,  where  the  unlucky  hero  is  always  brought  to  an 
untimely  end  in  a  '  sweet  cottage  on  the  banks  of  the  lovely  Severn.'  " 

" '  Domestic  felicity  ' — bah  !  What  are  you  writing  about  ?  "  yawned  Belle. 
"I'd  as  soon  take  to  teetotalism;  however,  it'll  tell  in  the  advertisement. 
Bravo,  Tom,  that  will  do.  Address  it  to  '  L.  C.,  care  of  Mrs.  Greene,  confec- 
tioner, St.  Giles  Street,  Norwich.'  Miss  Patty'll  take  the  letters  in  for  me, 
though  not  if  she  knew  their  errand.  Tip  seven-and-sixpence  with  it,  and  send 
it  to  the  Daily  Fryer." 

We  did  send  it  to  the  Daily,  and  in  that  broadsheet  we  all  of  us  read  it  two 
mornings  after. 

MARRIAGE.— A  Bachelor,  an  Officer  of  the  Queen's,  of  considerable  personal  attractions, 
and  in  the  flower  of  his  age,  is  desirous  of  meeting  a  young  lady  of  beauty,  accompli* 
ments  and  good  family,  who,  feeling  as  he  does  the  want  of  a  kindred  heart  and  sympa- 
thetic soul,  will  accord  him  the  favor  either  of  a  letter  or  an  interview,  as  a  preliminary  to 
the  greatest  step  in  life.    The  advertiser  being  a  man  of  some  present  and  still  mot 
spective  wealth;  requires  no  fortune,  the  sole  objects  of  his  search  being  love  and  domestic 
felicity.    Address,  L.  C.,  care  of  Mrs.  Greene,  confectioner,  Sj.  Giles  Street,  Norwich. 


(580  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

"  Whose  advertisement  do  you  imagine  that  is  ?  "  said  Fairlie,  showing  the 
Daily  to  Geraldine,  as  he  sat  with  her  and  her  sisters  under  some  lilac  and 
larch  trees  in  one  of  the  meadows  of  Fern  Chase,  which  had  had  the  civility, 
Geraldine  said,  to  yield  a  second  crop  of  hay  expressly  for  her  to  have  the 
pleasure  of  making  it.  She  leaned  down  toward  him  as  he  lay  on  the  grass, 
and  read  the  advertisement,  looking  uncommonly  pretty  in  her  dainty  muslin 
dress,  with  its  fluttering  mauve  ribbons,  and  a  wreath  she  had  just  twisted  up, 
of  bluebells  and  pinks  and  white  heaths  which  Fairlie  had  gathered  as  he  lay, 
put  on  her  bright  hair.  We  called  her  a  little  flirt,  but  I  think  she  was  an  un- 
intentional one;  at  least  her  agaceries  were  all  as  unconscious  as  they  were — 
her  worst  enemies  (/.  e.  plain  young  ladies)  had  to  allow — unaffected. 

"  How  exquisitely  sentimental  !  Is  it  yours  ?  "  she  asked,  with  demure 
mischief. 

"  Mine  !  "  echoed  Fairlie,  with  supreme  scorn. 

"  It's  some  one's  here,  because  the  address  is  at  Mrs.  Greene's.  Come,  tell 
me  at  once,  monsieur." 

"  The  only  fool  in  the  Artillery,"  said  Fairlie,  curtly:  "  Belle  Courtenay." 

"  Captain  Courtenay  ! "  echoed  Geraldine,  with  a  little  flush  on  her 
cheeks,  caused,  perhaps,  by  the  quick  glance  the  Colonel  shot  at  her  as  he 
spoke. 

"Captain  Courtenay!"  said  Katherine  Vane.  "  Why,  what  can  he  want 
with  a  wife  ?  I  thought  he  had  Vembarras  de  choix  offered  him  in  that  line;  at 
least,  so  he  makes  out  himself." 

"  I  daresay,"  said  Fairlie,  dryly,  "  it's  for  a  bet  he's  made,  to  see  how  many 
women  he  can  hoax,  I  believe." 

"  How  can  you  tell  it  is  a  hoax  ?  "  said  Geraldine>  throwing  cowlips  at  her 
greyhound.  "  It  may  be  some  medium  of  intercourse  with  some  one  he  really 
cares  for,  and  who  may  understand  his  meaning." 

"  Perhaps  you  are  in  his  confidence,  Geraldine,  or  perhaps  you  are  thinking 
of  answering  it  yourself  ? " 

"  Perhaps,"  said  the  young  lady,  waywardly,  making  the  cowslips  into  a  ball, 
"  there  might  be  worse  investments.  Your  bete  noire  is  strikingly  handsome; 
he  is  the  perfection  of  style;  he  is  going  to  be  Equerry  to  the  Prince;  his 
mother  is  just  married  again  to  Lord  Chevenix;  he  did  not  name  half  his  at- 
tractions in  that  line  in  the  Daily." 

With  which  Geraldine  rushed  across  the  meadow  after  the  greyhound  and 
the  cowslip  ball,  and  Fairlie  lay  quiet  plucking  up  the  heathes  by  the  roots. 
He  lay  there  still,  when  the  cowslip  ball  struck  him  a  soft  fragrant  blow  against 
his  lips,  and  knocked  the  Cuba  from  between  his  teeth. 

"  Why  don't  you  speak  ? "  asked  Geraldine,  plaintively.  "  You  are  not  half 
so  pleasant  to  play  with  as  you  were  before  you  went  to  India  and  I  was  seven 


A     LINE    IN     THE    "DAILY."  ,;.M 

or  eight,  and  you  had  La  Grace,  and  battledoor  and  shuttlecock,  and  cricket, 
and  all  sorts  of  games  with  me  in  the  old  garden  at  Charlton." 

He  might  have  told  her  she  was  much  less  dangerous  then  than  now;  he 
was  not  disposed  to  flatter  her,  however.  So  he  answered  her  quietly. 

"  I  preferred  you  as  you  were  then." 

"Indeed!"  said  Geraldine,  with  a  hot  color  in  her  cheeks.  "I  do  not 
think  there  are  many  who  would  indorse  your  complimentary  opinion." 

"  Possibly,"  said  Fairlie,  coldly. 

She  took  up  her  cowslips,  and  hit  him  hard  with  them  several  times. 

"  Don't  speak  in  that  tone.  If  you  dislike  me,  you  can  say  so  in  warmer 
words  surely." 

Fairlie  smiled  malgrt ' lui. 

"What  a  child  you  are,  Geraldine!  but  a  child  that  is  a  very  mischievous 
coquette,  and  has  learned  a  hundred  tricks  and  agaceries  of  which  my  little 
friend  of  seven  or  eight  knew  nothing.  I  grant  you  were  not  a  quarter  so 
charming,  but  you  were,  I  am  afraid — more  true." 

Geraldine  was  ready  to  cry,  but  she  was  in  a  passion,  nevertheless;  such  a 
hot  and  short-lived  passion  as  all  women  of  any  spirit  can  go  into  on  occasion, 
when  they  are  unjustly  suspected. 

"  If  you  choose  to  think  so  of  me  you  may,"  she  said,  with  immeasurable 
hauteur  sweeping  away  from  him,  her  mauve  ribbons  fluttering  disdainfully. 
"I,  for  one,  shall  not  try  to  undeceive  you." 

The  next  night  we  all  went  up  to  a  ball  at  the  Vanes',  to  drink  Rhenish,  eat 
ices,  quiz  the  women,  flirt  with  the  pretty  ones  in  corners,  lounge  against  door- 
ways, criticise  the  feet  in  the  waltzing  as  they  passed  us,  and  do,  in  fact,  any- 
thing but  what  we  went  to  do — danc"e, — according  to  our  custom  in  such  scenes. 

The  Swan  and  her  Cygnets  looked  very  stunning;  they  "  made  up  well,"  as 
ladies  say  when  they  cannot  deny  that  another  is  good-looking,  but  qualify 
your  admiration  by  an  assurance  that  she  is  shockingly  plain  in  the  morning, 
and  owes  all  to  her  milliner  and  maids.     Geraldine,  who,  by  the  greatest  stretch 
of  scepticism,  could  not  be  supposed  "  made  up,"  was  bewitching,  with  her 
sunshiny  enjoyment  of  everything,  and  her  untiring  waltzing,  going  for  all  tin- 
world  like  a  spinning-top,  only  a  top  tires,  and  she  did  not.     Belle,  who  made 
a  principle  of  never  dancing  except  under  extreme  coercion  by  a  very  pretty 
hostess  could  not  resist  her,  and  Tom  Gower,  and  Little  Nell,  and  all  the  rest 
not  to  mention  half  Norfolk,  crowded  round  her;  all  except  Fairlie,  who  leaned 
against  the  doorway,  seeming  to  talk  to  her  father,  or  the  members,  or  any- 
body near,  but  watching  the  young  lady  for  all  that,  who  flirted  not  a  h 
having  in  her  mind  the  scene  in  the  paddock  of  yesterday,  and  wishmg,  pei 
to  show  him  that  if  he  did  not  admire  her  more  than  when  she  was  eight,  01 
men  had  better  taste. 


68o  OU  IDA'S     WORKS. 

She  managed  to  come  near  him  towards  the  end  of  the  evening,  sending 
Belle  to  get  her  an  ice. 

"  Well,"  she  said,  with  a  comical  pitie  cTelle-meme,  "  do  you  dislike  me  so 
much  that  you  don't  mean  to  dance  with  me  at  all  ?  Not  a  single  waltz  all 
night  ? " 

"  What  time  have  you  had  to  give  me  ?  "  said  Fairlie,  coldly.  "  You  have 
been  surrounded  all  the  evening." 

"  Of  course  I  have.  I  am  not  so  disagreeable  to  other  gentlemen  as  I  am 
to  you.  But  I  could  have  made  time  for  you  if  you  had  only  asked  for  it.  At 
your  own  ball  last  week  you  engaged  me  beforehand  for  six  waltzes." 

Fairlie  relented  towards  her.  Despite  her  flirting,  he  thought  she  did  not 
care  for  Belle  after  all. 

"  Well,"  he  said,  smiling,  "  will  you  give  me  one  after  supper  ?  " 

"  You  told  me  you  shouldn't  dance,  Colonel  Fairlie,"  said  Katherine  Vane, 
smiling. 

"  One  can't  tell  what  one  mayn't  do  under  temptation,"  said  Fairlie,  smiling 
too.  "  A  man  may  change  his  mind,  you  know." 

"Oh  yes,"  cried  Geraldine;  a  man  may  change  his  mind,  and  we  are  ex- 
pected to  be  eminently  grateful  to  him  for  his  condescension;  but  if  we  change 
our  minds,  how  severely  we  are  condemned  for  vacillation:  'So  weak! '  '  Just 
like  women! '  '  Never  like  the  same  thing  two  minutes,  poor  things! ' ' 

"You  don't  like  the  same  thing  two  minutes,  Geraldine,"  laughed  Fairlie; 
"  so  I  daresay  you  speak  feelingly." 

"  I  changeablej     I  am  constancy  itself! " 

"  Are  you  ?    You  know  what  the  Italians  say  of  '  ocche  azzure  '  ?  " 

"But  I  don't  believe  it,  monsieur!  "  cried  Geraldine: 

"  Blue  eyes  beat  black  fifty  to  seven, 
For  black's  of  hell,  but  blue's  of  heaven! " 

"I  beg  your  pardon,  mademoiselle,"  laughed  Fairlie: 

"  Done,  by  the  odds,  it  is  not  true! 
One  devil's  black,  but  scores  are  blue!" 

He  whirled  her  off  into  the  circle  in  the  midst  of  our  laughter  at  their  ready 
wit  Soon  after  he  bid  her  good  night,  but  he  found  time  to  whisper  as  he  did  so. 

"You  are  more  like  my  little  Geraldine  to-night!" 

The  look  he  got  made  him  determine  to  make  her  his  little  Geraldine  be- 
fore much  more  time  had  passed.  At  least  he  drove  us  back  to  Norwich  in 
what  seemed  very  contented  silence,  for  he  smoked  tranquilly,  and  let  the 
horses  go  their  own  pace— two  certain  indications  that  a  man  has  pleasant 
thoughts  to  accompany  him. 


A     LINE    IN     THE     "DAILY."  683 

I  do  not  think  he  listened  to  Belle's,  and  Gower's,  and  my  conversation, 
not  even  when  Belle  took  his  weed  out  of  his  mouth  and  announced  the 
important  fact:  "  Hardinge!  my  ten  guineas,  if  you  please.  I've  had  a 
letter! " 

"  What !  an  answer  ?     By  Jove  !  " 

"  Of  course,  an  answer.  I  tell  you  all  the  pretty  women  in  the  city  will 
know  my  initials,  and  send  after  me.  I  only  hope  they  will  be  pretty,  and 
then  one  may  have  a  good  deal  of  fun.  I  was  in  at  Greene's  this  morning  hav- 
ing mock-turtle,  and  talking  to  Patty  (she's  not  bad-looking,  that  little  girl, 
only  she  drops  her  'h's'  so.  I'm  like  that  fellow — what's  his  name  ? — in  the 
'  Peau  de  Chagrin;'  I  don't  admire  my  loves  in  cotton  prints),  when  she  gave 
me  the  letter.  I  left  it  on  my  dressing-table,  but  you  can  see  it  to-morrow. 
It's  a  horrid  red  daubed-looking  seal,  and  no  crest;  but  that  she  mightn't  use 
for  fear  of  being  found  out,  and  the  writing  is  disguised,  but  that  it  would  be. 
She  says  she  has  the  three  requisites;  but  where's  the  woman  that  don't  think 
herself  Sappho  and  Galatea  combined  ?  And  she  was  nineteen  last  March. 
Poor  little  devil  !  she  little  thinks  how  she'll  be  done.  I'm  to  meet  her  on  the 
Yarmouth  road  at  two,  and  to  look  out  for  a  lady  standing  by  the  first  mile- 
stone. Shall  we  go,  Tom  ?  It  may  lead  to  something  amusing,  you  know, 
though  certainly  it  won't  lead  to  marriage." 

"  Oh  !  we'll  go,  old  fellow,"  said  I.  "  Deuce  take  you,  Belle  !  what  a  lucky 
fellow  you  are  with  the  women." 

"  Luckier  than  I  want  to  be,"  yawned  Belle.  "  It's  a  horrid  bore  to  be  so 
set  upon.  One  may  have  too  much  of  a  good  thing,  you  know." 

At  two  the  day  after,  having  refreshed  ourselves  with  a  light  luncheon  at 
Mrs.  Greene's  of  lobster-salad  and  pale  ale,  Belle,  Gower,  and  I  buttoned  our 
gloves  and  rode  leisurely  up  the  road. 

"  How  my  heart  palpitates  ! "  said  Belle,  stroking  his  moustaches  with  a 
bored  air.  "  How  can  I  tell,  you  know,  but  what  I  may  be  going  to  see  the  arbiter 
of  my  destiny  ?  Men  have  been  tricked  into  all  sorts  of  tomfoolery  by  their 
compassionate  feelings.  And  then — if  she  should  squint  or  have  a  turn-up 
nose  !  Good  Heavens,  what  a  fearful  idea  !  I've  often  wondered  when  I've 
seen  men  with  ugly  wives  how  they  could  have  been  cheated  into  taking  'em; 
they  couldn't  have  done  it  in  their  senses,  you  know,  nor  yet  with  their  eyes 
open.  You  may  depend  they  took  'em  to  church  in  a  state  of  coma  from 
chloroform.  'Pon  my  word,  I  feel  quite  nervous.  You  don't  think  the  girl 
will  have  a  parson  and  a  register  hid  behind  the  milestone,  do  you  ? " 

"  If  she  should,  it  won't  be  legal  without  a  license,  thanks  to  the  fools  who 
turn  Hymen  into  a  tax-gatherer,  and  won't  let  a  fellow  make  love  without  he 
asks  leave  of  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,"  said  Gower.  "  Hallo,  Belle, 
here's  the  milestone,  but  where's  the  lady  ? " 


684 


QUID  AS     WORKS. 


"  Virgin  modesty  makes  her  unpunctual,"  said  Belle,  puting  up  his  eye-glass. 

"  Hang  modesty  ! "  swore  Tom.  "  It's  past  two,  and  we  left  a  good  quarter 
of  that  salad  uneaten.  Confound  her  !  " 

"There  are  no  signs  of  her," 'said  I.     "Did  she  tell  you  her  dress,  Belle?" 

"Not  a  syllable  about  it;  only  mentiond  a  milestone,  and  one  might  have 
found  a  market-woman  sitting  on  that."  •••-,  1 

"  Hallo  ?  here's  something  feminine.  Oh,  good  gracious  !  this  can't  be  it, 
it's  got  a  brown  stuff  dress  on,  and  a  poke  straw  bonnet  and  a  green  veil.  No, 
no,  Belle.  If  you  married  her,  that  would  be  a  case  of  chloroform." 

But  the  horrible  brown  stuff  came  sidling  along  the  road  with  that  peculiar 
step  belonging  to  ladies  of  a  certain  age,  characterized  by  Patty  Greene  as  "  tip- 
putting,"  sweeping  up  the  dust  with  its  horrible  folds,  making  straight  en  route 
for  Belle,  who  was  standing  a  little  in  advance  of  us.  Nineteen  !  Good 
Heavens  !  she  must  have  been  fifty  if  she  was  a  day,  and  under  her  green  veil 
was  a  chestnut  front — yes,  decidedly  a  front — and  a  face  yellow  as  a  Canadian's, 
and  wrinkled  as  Madame  Pipelet's,  made  infinitely  worse  by  that  sweet  maiden 
simper  and  assumed  juvenility  common  to  vieilles  filles.  Up  she  came  towards 
poor  Belle,  who  involuntarily  retreated  .step  by  step  till  he  had  backed  against 
the  milestone,  and  could  get  no  farther,  while  she  smiled  up  in  his  handsome 
face,  and  he  stared  down  in  her  withered  one,  with  the  most  comical  expression 
of  surprise,  dismay,  and  horror  that  had  ever  appeared  on  our  "  beauty's  im- 
passive features.  " 

"Are  you — the — the — L.  C.?"  demanded  the  maiden  often  lustres,  casting 
her  eyes  to  the  ground  with  virgin  modesty. 

"  L.  C.  ar My  dear  madam,   I  don't  quite  understand  you,"  faltered 

Belle,  taken  aback  for  once  in  his  life. 

"Was  it  not  you,"  faltered  the  fair  one,  shaking  out  a  pocket-handkerchief 
that  sent  a  horrible  odor  of  musk  to  the  olfactory  nerves  of  poor  Belle,  most 
fastidious  connoisseur  in  perfume,  "who  advertised  for  a  kindred  heart  and 
sympathetic  soul  ?  " 

"  Really,  my  good  lady,"  began  Belle,  still  too  aghast  by  the  chestnut  front 
to  recover  his  self-possession. 

"Because,"  simpered  his  inamorata,  too  agitated  by  her  own  feelings  to 
hear  his  horrible  appellative,  keeping  him  at  bay  there  with  the  fatal  mile- 
stone behind  him  and  the  awful  brown  stuff  in  front  of  him — "  because  I,  too, 
have  desired  to  meet  with  some  elective  affinity,  some  spirit-tie  that  might  give 
me  all  those  more  subtle  sympathies  which  can  never  be  found  in  the  din  and 
bustle  of  the  heartless  world;  I,  too,  have  pined  for  the  objects  of  your  search 
-love  and  domestic  happiness.  Oh,  blessed  words,  surely  we  might— might 
we  not  ? " 

She  paused,  overcome  with  maidenly  confusion,  and  buried  her  face  in  the 


A     LINE    IN     THE    "DAILY."  685 

musk-scented  handkerchief.  Tom  and  I,  where  we  stood  perdus,  burst  into  un- 
controllable shouts  of  laughter.  Poor  Belle  gave  one  blank  look  of  utter  terror 
at  the  tout  ensemble  of  brown  stuff,  straw  poke,  and  chustnut  front.  He  forgot 
courtesy,  manners,  and  everything  else;  his  lips  were  parted,  with  his  small 
white  teeth  glancing  under  his  silky  moustaches,  his  sleepy  eyes  were  open  wide, 
and  as  the  maiden  lady  dropped  her  handkerchief,  and  gave  him  what  she  meant 
to  be  the  softest  and  most  tender  glance,  he  turned  straight  round,  sprang  on  his 
bay,  and  rushed  down  the  Yarmouth  road  as  if  the  whole  of  the  dignitaries  of 
the  church  and  law  were  tearing  after  him  to  force  him  nolens  volens  into  car- 
rying out  the  horrible  promise  in  his  cursed  line  in  the  Daily.  What  was  Tom's 
and  my  amazement  to  see  the  maiden  lady  seat  herself  astride  on  the  milestone, 
and  join  her  cachinnatory  shouts  to  ours,  fling  her  green  veil  into  a  hawthorn 
tree,  jerk  her  bonnet  into  our  faces,  kick  off  her  brown  stuff  into  the  middle  of  the 
road,  tear  off  her  chestnut  front  and  yellow  mask,  and  perform  a  frantic  war- 
dance  on  the  roadside  turf.  No  less  a  person  than  that  mischievous  monkey 
and  inimitable  minic  Little  Nell  ! 

"You  young  demon!"  shouted  Gower,  shrieking  with  laughter  till  he 
cried.  "  A  pretty  fellow  you  are  to  go  tricking  your  senior  officer  like  this. 
You  little  imp,  how  can  you  tell  but  what  I  shall  court-martial  you  to-morrow  ?  " 

"  No,  no,  you  won't  ! "  cried  Little  Nell,  persuing  his  frantic  dance. 
"  Wasn't  it  prime  ?  wasn't  it  glorious  ?  wasn't  it  worth  the  Kohinoor  to  see  ? 
You  won't  go  and  peach,  when  I've  just  given  you  a  better  farce  than  all  old 
Buckstone's  ?  By  Jove  !  Belle's  face  at  my  chestnut  front  !  This'll  be  one  of 
his  prime  conquests,  eh  ?  I  say,  old  fellows,  when  Charles  Mathews  goes  to 
glory,  don't  you  think  I  might  take  his  place,  and  beat  him  hollow,  too  ? " 

When  we  got  back  to  barracks,  we  found  Belle  prostrate  on  his  sofa,  heated, 
injured,  crestfallen,  solacing  himself  with  Seltzer-and-water,  and  swearing  away 
anything  but  mildly  at  that  "  wretched  old  woman."  He  bound  us  over  to 
secrecy,  which,  with  Little  Nell's  confidence  in  our  minds,  we  naturally  prom- 
ised. Poor  Belle  !  to  have  been  made  a  fool  of  before  two  was  humiliation 
more  than  sufficient  for  our  all-conquering  blondin.  For  one  who  had  so  often 
refused  to  stir  across  a  ballroom  to  look  at  a  Court  beauty,  to  have  ridden  out 
three  miles  to  see  an  old  maid  of  fifty  with  a  chestnut  front !  The  insult  sank 
deep  into  his  soul,  and  threw  him  into  an  abject  melancholy,  which  hung  over 
him  all  through  mess,  and  was  not  disipated  till  a  letter  came  to  him  from  Mrs. 
Greene's,  when  we  were  playing  loo  in  Fairlie's  room.  That  night  Fairlie  was 
in  gay  spirts.  He  had  called  at  Fern  Chase  that  morning,  and  though  he  had 
not  been  able  to  see  Geraldine  alone,  he  had  passed  a  pleasant  couple  of  hours 
there,  playing  pool  with  her  and  her  sisters,  and  had  been  as  good  friends  as 
ever  with  his  old  playmate. 

"Well,  Belle,"  said  he,  feeling  good-natured  even  with  him  that  night,  "did 


686 


QUID  AS     WORKS. 


you  get  any  good  out  of  your  advertisement  ?     Did  your  lady  turn  out  a  very 

pretty  one  ? " 

"No:  deuced  ugly,  like  the  generality,"  yawned  poor  Belle,  giving  me 
a  kick  to  remind  me  of  my  promise.  Little  Nell  was  happily  about  the 
city  somewhere  with  Pretty  Face,  or  the  boy  would  scarcely  have  kept  his 
countenance. 

"  What  amusement  you  can  find  in  hoaxing  silly  women,"  said  Fairlie,  "  is 
incomprehensible  to  me.  However,  men's  tastes  differ,  happily.  Here  comes 
another  epistle  for  you,  Belle;  perhaps  there's  better  luck  for  you  there." 

"  Oh  !  I  shall  have  no  end  of  letters.  I  sha'n't  answer  any  more.  I  think 
it's  such  a  deuced  trouble.  Diamonds  trumps,  eh  ? "  said  Belle,  laying  the 
note  down  till  he  should  have  leisure  to  attend  to  it.  Poor  old  fellow  !  I 
daresay  he  was  afraid  of  another  onslaught  from  maiden  ladies. 

"Come,  Belle,"  said  Glenville;  "come,  Belle,  open  your  letter;  we're  all 
impatience.  If  you  won't  go,  I  will  in  your  place." 

"  Do,  my  dear  fellow.  Take  care  you're  not  pounced  down  upon  by  a  re- 
spectable papa  for  intentions,  or  called  to  account  by  a  fierce  brother  with  a 
stubby  beard,"  said  Belle,  lazily  taking  up  the  letter.  As  he  did  so,  the  melan- 
choly indolence  on  his  face  changed  to  eagerness. 

"  The  deuce!  the  Vane  crest!  " 

"  A  note  of  invitation,  probably  ? "  suggested  Gower. 

"  Would  they  send  an  invitation  to  Patty  Greene's  ?  I  tell  you  it's  addressed 
to  L.  C,"  said  Belle,  disdainfully,  opening  the  letter,  leaving  its  giant  deer 
couchant  intact.  "I  thought  it  very  likely;  I  expected  it,  indeed — poor  little 
dear!  I  oughtn't  to  have  let  it  out.  Ain't  you  jealous,  old  fellows  ?  Little 
darling!  Perhaps  I  may  be  tricked  into  matrimony  after  all.  I'd  rather  a 
presentiment  that  advertisement  would  come  to  something.  There,  you  may 
all  look  at  it,  if  you  like." 

It  was  a  dainty  sheet  of  scented  cream-laid,  stamped  with  the  deer  couch- 
ant,  such  us  had  brought  us  many  an  invitation  down  from  Fern  Chase,  and  on 
it  was  written,  in  delicate  caligraphy: 

"  G.  V.  Understands  the  meaning  of  the  advertisement,  and  will  meet  L,  C. 
at  the  entrance  of  Fern  Wood,  at  eleven  o'clock  to-morrow  morning." 

There  was  a  dead  silence  as  we  read  it;  then  a  tremendous  buzz.  Cheaplyas 
we  held  women,  I  don't  think  there  was  one  of  us  who  wasn't  surprised  at  Ger- 
aldine's  doing  any  clandestine  thing  like  this.  He  sat  with  a  look  of  indolent 
triumph,  curling  his  perfumed  moustaches,  and  looking  at  the  little  autograph, 
which  gave  us  evidence  of  what  he  often  boasted— Geraldine  Vane's  regard. 

"  Let  me  look  at  your  note,"  said  Fairlie,  stretching  out  his  hand. 

He  soon  returned  it,  with  a  brief,  "  Very  complimentary  indeed  !  " 

When  the  men  left,  I  chanced  to  be  last,  having  mislaid  my  cigar-case.    As 


A     LINE    IN     THE    "DAILY."  687 

I  looked  about  for  it,  Fairlie  addressed  me  in  the  same  brief,  stern  tone  be- 
tween his  teeth  with  which  he  spoke  to  Belle. 

"  Hardinge,  you  made  this  absurd  bet  with  Courtenay,  did  you  not  ?  Is 
this  note  a  hoax  upon  him  ? " 

"  Not  that  I  know  of — it  dosen't  look  like  it.  You  see  there  is  the  Vane 
crest,  and  the  girl's  own  initials." 

"Very  true."  He  turned  round  to  the  window  again,  and  leaned  against 
it,  looking  out  into  the  dawn,  with  a  look  upon  his  face  that  I  was  very  sorry 
to  see. 

"But  it  is  not  like  Geraldine,"  I  began.  "  It  may  be  a  trick.  Somebody 
may  have  stolen  their  paper  and  crest — it's  possible.  I  tell  you  what  I'll  do  to 
find  out;  I'll  follow  Belle  to-morrow,  and  see  who  does  meet  him  in  Fern  Wood." 

"  Do,"  said  Fairlie,  eagerly.  Then  he  checked  himself,  and  went  on  tapping 
an  impatient  tattoo  on  the  shutter.  "  You  see,  I  have  known  the  family  for 
years — known  her  when  she  was  a  little  child.  I  should  be  sorry  to  think  that 
one  of  them  could  be  capable  of  such " 

Despite  his  self-command  he  could  not  finish  his  sentence.  Geraldine  was 
a  great  deal  too  dear  to  him  to  be  treated  in  seeming  carelessness,  or  spoken 
lightly  of,  however  unwisely  she  might  act.  I  found  my  cigar-case.  His 
laconic  "  Good-night !  "  told  me  he  would  rather  be  alone,  as  I  closed  the  door 
and  left  him. 

The  morning  was  as  sultry  and  as  clear  as  a  July  day  could  be  when  Belle 
lounged  down  the  street,  looking  the  perfection  of  a  gentleman,  a  trifle  less 
bored  and  blase  than  ordinary,  en  route  to  his  appointment  at  Fern  Wood  (a 
sequestered  part  of  the  Vane  estate),  where  trees  and  lilies  of  the  valley  grew 
wild,  and  where  the  girls  were  accustomed  to  go  for  picnics  or  sketching.  As 
soon  as  he  had  turned  a  corner,  Gower  and  I  turned  it  too,  and  with  persever- 
ance worthy  a  better  cause,  Tom  and  I  followed  Belle  in  and  out  and  down 
the  road  which  led  to  Fern  Wood — a  flat,  dusty,  stony  two  miles — on  which,  in 
the  blazing  noon  of  a  hot  midsummer  day,  nothing  short  of  Satanic  coercion, 
or  love  of  Geraldine  Vane,  would  have  induced  our  beauty  to  immolate  himself, 
and  expose  his  delicate  complexion. 

"  I  bet  you  anything,  Tom,"  said  I  confidently,  "  that  this  is  a  hoax,  like 
yesterday's.  Geraldine  will  no  more  meet  Belle  there  than  all  the  Ordnance 
Office." 

"  Well,  we  shall  see,"  responded  Gower.  "  Somebody  might  get  the  note- 
paper  from  the  bookseller,  and  the  crest  seal  through  the  servants,  but  they'll 
hardly  get  Geraldine  there  bodily  against  her  will." 

We  waited  at  the  entrance  of  the  wood,  shrouded  ourselves  in  the  wild  haw- 
thorn hedges,  while  we  could  still  see  Belle — of  course  we  did  not  mean  to  be 
near  enough  to  overhear  him — who  paced  up  and  down  the  green  alleys  under 


6  88  O  UIDA  'S     /  /  'O&KS. 

the  firs  and  larches,  rendered  doubly  dark  by  the  evergreens,  brambles,  and 

honeysuckles, 

which,  ripened  by  the  sun, 
Forbade  the  sun  to  enter. 

He  paced  up  and  down  there  a  good  ten  minutes,  prying  about  with  his  eye- 
glass, but  unable  to  see  very  far  in  the  tangled  boughs,  and  heavy  dusky  light 
of  the  untrimmed  wood.  Then  there  was  the  flutter  of  something  azure  among 
the  branches,  and  Gower  gave  vent  to  a  low  whistle  of  surprise. 

"By  George,  Hardinge  !  there's  Geraldine  !  Well!  I  didn't  think  she'd 
have  done  it.  You  see  they're  all  alike  if  they  get  the  opportunity." 

It  was  Geraldine  herself — it  was  her  fluttering  muslin,  her  abundant  folds, 
her  waving  ribbons,  her  tiny  sailor  hat,  and  her  little  veil,  and  under  the  veil  her 
face,  with  its  delicate  tinting,  its  pencilled  eyebrows,  and  its  undulating  bright- 
colored  hair.  There  was  no  doubt  about  it:  it  was  Geraldine.  I  vow  I  was  as 
sorry  to  have  to  tell  it  to  Fairlie  as  if  I'd  had  to  tell  him  she  was  dead,  for  I 
knew  how  it  would  cut  him  to  the  heart  to  know  not  only  that  she  had  given 
herself  to  his  rival,  but  that  his  little  playmate,  whom  he  had  thought  truth,  and 
honesty,  and  daylight  itself,  should  have  stopped  to  a  clandestine  interview 
arranged  through  an  advertisement !  Their  retreating  figures  were  soon  lost 
in  the  dim  woodland,  and  Tom  and  I  turned  to  retrace  our  steps. 

"No  doubt  about  it  now,  old  fellow?"  quoth  Gower. 

"  No,  confound  her  ! "  swore  I. 

"  Confound  her  ?     Et  pourquoi?     Hasn't  she  a  right  to  do  what  she  likes  ? " 

"Of  course  she  has,  the  cursed  little  flirt;  but  she'd  no  earthly  business  to 
go  making  such  love  to  Fairlie.  It's  a  rascally  shame,  and  I  don't  care  if  I 
tell  her  so  myself." 

"She'll  only  say  you're  in  love  with  her  too,"  was  Gower's  sensible  response. 
"  I'm  not  surprised  myself.  I  always  said  she  was  an  out-and-out  coquette." 

I  met  Fairlie  coming  out  of  his  room  as  I  went  up  to  mine.  He  looked  as 
men  will  look  when  they  have  not  been  in  bed  all  night,  and  have  watched  the 
sun  up  with  painful  thoughts  for  their  companions. 

"You  have  been—  "  he  began;  then  stopped  short,  unwilling  or  unable  to 
put  the  question  into  words. 

"  After  Belle  ?    Yes.     It  is  no  hoax,  Geraldine  met  him  herself." 

I  did  not  relish  telling  him,  and  therefore  told  it,  in  all  probability,  bluntly 
and  blunderingly— tact,  like  talk,  having,  they  say,  been  given  to  women.  A 
spasm  passed  over  his  face.  "  Herself!  "  he  echoed.  Until  then  I  do  not  think 
he  had  realized  it  as  even  possible. 

"  Yes,  there  was  no  doubt  about  it.     What  a  wretched  little  coquette  she 

must  have  been;  she  always  seemed  to  make  such  game  of  Belle " 

But  Fairlie,  saying  something  about  his  gloves  that  he  had  left  behind,  had 


A     LINE    IN     THR    "DAILY."  G80 

gone  back  into  his  room  again  before  I  had  half  done  my  sentence.  When 
Belle  came  back,  about  half  an  hour  afterwards,  with  an  affected  air  of  triumph, 
and  for  once  in  his  life  of  languid  sensations  really  well  contented,  Gower  and 
I  poured  questions.upon  him,  as,  done  up  with  the  toil  of  his  dusty  walk,  and 
horrified  to  find  himself  so  low-bred  as  to  be  hot,  he  kicked  off  his  varnished 
boots,  imbibed  Seltzer,  and  fanned  himself  with  a  perodical  before  he  could 
find  breath  to  answer  us. 

"  Was  it  Geraldine  ? ' 

"  Of  course  it  was  Geraldine,"  he  said,  yawning. 

"  And  will  she  marry  you,  Belle  ?  " 

"  To  be  sure  she  will.  I  should  like  to  see  the  woman  that  wouldn't," 
responded  Belle,  shutting  his  eyes  and  nestling  down  among  the  cushions. 
"  And  what's  more,  I've  been  fool  enough  to  let  her  make  me  ask  her.  Give 
me  some  more  sherry,  Phil;  a  man  wants  support  under  such  circumstances. 
The  deuce  if  I'm  not  as  hot  as  a  ploughboy!  It  was  very  cruel  of  her  to  call 
a  fellow  out  with  the  sun  at  the  meridian;  she  might  as  well  have  chosen 
twilight.  But,  I  say,  you  fellows,  keep  the  secret,  will  you  ?  she  don't  want 
her  family  to  get  wind  of  it,  because  they're  bothering  her  to  marry  that  old 
cove,  Mount  Trefoil,  with  his  sixty  years  and  his  broad  acres,  and  wouldn't  let 
her  take  anybody  else  if  they  knew  it;  she's  under  age,  you  see." 

"  But  how  did  she  know  you  were  L.  C.  ? " 

"  Fairlie  told  her,  and  the  dear  little  vain  thing  immediately  thought  it  was 
an  indirect  proposal  to  herself,  and  answered  it;  of  course  I  didn't  undeceive  her. 
She  raffoles  of  me — it'll  be  almost  too  much  of  a  good  thing,  I'm  afraid.  She's 
deuced  prudish,  too,  much  more  than  I  should  have  thought  she'd  have  been; 
but  I  vow  she'd  only  let  me  kiss  her  hand,  and  that  was  gloved." 

"I  hate  prudes,"  said  Gower;  "they've  always  much  more  devilry  than  the 
open-hearted  ones.  Videlicet — here's  your  young  lady  stiff  enough  only  to 
give  you  her  hand  to  kiss,  and  yet  she'll  lower  herself  to  a  clandestine  corres- 
pondence and  stolen  interviews — a  condescension  I  don't  think  I  should  admire 
in  my  wife." 

"  Love,  my  dear  fellow,  oversteps  all — what  d'ye  call  'em  ? — boundaries," 
said  Belle,  languidly.  "  What  a  bore  !  I  shall  never  be  able  to  wear  this  coat 
again,  it's  so  ingrained  with  dust;  little  puss,  why  didn't  she  wait  till  it  was 
cooler?" 

"  Did  you  fix  your  marriage-day  ? "  asked  Tom,  rather  contemptuously. 

"Yes,  I  was  very  weak  !"  sighed  Belle;  "but  you  see  she's  uncommonly 
pretty,  and  there's  Mount  Trefoil  and  lots  of  men,  and,  I  fancy,  that  dangerous 
fellow  Fairlie,  after  her;  so  we  hurried  matters.  We've  been  making  love  to 
one  another  all  these  three  months,  you  know,  and  fixed  it  so  soon  as  Thursday 
week.  Of  course  she  blushed,  and  sighed,  and  put  her  handkerchief  to  her 


GOO  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

eyes,  and  all  the  rest  of  it,  en  regie;  but  she  consented,  and  I'm  to  be  sacri- 
ficed. But  not  a  word  about  it,  my  dear  fellows  !  The  Vanes  are  to  be  kept 
in  profoundest  darkness,  and,  to  lull  suspicion,  I'm  not  to  go  there  scarcely  at 
all  until  then,  and  when  I  do,  she'll  let  me  know  when  she  will  be  out,  and  I'm 
to  call  on  her  mother  then.  She'll  write  to  me,  and  put  the  letters  in  a  hollow 
tree  in  the  wood,  where  I'm  to  leave  my  answers,  or,  rather,  send  'em;  catch 
me  going  over  that  road  again  !  Don't  give  me  joy,  old  boys.  I  know  I'm 
making  a  holocaust  of  myself,  but  deuce,  take  me  if  I  can  help  it — she  is  so 
deuced  pretty  ! " 

Fairlie  was  not  at  mess  that  night.  Nobody  knew  where  he  was.  I  learnt, 
long  months  afterwards,  that  as  soon  as  I  had  told  him  of  Geraldine's  identity, 
he,  still  thirsting  to  disbelieve,  reluctant  to  condemn,  catching  at  straws  to  save 
his  idol  from  being  shattered  as  men  in  love  will  do,  had  thrown  himself  across 
his  horse  and  torn  off  to  Fern  Dell  to  see  whether  or  no  Geraldine  was  at  home. 

His  heart  beat  faster  and  thicker  as  he  entered  the  drawing-room  than  it 
had  done  before  the  lines  at  Ferozeshah,  or  in  the  giant  semicircle  at  Sobraon; 
it  stood  still  as  in  the  far  end  of  the  room,  lying  back  on  a  low  chair,  sat  Ger- 
aldine, her  gloves  and  sailor  hat  lying  on  her  lap.  She  sprang  up  to  welcome 
him  with  her  old  gay  smile. 

"  Good  God!  that  a  child  like  that  can  be  such  an  accomplished  actress  !  " 
thought  Fairlie,  as  he  just  touched  her  hand. 

"  Have  you  been  out  to-day  ? "  he  asked,  suddenly. 

"You  see  I  have." 

"  Prevarication  is  conviction,"  thought  Fairlie,  with  a  deadly  chill  over  him. 

"  Where  did  you  go,  love  ?  "  asked  mamma. 

"To  see  Adela  Ferrers;  she  is  not  well,  you  know,  and  I  came  home 
through  part  of  the  wood  to  gather  some  of  the  anemones;  I  don't  mean  anem- 
ones, they  are  over — lilies  of  the  valley." 

She  spoke  hurriedly,  glancing  at  Fairlie  all  the  time,  who  never  took  his 
iron  gaze  off  her,  though  all  the  beauty  and  glory  was  draining  away  from  his 
life  with  every  succeeding  proof  that  stared  him  in  the  face  with  its  cruel 
evidence. 

At  that  minute  Lady  Vane  was  called  from  the  room  to  give  some  directions 
to  her  head  gardener  about  some  flowers,  over  which  she  was  particularly  choice, 
and  Fairlie  and  Geraldine  were  left  in  dead  silence,  with  only  the  ticking  of 
the  timepiece  and  the  chirrup  of  the  birds  outside  of  the  open  windows  to 
break  its  heavy  monotony. 

Fan-he  bent  over  a  spaniel,  rolling  the  dog  backwards  and  forwards  on 
the  rug. 

Geraldine  stood  on  the  rug,  her  head  on  one  side  in  her  old  pretty  attitude 
of  plaintiveness  and  defiance,  the  bright  sunshine  falling  round  her  and  play- 


A     LINE    IN     THE    "DAILY."  691 

ing  on  her  gay  dress  and  fair  hair — a  tableau  lost  upon  the  Colonel,  who,  though 
he  had  risen  too,  was  playing  sedulously  with  the  dog. 

"Colonel  Fairlie,  what  is  the  matter  with  you?  How  unkind  you  are 
to-day ! " 

Fairlie  was  roused  at  last,  disgusted  that  so  young  a  girl  could  be  so  accom- 
plished a  liar  and  actress,  sick  at  heart  that  he  had  been  so  deceived,  mad  with 
jealousy,  and  that  devil  in  him  sent  courtesy  flying  to  the  winds. 

"  Pardon  me,  Miss  Vane,  you  waste  your  coquetteries  on  me.  Unhappily, 
I  know  their  value,  and  am  not  likely  to  be  duped  by  them." 

Geraldine's  face  flushed  as  deep  a  rose  hue  as  the  geraniums  nodding  their 
heads  in  at  the  windows. 

"Coquetteries  ? — duped  ?    What  do  you  mean  ? " 

"You  know  well  enough  what.  All  I  warn  you  is,  never  try  them  again  on 
me — never  come  near  me  any  more  with  your  innocent  smiles  and  your  lying 
lips,  or,  by  Heaven,  Geraldine  Vane,  I  may  say  what  I  think  of  you  in  plainer 
words  than  suit  the  delicacy  of  a  lady's  ears  !  " 

Geraldine's  eyes  flashed  fire;  from  rose-hued  as  the  geraniums  she  changed 
to  the  dead  white  of  the  Guelder  roses  beside  them. 

"  Colonel  Fairlie,  you  are  mad,  I  think !  If  you  only  came  here  to  insult 
me " 

"I  had  better  leave?    I  agree  with  you.     Good  morning." 

Wherewith  Fairlie  took  his  hat  and  whip,  bowed  himself  out,  and,  throwing 
himself  across  his  horse,  tore  away  many  miles  beyond  Norwich,  I  should  say, 
and  rode  into  the  stable-yard  at  twelve  o'clock  that  night,  his  horse  with  every 
hair  wringing  and  limb  trembling  at  the  headlong  pace  he  had  been  ridden; 
such  a  midnight  gallop  as  only  Mazeppa,  or  a  Border  rider,  or  Turpin  racing 
for  his  life,  or  a  man  vainly  seeking  to  leave  behind  him  some  pursuing  ghost  of 
memory  or  passion,  ever  took  before. 

We  saw  little  of  him  for  the  next  few  days.  Luckily  for  him,  he  was 
employed  to  purchase  several  strings  of  Suffolk  horses  for  the  corps,  and  he 
rode  about  the  country  a  good  deal,  and  went  over  to  Newmarket,  and  to  the 
Bury  horse  fair,  inspecting  the  cattle,  glad,  I  daresay,  of  an  excuse  to  get 
away. 

"I  feel  nervous,  terribly  nervous;  do  give  me  the  Seltzer  and  hock,  Tom. 
They  wonder  at  the  fellows  asking  for  beer  before  their  execution.  I  don't;  and 
if  a  fellow  wants  it  to  keep  his  spirits  up  before  he's  hanged,  he  may  surely 
want  it  before  he's  married,  for  one's  a  swing  and  a  crash,  and  it's  all  over  and 
done  most  likely  before  you've  time  to  know  anything  about  it;  but  the  other 
you  walk  into  so  deliberately,  superintend  the  sacrifice  of  yourself,  as  it  were, 
like  that  old  cove  Seneca;  feel  yourself  rolling  down-hill  like  Regulus,  with  all 
the  horrid  nails  of  the 'domesticities '  pricking  you  in  every  corner;  see  life 


693  O  UIDA '  S     WORKS. 

ebbing  away  from  you;  all  the  sunshine  of  life,  as  poets  have  it,  fading,  sweetly 
but  surely,  from  your  grasp,  and  Death,  alias  the  Matrimonial  Black  Cap, 
coming  down  ruthlessly  on  your  devoted  heads.  I  feel  low— shockingly  low. 
Pass  me  the  Seltzer,  Tom,  do  !  " 

So  spoke  Geraldine's  sposo  that  was  to  be,  on  the  evening  before  his  mar- 
riage-day, lying  on  his  sofa  in  his  Cashmere  dressing-gown,  his  gold  embroid- 
ered slippers,  and  his  velvet  smoking-cap,  puffing  largely  at  his  meerschaum, 
and  unbosoming  his  private  sentiments  and  emotions  to  the  (on  this  score) 
sufficiently  sympathetic  listeners,  Gower  and  I. 

"  I  don't  pity  you  ! "  said  Tom,  contemptuously,  who  had  as  much  disdain 
for  a  man  who  married  as  for  one  who  bought  gooseberry  for  champagne,  or 
Cape  for  comet  hock,  and  did  not  know  the  difference — "  I  don't  pity  you  one  bit. 
You've  put  the  curb  on  yourself,  you  can't  complain  if  you  get  driven  where 
you  don't  like." 

"  But,  my  dear  fellow,  can  one  help  it  ? "  expostulated  Belle,  pathetically. 
"  When  a  little  winning,  bewitching,  attractive  animal  like  that  takes  you  in 
hand,  and  traps  you  as  you  catch  a  pony,  holding  out  a  sieve  of  oats,  and 
coaxes  you,  and  so-ho-ing  you  till  she's  fairly  got  the  bridle  over  your  head, 
and  the  bit  between  your  teeth,  what  is  a  man  to  do  ?  " 

"  Remember  that  as  soon  as  the  bit  is  in  your  mouth,  she'll  never  trouble 
herself  to  give  you  any  oats,  or  so-ho  you  softly  any  more,  but  will  take  the 
whip  hand  of  you,  and  not  let  you  have  the  faintest  phantom  of  a  will  of  your 
own  ever  again,"  growled  the  misogamistic  Tom. 

"  Catch  a  man's  remembering  while  it's  any  use,"  was  Belle's  very  true 
rejoinder.  "  After  he's  put  his  hand  to  a  little  bill,  he'll  remember  it's  a  very 
green  thing  to  do,  but  he  don't  often  remember  it  before,  I  fancy.  No,  in 
things  like  this,  one  can't  help  one's  self;  one's  time  is  come,  and  one  goes 
down  before  fate.  If  anybody  had  told  me  that  I  should  go  as  spooney  about 
any  woman  as  I  have  about  that  little  girl  Geraldine,  I'd  have  given  'em  the 
lie  direct;  I  would,  indeed!  But  then  she  made  such  desperate  love  to  me, 
took  such  a  deuced  fancy  to  me,  you  see:  else,  after  all,  the  women  7  might 

have  chosen By  George!  I  wonder  what  Lady  Con,  and  the  little  Bosanquet, 

and  poor  Honoria,  and  all  the  rest  of  'em  will  say  ? " 

"  What  ?  "  said  Gower;  «  say  « Poor  dear  fellow! '  to  you,  and  «  Poor  girl,  I 
pity  her! '  to  your  wife.  So  you're  going  to  elope  with  Miss  Geraldine  ?  A 
man's  generally  too  ready  to  marry  his  daughters,  to  force  a  fellow  to  carry 
them  off  by  stealth.  Besides,  as  Bulwer  says  somewhere, « Gentlemen  don't  run 
away  with  the  daughters  of  gentlemen.'  " 

Pooh,  nonsense!  all's  fair  in  love  or  war,"  returned  Belle,  going  into  the 

:k  and  Seltzer  to  keep  up  his  spirits.     "  You  see,  she's  afraid,  her  governor's 
Bind  being  so  set  on  old  Mount  Trefoil  and  his  baron's  coronet;  they  might 


A     LINE    IN     THE     "DAILY."  693 

offer  some  opposition,  put  it  off  till  she  was  one-and-twenty,  you  know — and 
she's  so  distractedly  fond  of  me,  poor  little  thing,  that  she'd  die  under  the  pro- 
bation, probably — and  I'm  sure  I  couldn't  keep  faithful  to  her  for  two  mortal 
years.  Besides,  there's  something  amusing  in  eloping;  the  excitement  of  it 
keeps  up  one's  spirits;  whereas,  if  I  were  marched  to  church  with  so  many 
mourners — I  mean  groomsmen — I  should  feel  I  was  rehearsing  my  own  ob- 
sequies like  Charles  V.,  and  should  funk  it,  ten  to  one  I  should.  No!  I  like 
eloping:  it  gives  the  certain  flavor  of  forbidden  fruit,  which  many  things, 
besides  pure  water,  want  to  'give  them  a  relish.'  ' 

"  Let's  see  how's  the  thing  to  be  managed  ?  "  asked  Gower.  "  Beyond  tell- 
ing me  I  was  to  go  with  you,  consigned  ignominiously  to  the  rumble,  to  witness 
the  ceremony,  I'm  not  very  clear,  as  to  the  programme." 

"  Why,  as  soon  as  it's  dawn,"  responded  Belle,  with  leisurely  whiffs  of 
his  meerschaum,  "  I'm  to  take  the  carriage  up  to  the  gate  at  Fern  Wood — 
this  is  what  she  tells  me  in  her  last  note;  she  was  coming  to  meet  me,  but 
just  as  she  was  dressed  her  mother  took  her  to  call  on  some  people,  and  she 
had  to  resort  to  the  old  hollow  tree.  The  deuce  is  in  it,  I  think,  to  prevent 
our  meeting;  if  it  weren't  for  the  letter  and  her  maid,  we  should  have  been 
horribly  put  to  it  for  communication; — I'm  to  take  the  carriage,  as  I  say, 
and  drive  up  there,  where  she  and  her  maid  will  be  waiting.  We  drive  away, 
of  course,  catch  the  8.15  train  and  cut  off  to  town,  and  get  married  at  the 
Regeneration,  Piccadilly,  where  a  fellow  I  know  very  well  will  act  the  priestly 
Calcraft.  The  thing  that  bothers  me  most  of  all  is  getting  up  so  early.  I  used 
to  hate  it  so  awfully  when  I  was  a  young  one  at  the  college.  I  like  to  have  my 
bath,  and  my  coffee,  and  my  paper  leisurely,  and  saunter  through  my  dressing, 
and  get  up  when  the  day's  warmed  for  me.  Early  parade's  one  of  the  crying 
cruelties  of  the  Service;  I  always  turn  in  again  after  it,  and  regard  it  as  a  hide- 
ous nightmare.  I  vow  I  couldn't  give  a  greater  test  of  my  devotion  than  by 
getting  up  at  six  o'clock  to  go  after  her — deuced  horrible  exertion!  I'm  quite 
certain  that  my  linen  won't  be  aired,  nor  my  coffee  fit  to  drink,  nor  Perkins 
with  his  eyes  half  open,  nor  a  quarter  of  his  wits  about  him.  Six  o'clock!  By 
George!  nothing  should  get  me  up  at  that  unearthly  hour  except  my  dear, 
divine,  delicious  little  demon  Geraldine!  But  she's  so  deuced  fond  of  me,  one 
must  make  sacrifices  fot  such  a  little  darling." 

With  which  sublimely  unselfish  and  heroic  sentiment  the  bridegroom-elect 
drank  the  last  of  his  hock  and  Seltzer,  took  his  pipe  out  of  his  lips,  flung  his 
smoking-cap  lazily  on  to  his  Skye's  head,  who  did  not  relish  the  attention,  and 
rose  languidly  to  get  into  his  undress  in  time  for  mess. 

As  Belle  had  to  get  up  so  frightfully  early  in  the  morning,  he  did  not  think 
it  worth  while  to  go  to  bed  at  all,  but  asked  us  all  to  vingt-et-un  in  his  room, 
where,  with  the  rattle  of  half-sovereigns  and  the  flow  of  rum-punch,  kept  up  his 


094  QUID  AS     WORKS. 

courage  before  the  impending  doom  of  matrimony.  Belle  was  really  in  love 
with  Geraldine,  but  in  love  in  his  own  particular  way,  and  consoled  himself  for 
his  destiny  and  her  absence  by  what  I  daresay  seems  to  mademoiselle,  fresh 
from  her  perusal  of  "Aurora  Leigh"  or  "Lucille,"  very  material  comforters 
indeed.  But,  if  truth  were  told  I  am  afraid  mademoiselle  would  find,  save  that 
from  one  or  two  fellows  here  and  there,  who  go  in  for  love  as  they  go  in  for 
pig-sticking  or  tiger-hunting,  with  all  their  might  and  main,  wagering  even  their 
lives  in  the  sport,  the  Auroras  and  Lucilles  are  very  apt  to  have  their  charms 
supplanted  by  the  points  of  a  favorite,  their  absence  made  endurable  by  the 
aroma  of  Turkish  tobacco,  and  their  last  fond  admonishing  words,  spoken  with 
such  persuasive  caresses  under  the  moonlight  and  the  limes  against  those 
"  horrid  cards,  love,"  forgotten  that  very  night  under  the  glare  of  gas,  while 
the  hands  that  lately  held  their  own  so  tenderly,  clasp  wellnigh  with  as  much 
affection  the  unprecedented  luck  "  two  honors  and  five  trumps  ! " 

Man's  love  is  of  man's  life  a  thing  apart. 

Byron  was  right;  and  if  we  go  no  deeper,  how  can  it  well  be  otherwise,  when 
we  have  our  stud,  our  pipe,  our  Pytchley,  our  Newmarket,  our  club,  our  cou- 
lisses, our  Mabille,  and  our  Epsom,  and  they — oh,  Heaven  help  them  ! — have  no 
distraction  but  a  needle  or  a  novel  !  The  Fates  forbid  that  our  agremens  should 
be  less,  but  I  daresay,  if  they  had  a  vote  in  it,  they'd  try  to  get  a  trifle  more. 
So  Belle  put  his  "love  apart,"  to  keep  (or  to  rust,  whichever  you  please)  till  six 
A.M.  that  morning,  when,  having  by  dint  of  extreme  physical  exertion  got  him- 
self dressed,  saw  his  valet  pack  his  things  with  the  keenest  anxiety  relative  to 
the  immaculate  folding  of  his  coats  and  the  safe  repose  of  his  shirts,  and  at 
last  was  ready  to  go  and  fetch  the  bride  his  line  in  the  Daily  had  produced  him. 
As  Belle  went  down  the  stairs  with  Gower,  who  should  come  too,  with  his 
gun  in  his  hand,  his  cap  over  his  eyes,  and  a  pointer  following  close  at  his  heels, 
but  Fairlie,  going  out  to  shoot  over  a  friend's  manor. 

Of  course  he  knew  that  Belle  had  asked  for  and  obtained  leave  for  a  couple 
months,  but  he  had  never  heard  for  what  purpose;  and  possibly,  as  he  saw  him 
at  such  an  unusual  hour,  going  out,  not  in  his  usual  travelling  guise  of  a  wide- 
awake and  a  Maude,  but  with  a  delicate  lavender  tie  and  a  toilet  of  the  most 
unexceptionable  art,  the  purport  of  his  journey  flashed  fully  on  his  mind,  for  his 
face  grew  as  fixed  and  unreadable  as  if  he  had  had  on  the  iron  mask.  Belle, 
guessing  as  he  did  that  Fairlie  would  not  have  disliked  to  have  been  in  his 
place  that  morning,  was  too  kind-hearted  and  infinitely  too  much  of  a  gentle- 
man to  hint  at  his  own  triumph.  He  laughed,  and  nodded  a  good  morning. 

Off  early,  you  see,  Fairlie;  going  to  make  the  most  of  my  leave.  'Tisn't 
very  often  we  can  get  one;  our  corps  is  deuced  stiff  and  strict  compared  to  the 
Guards  and  the  Cavalry." 


A    LINE    IN    THE    "DAILY:*  695 

"  At  least  our  strictness  keeps  us>  from  such  disgraceful  scenes  as  some  of 
the  other  regiments  have  shown  up  of  late,"  answered  Fairlie  between  his  teeth. 

"Ah  !  well,  perhaps  so;  still,  strictness  ain't  pleasant,  you  know,  when  one's 
the  victim." 

"  Certainly  not." 

"  And,  therefore,  we  should  never  be  hard  upon  others." 

"  I  perfectly  agree  with  you." 

"  There's  a  good  fellow.  Well,  I  must  be  off;  I've  no  time  for  philoso- 
phizing. Good-by,  Colonel.'* 

"  Good-by — a  safe  journey." 

But  I  noticed  that  he  held  the  dog's  collar  in  one  hand  and  the  gun  in  the 
other,  so  as  to  have  an  excuse  for  not  offering  that  poignee  de  main  which  ought 
to  be  as  sure  a  type  of  friendship,  and  as  safe  a  guarantee  for  good  faith,  as 
the  Bedouin  Arab's  salt. 

Belle  nodded  him  a  farewell,  and  lounged  down  the  steps  and  into  the  car- 
riage, just  as  Fairlie's  man  brought  his  mare  round. 

Fairlie  turned  on  to  me  with  unusual  fierceness,  for  generally  he  was  very 
calm,  and  gentle,  and  impassive  in  manner. 

"  Where  is  he  gone  ? " 

I  could  not  help  but  tell  him,  reluctant  though  I  was,  for  I  guessed  pretty 
well  what  it  would  cost  him  to  hear  it.  He  did  not  say  one  word  while  I  told 
him,  but  bent  over  Marquis,  drawing  the  dog's  leash  tighter,  so  that  I  might 
not  see  his  face,  and  without  a  sign  or  reply  he  was  out  of  the  barracks,  across 
his  mare's  back,  and  rushing  away  at  a  mad  gallop,  as  if  he  would  leave  thought, 
and  memory,  and  the  curse  of  love  for  a  worthless  woman  behind  him  forever. 

His  man  stood  looking  at  the  gun  Fairlie  had  thrown  to  him  with  a  puz- 
zled expression. 

"  Is  the  Colonel  gone  mad  ?  "  I  heard  him  say  to  himself.  "  The  devil's  in 
it,  I  think.  He  used  to  treat  his  things  a  little  carefuller  than  this.  As  I  live, 
he's  been  and  gone  and  broke  the  trigger  !  " 

The  devil  wasn't  in  it  but  a  woman  was,  an  individual  that  causes  as  much 
mischief  as  any  Asmodeus,  Belphegor,  or  Mephistopheles.  Some  fair  unknown 
correspondents  assured  me  the  other  day,  in  a  letter,  that  my  satire  on  women 
was  "  a  monstrous  libel."  All  I  can  say  is,  that  if  it  be  a  libel,  it  is  like  many 
a  one  for  which  one  pays  the  highest,  and  which  sounds  the  blackest — a  libel 
that  is  true  ! 

While  his  rival  rode  away  as  recklessly  as  though  he  was  riding  for  his  life, 
the  gallant  bridegroom — as  the  Court  Circular  would  have  it — rolled  on  his  way 
to  Fern  Wood,  while  Gower,  very  amiably  occupying  the  rumble,  smoked,  and 
bore  his  position  philosophically,  comforted  by  the  recollection  that  Geraldine's 
French  maid  was  an  uncommonly  good-looking,  coquettish  little  person. 


GOG 


QUID  A  8     WORKS. 


They  rolled  on,  and  speedily  the  postilion  pulled  up,  according  to  order, 
before  the  white  five-bar  gate,  its  paint  blistering  in  the  hot  summer  dawn,  and 
the  great  fern-leaves  and  long  grass  clinging  up  round  its  posts,  still  damp  with 
the  six  o'clock  dew.  Five  minutes  passed — ten  minutes — a  quarter  of  an  hour. 
Poor  .Belle  got  impatient.  Twenty  minutes— five-and-twenty — thirty.  Belle 
couldn't  stand  it.  He  began  to  pace  up  and  down  the  turf,  soiling  his  boots 
frightfully  with  the  long  wet  grass,  and  rejecting  all  Tom's  offers  of  consolation 
and  a  cigar-case. 

"Confound  it  !  "  cried  poor  Belle,  piteously,  "  I  thought  women  were  always 
ready  to  marry.  I  know,  when  I  went  to  turn  of  Lacquers  of  the  Rifles  at  St. 
George's,  his  bride  had  been  waiting  for  him  half  an  hour,  and  was  in  an  awful 
state  of  mind,  and  all  the  other  brides  as  well,  for  you  know  they  always  marry 
first  the  girl  that  gets  there  first,  and  all  the  other  poor  wretches  were  kept  on 
tenter-hooks  too.  Lacquers  had  lost  the  ring,  and  found  it  in  his  waistcoat 
after  all !  I  say,  Tom,  devil  take  it,  where  can  she  be  ?  It's  forty  minutes,  as 
I  live.  We  shall  lose  the  train,  you  know.  She's  never  prevented  coming, 
surely.  I  think  she'd  let  me  hear,  don't  you?  She  could  send  Justine  to  me 
if  she  couldn't  come  by  any  wretched  chance.  Good  Heavens,  Tom,  what 
shall  I  do  ?  " 

"Wait,  and  don't  worry,"  was  Tom's  laconic  and  common-sense  advice; 
about  the  most  irritating  prabably  to  a  lover's  feelings  that  could  pretty  well 
be  imagined.  Belle  swore  at  him  in  stronger  terms  than  he  generally  exerted 
himself  to  use,  but  was  pulled  up  in  the  middle  of  them  by  the  sight  of  Geral- 
dine  and  Justine,  followed  by  a  boy  bearing  his  bride's  dainty  trunks. 

On  came  Geraldine  in  a  travelling-dress;  Justine  following  after  her,  with  a 
brilliant  smile,  that  showed  all  her  white  teeth,  at  "  Monsieur  Torm,"  for  whom 
she  had  a  very  tender  friendship,  consolidated  by  certain  half-sovereigns  and 
French  phrases  whispered  by  Gower  after  his  dinners  at  Fern  Chase. 

Belle  met  Geraldine  with  all  that  tender  empressement  which  he  knew  well 
how  to  put  into  his  slightest  actions;  but  the  young  lady  seemed  already  almost 
to  have  begun  repenting  her  hasty  step.  She  hung  her  head  down,  she  held  a 
handkerchief  to  her  bright  eyes,  and  to  Belle's  tenderest  and  most  ecstatic 
whispers  she  only  answered  by  a  convulsive  pressure  of  the  arm,  into  which  he 
had  drawn  her  left  hand,  and  a  half-smothered  sob  from  her  heart's  depths. 

Belle  thought  it  all  natural  enough  under  the  circumstances.  He  knew 
women  always  made  a  point  of  impressing  upon  you  that  they  are  making  a 
frightful  sacrifice  for  your  good  when  they  condescend  to  accept  you,  and  he 
whispered  what  tender  consolation  occured  to  him  as  best  fitted  for  the  occasion, 
thanked  her,  of  course,  for  all  the  rapture,  etc.  etc.,  assured  her  of  his  life-long 
devotion— you  know  the  style— and  lifted  her  into  the  carriage,  Geraldine  only 
responding  with  broken  sighs  and  stifled  sobs. 


A     LINE    IN     THE    "DAILY."  GOT 

The  boxes  were  soon  beside  Belle's  valises,  Justine  soon  beside  Govver,  the 
postilion  cracked  his  whip  over  his  outsider,  Perkins  refolded  his  arms,  and  the 
carriage  rolled  down  the  lane. 

Gower  was  very  well  contented  with  his  seat  in  the  rumble.  Justine  was  a 
very  dainty  little  Frenchwoman,  with  the  smoothest  hair  and  the  whitest  teeth 
in  the  world,  and  she  and  "  Monsieur  Torm  "  were  eminently  good  friends,  as  I 
have  told  you,  though  to-day  she  was  very  coquettish  and  wilful,  and  laughed  a 
propos  de  bottes  at  Gower,  say  what  Chaumiere  compliments  he  might. 

"  Ma  chere  et  charmante  petite,"  expostulated  Tom,  "tes  moues  mutines 
sont  ravissantes,  mais  je  t'avoue  que  je  prefere  tes " 

"Tais-toi,  because  !  "  cried  Justine,  giving  him  a  blow  with  her  parasol,  and 
going  off  into  what  she  would  have  called  Eclats  de  rire. 

"Mais  ecoute-moi,  Justine,"  whispered  Tom,  piqued  by  her  perversity;  "  je 
raffole  de  toi  !  je  t'adore,  sur  ma  parole  !  je — Hallo  !  what  the  devil's  the  matter  ? 
— Good  gracious  !  Deuce  take  it !  " 

Well  might  Tom  call  on  his  Satanic  Majesty  to  explain  what  met  his  eyes  as 
he  gave  vent  to  all  three  ejaculations  and  maledictions!  No  less  a  sight  than 
the  carraige-door  flying  violently  open,  Belle  descending  with  a  violent  impetus, 
his  face  crimson,  and  his  hat  in  his  hand,  clearing  the  hedge  at  a  bound,  plung- 
ing up  to  his  ankles  in  mud  on  the  other  side  of  it,  and  starting  across  country 
at  the  top  of  his  speed,  rushing  frantically  straight  over  the  heavy  grass-land  as 
if  he  had  just  escaped  from  Hanwell,  and  the  whole  hue  and  cry  of  keepers  and 
policemen  was  let  loose  at  his  heels. 

"  Good  Heavens  !  By  Jove  !  Belle,  Belle,  I  say,  stop  !  Are  you  mad  ? 
What's  happened  ?  What's  the  row  ?  I  say — the  devil  !  " 

But  to  his  incoherent  but  very  natural  exclamations  poor  Tom  received  no 
answer.  Justine  was  screaming  with  laughter,  the  postilion  was  staring,  Per- 
kins swearing,  Belle,  flying  across  the  country  at  express  speed,  rapidly  dimin- 
ishing into  a  small  black  dot  in  the  green  landscape,  while  from  inside  [the 
carriage,  from  Geraldine,  from  the  deserted  bride,  peals  of  laughter,  loud,  long, 
and  uproarious,  rang  out  in  the  summer  stillness  of  the  early  morning. 

"  By  Jupiter  !  but  this  is  most  extraordinary.  The  deuce  is  in  it.  Are 
they  both  gone  stark  staring  mad  ?  "  asked  Tom  of  his  Cuba,  or  the  blackbirds, 
or  the  hedge-cutter  afar  off,  or  anything  or  anybody  that  might  turn  out  so 
amiable  as  to  solve  his  problem  for  him. 

No  reply  being  given  him,  however,  Tom  could  stand  it  no  longer.  Down 
he  sprang,  jerked  the  door  open  again,  and  put  his  head  into  the  carriage. 

"Hallo,  old  boy,  done  green,  eh?  Pity 'tisn't  the  ist  of  April  !"  cried 
Geraldine,  with  renewed  screams  of  mirth  from  the  interior. 

"  Eh  ?  What  ?  What  did  you  say,  Miss  Vane  ? "  ejaculated  Gower,  fairly  stag- 
gered by  this  extraordinary  answer  of  a  young  girl,  a  lady,  and  a  forsaken  bride. 


698 


OUIDAS     WORKS. 


"  What  did  I  say,  my  dear  fellow?  Why, that  you're  done  most  preciously, 
and  that  I  fancy  it'll  be  a  deuced  long  time  before  your  delectable  friend  tries 
his  hand  at  matrimony  again,  that's  all.  Done  !  oh,  by  George,  he  is  done, 
and  no  mistake.  Look  at  me,  sir,  ain't  I  a  charming  bride  ?  " 

With  which  elegant  language  Geraldine  took  off  her  hat,  pulled  down  some 
false  braids,  pushed  her  hair  off  her  forehead,  shook  her  head  like  a  water-dog 
after  a  bath,  and  grinned  in  Gower's  astonished  eyes — not  Geraldine,  but  her 
twin-brother,  Pretty  Face  ! 

"  Do  you  know  me  now,  old  boy  ? "  asked  the  Etonian,  with  demoniacal 
delight, — "  do  you  know  me  now  ?  Haven't  I  chiselled  him — haven't  I  tricked 

him haven't  I  done  him  as  green  as  young  gooseberries,  and  as  brown  as  that 

bag  ?    Do  you  fancy  he'll  boast  of  his  conquests  again,  or  advertise  for  another 
wife  ?    So  you  didn't  know  how  I  got  Gary  Clements,  of  the  Ten  Bells,  to 
write  the  letters  for  me  ?  and  Justine  to  dress  me  in  Geraldine's  things  ?    You 
know  they  always  did  say  they  couldn't  tell  her  from  me;  I've  proven  it  now, 
eh  ? — rather  !     Oh,  by  George,  I  never  had  a  better  luck  !  and  not  a  creature 
guesses  it,  not  a  soul,  save  Justine,  Nell,  and  I  !     By  Jupiter,  Gower,  if  you'd 
heard  that  unlucky  Belle  go  on  swearing  devotion  interminable,  and  enough 
love  to  stock  all  Mudie's  novels  !     But  I  never  dare  let  him  kiss  me,  though 
my  beard  is  down,  confound  it  !     Oh !  what  jolly  fun  it's  been,  Gower,  no 
words  can  tell.     I  always  said  he  shouldn't  marry  her;  he'll  hardly  try  to  do  it 
now,  I  fancy  !    What  a  lark  it's  been  !     I  couldn't  have  done  it,  you  know, 
without  that  spicy  little  French  girl; — she  did  my  hair,  and  got  up  my  crino- 
line, and  stole  Geraldine's  dress,  and  tricked  me  up  altogether,  and  carried  my 
notes  to  the  hollow  oak,  and  took  all  my  messages  to  Belle.     Oh,  Jupiter  ! 
what  fun  it's  been !     If  Belle  isn't  gone  clean  out  of  his  senses,  it's  very  odd  to 
me.    When  he  was  going  to  kiss  me,  and  whispered,  <  My  dearest,  my  darling, 
my  wife  ! '  I  just  took  off  my  hat  and  grinned  in  his  face,  and  said,  '  Ain't 
this  a  glorious  go  ? '     Oh  i  by  George,  Gower,  I  think  the  fun  will  kill  me  !  " 
And  the  wicked  little  dog  of  an  Etonian  sank  back  among  the  carriage 
cushions  stifled  with  his  laughter.     Gower  staggered  backwards  against  a  road- 
side tree,  and  stood  therewith  his  lips  parted  and  his  eyes  wide  open,  bewildered, 
more  than  that  cool  hand  had  ever  been  in  all  his  days,  by  the  extraordinary 
finish  of  poor  Belle's  luckless  wooing;  the  postilion  rolled  off  his  saddle  in 
cachinnatory  fits  at  the  little  monkey's  narrative!  Perkins,  like  a  soldier  as  he 
was,  utterly  impassive  to  all  surrounding  circumstances,  shouldered  a  valise 
and  dashed  at  quick  march   after  his   luckless   master;  Justine  clapped  her 
plump  French-gloved  fingers  with  a  million  ma  Fois!  and  mon  Dieus!  and  O 
Ciels!  and  far  away  in  the  gray  distance  sped  the  retreating  figure  of  poor 
Belle,  with  the  license  in  one  pocket  and  the  wedding-ring  in  the  other,  flying, 
as  if  his  life  depended  on  it,  from  the  shame,  and  the  misery,  and  the  horror 


A     LINE    IN     THE    "DAILY."  699 

of  that  awful  sell,  drawn  on  his  luckless  head  by  that  ill-fated  line  in  the 
Daily. 

While  Belle  drove  to  his  hapless  wooing,  Fairlie  galloped  on  and  on. 
Where  he  went  he  neither  knew  nor  cared.  He  had  ridden  heedlessly  along, 
and  the  Gray,  left  to  her  own  devices,  had  taken  the  road  to  which  her  head 
for  the  last  four  months  had  been  so  often  turned, — the  road  leading  to  Fern 
Chase, — and  about  a  mile  from  the  Vane  estate  lost  her  left  hind-shoe,  and 
came  to  a  dead  stop  of  her  own  accord,  after  having  been  ridden  for  a  couple 
of  hours  as  hard  as  if  she  had  been  at  the  Grand  Military.  Fairlie  threw  him- 
self off  the  saddle,  and,  leaving  the  bridle  loose  on  the  rnare's  neck,  who  he 
knew  would  not  stray  a  foot  away  from  him,  he  flung  himself  on  the  grass, 
under  the  cool  morning  shadows  of  the  roadside  trees,  no  sound  in  the  quiet 
country  round  him  breaking  in  on  his  weary  thoughts,  till  the  musical  ring  of  a 
pony's  hoofs  came  pattering  down  the  lane.  He  never  heard  it,  however,  nor 
looked  up,  till  the  quick  trot  slackened  and  then  stopped  beside  him. 

"  Colonel  Fairlie  ! " 

"  Good  Heavens  !  Geraldine  !  " 

"  Well,"  she  said,  with  tears  in  her  eyes  and  petulant  anger  in  her  voice, 
"so  you  have  never  had  the  grace  to  come  and  apologize  for  insulting  me  as 
you  did  last  week  ?  " 

"  For  mercy's  sake  do  not  trifle  with  me." 

"  Trifle  !  No,  indeed  !  "  interrupted  the  young  lady.  "Your  behavior  was 
no  trifle,  and  it  will  be  a  very  long  time  before  I  forgive  it,  if  ever  I  do." 

"  Stay — wait  a  moment." 

"  How  can  you  ask  me,  when,  five  days  ago,  you  bid  me  never  come  near 
you  with  my  cursed  coquetries  again  ?  "  asked  Geraldine,  trying,  and  vainly,  to 
get  the  bridle  out  of  his  grasp. 

"  God  forgive  me  !  I  did  not  know  what  I  said.  What  I  had  heard  was 
enough  to  madden  a  colder  man  than  I.  Is  it  untrue  ? " 

"  Is  what  untrue  ?  " 

"  You  know  well  enough.     Answer  me,  is  it  true  or  not  ?  " 

"  How  can  I  tell  what  you  mean  ?     You  talk  in  enigmas.     Let  me  go." 

"I  will  never  let  you  go  till  you  have  answered  me." 

"  How  can  I  answer  you  if  I  don't  know  what  you  mean  ? "  retorted  Geral- 
dine, half  laughing. 

"  Do  not  jest.  Tell  me,  yes  or  no,  are  you  going  to  marry  that  cursed 
fool  ? " 

"  What  '  cursed  fool '  ?  Your  language  is  not  elegant,  Colonel  Fairlie  !  " 
said  Geraldine,  with  demure  mischief. 

"  Belle !  Would  you  have  met  him  ?  Did  you  intend  to  elope  with 
him  ?" 


roo 


OVID  AS     WORKS. 


Geraldine's  eyes,  always  large  enough,  grew  larger  and  a  darker  blue  still, 

in  extremest  astonishment. 

"  Belle  !— elope  with  him  ?    What  are  you  dreaming  ?     Are  you  mad  ?  " 
"Almost,"  said  Fairlie,  recklessly.     "  Have  you  misled  him,  then— tricked 

him  ?    Do  you  care  nothing  for  him  ?     Answer  me,   for  Heaven's  sake,   Ger- 

aldine  !  " 

"  I  know  nothing  of  what  you  are  talking  !  "  said  Geraldine,  with  her 
surprised  eyes  wide  open  still.  "  Oblige  me  by  leaving  my  pony's  head.  I 
shall  be  too  late  home." 

"  You  never  answered  his  advertisement,  then?  " 

"  The  very  question  insults  me  !     Let  my  pony  go." 

"  You  never  met  him  in  Fern  Wood — never  engaged  yourself  to  him — 
never  corresponded  with  him  ? " 

"  Colonel  Fairlie,  you  have  no  earthly  right  to  put  such  questions  to  me," 
interrupted  Geraldine,  with  her  hot  geranium  color  in  her  cheeks  and  her  eyes 
flashing  fire.  I  honor  the  report,  whoever  circulated  it,  far  more  than  it  deserves 
by  condescending  to  contradict  it.  Have  the  kindness  to  unhand  my  pony, 
and  allow  me  to  continue  my  ride." 

"  You  shall  not  go,"  said  Fairlie,  as  passionately  as  she,  "  till  you  have 
answered  me  one  more  question:  can  you,  will  you  ever  forgive  me  ?  " 

"No,"  said  Geraldine,  with  an  impatient  shake  of  her  head,  but  a  smile 
nevertheless  under  the  shadow  of  her  hat. 

"  Not  if  you  know  it  was  jealousy  of  him  which  maddened  me,  'love  for  you 
which  made  me  speak  such  unpardonable  words  to  you  ? — not  if  I  tell  you  how 
perfect  was  the  tale  I  was  told,  so  that  there  was  no  link  wanting,  no  room  for 
doubt  or  hope  ? — not  if  tell  you  what  tortures  I  had  endured  in  losing  you — 
what  bitter  punishment  I  have  already  borne  in  crediting  the  report  that  you 
were  secretly  engaged  to  my  rival — would  you  not  forgive  me  then  ?  " 

"  No,"  whispered  the  young  lady  perversely,  but  smiling  still,  the  geraniums 
brighter  in  her  cheeks,  and  her  eyes  fixed  on  the  bridle. 

Fairlie  dropped  the  reins,  let  go  her  hand,  and  left  her  free  to  ride,  if  she 
would,  away  from  him.  % 

"  Will  you  leave  me,  Geraldine  ?  Not  for  this  morning  only,  remember, 
nor  for  to-day,  nor  for  this  year,  but — for  ever  ? " 

"  No! "     It  was  a  very  different  "  No  "  this  time. 

"Will  you  forgive  me,  then,  my  darling?  " 

Her  fingers  clasped  his  hand  clos'ely,  and  Geraldine  looked  at  him  from  un- 
der her  hat;  her  eyes,  so  like  an  April  day,  with  their  tears,  and  their  tender  and 
mischievous  smile,  were  so  irresistibly  provocative  that  Fairlie  took  his  pardon 
for  granted,  and  thanked  her  in  the  way  that  seemed  to  him  at  once  most  elo- 
quent and  most  satisfactory. 


A     LINE    IN     THE    "DAILY."  701 

If  you  wish  to  know  what  became  of  Belle,  he  fled  across  the  country  to 
the  railway  station,  and  spent  his  leave  Heaven  knows  where — in  sackcloth  and 
ashes,  I  suppose — meditating  on  his  frightful  sell.  We  saw  nothing  more  of  him; 
he  could  hardly  show  in  Norwich  again  with  all  his  laurels  tumbled  in  the  dust, 
and  his  trophies  of  conquest  laughing-stocks  for  all  the  troop.  He  exchanged 
into  the  Z  Battery  going  out  to  India,  and  I  never  saw  or  heard  of  him  till  a 
year  or  two  ago,  when  he  landed  at  Portsmouth,  a  much  wiser  and  pleasanter 
man.  The  lesson,  joined  to  the  late  campaign  under  Sir  Colin,  had  done  him 
a  vast  amount  of  good;  he  had  lost  his  conceit,  his  vanity,  his  affectation,  and 
was  what  nature  meant  him  to  be — a  sensible,  good-hearted  fellow.  As  luck 
would  have  it,  Pretty  Face,  who  had  joined  the  Eleventh,  was  there  too,  and 
Fairlie  and  his  wife  as  well,  and  Belle  had  the  good  sense  to  laugh  it  over  with 
them,  assuring  Geraldine,  however,  that  no  one  had  eclipsed  the  G.  V.  whom  he 
had  once  hoped  had  answered  his  memorable  advertisement.  He  has  grown 
wiser,  and  makes  a  jest  of  it  now;  it  may  be  a  sore  point  still,  I  cannot  say — 
nobody  sees  it;  but,  whether  or  no,  in  the  old  city  of  Norwich,  and  in  our  corps, 
from  Cadets  to  Colonels,  nobody  forgets  THE  LINE  IN  THE  "  DAILY:  "  WHO 

DID  IT,  AND  WHO  WAS  DONE  BY  IT. 


END   OF   VOLUME   THREE. 


000  143 


